Outings and other adventures

So the puffballs that Mira wore on her first day of school were ones she bought herself. She doesn't want Cecily wearing them for good reason--Cecily pays no attention to what she's doing (hence her constantly falling or running into things), so it's very likely that Cecily would get annoyed with them in the middle of the day, take them out, and leave them wherever she was. I don't blame Mira in the least. But I got tired of Cecily trying to steal them. So I looked into getting her some of her own. But I couldn't find any locally that were colors Cecily would like (gray is way to boring for this girl), so I started to look on etsy. But on etsy, to get a good price, you had to buy 10 of them--which would be fine if I could get two puffballs of five different colors. But you could only pick two colors. Why in the world would I want five puffballs of the same color? One of the listings talked about them being homemade. So I googled it. And they are SUPER easy to make! The fur isn't cheap--the least I found it for was $20/yard at Joann's. But since you only need 1/8 of a yard to make like 10 puffballs, it ends up not being that expensive. You just end up with ten puffballs of the same color. Haha! The jokes on me. (I realize now that I told you this already. Sorry.)

So anyway. I made puffballs out of Cecily's choice of colors for her first day of kindergarten. I think they were the perfect accessory to her outfit. I I love what she picked. A funky sequined heart shirt, fuchsia pants with silver glittery spots on them, and fuchsia sandals with sequined pineapples on them. It's just so Cecily--vibrant and funky and fun.

She was all about the photo shoot, too.

She had a bunch of poses up her sleeve.

She made me take one with her leg up like this because "it's like I'm running into my classroom." Haha! She's so funny.

This pose was all her. Where does she come up with this stuff?

Gah. Those eyes. That mischief hiding behind them. *heart eyes*
We're in trouble in 3 - 8 years. There is too much gorgeousness tossed around in this house.

She started school last Tuesday. And I was so excited to have down time in the afternoons to write. Hah! It's only happened once in 2 weeks. I keep myself too busy to sit down for two hours straight. :)

I thought another belly picture was in order. I am 24 weeks in this picture. A little over half-way there.

I took Cecily to the mall play area before school one day so I could have time to work on my writing. I also got my hair color touched up and finished my Independent Study course.

Last Saturday, we were assigned to clean our church building. Mostly because Steve just got called as the new building cleaning coordinator. Since there are three wards in our building, we only have to clean it Sept thru Dec. So Steve has to assign each family in the ward to clean it one Saturday during that time. About 3/4 of them won't show up to do it, so Steve will probably end up doing a lot of building cleaning over the next four months, but he's been very dedicated about it so far and I'm proud of him

The kids and I didn't actually end up going down for our turn because Cecily slept until about 10 minutes before they were going to be done. So I got up and mowed the lawn so Steve wouldn't have to do that, too, when he got home. You use a surprising amount of muscles to use a lawnmower. And I scratched myself like three times and bruised my ankle really good. I guess Cecily doesn't get all of her clumsiness from her dad. ;)

Mira made a Duplo castle that day and had to take about 10 pictures of it. This isn't the best picture, but you get the idea.

This was Mira's hair for church.

Monday was Labor Day, so we decided to use our Visit Salt Lake passes. We were going to go to Red Butte Gardens, but we found out last minute that they were doing free admissions on Labor Day, so we wouldn't even need to use our passes and it was probably going to be ridiculously busy. So we went to the Zoo instead. Parking was a nightmare, but the Zoo itself actually didn't feel overly crowded.

The girls had been grouchy, rebellious, and contentious all weekend. I had hoped getting to do a fun outing would help them turn their attitudes around, but it ended up just making me and Steve want to throttle them.

The elephant show--where we got to sit in the shade--was probably my favorite part of the day.

The Sea Lions were pretty cool, too. There was one that was bigger than me.

Cecily and the grizzly bear had a moment . . .

. . . before he went back to making dents in a bone with his enormous canines.

The red panda was what Cecily was the most excited about.

That night, we went to a park and had a picnic dinner with my parents and Ben's family. It was the only part of the day where my kids seemed happy, so it was good.

I found this sucker in my garden on Wednesday. My zucchini plant has been super weird this summer. It's only produced five zucchini all summer, I think. So I stopped checking it regularly. And then I go out to find the godzilla of zucchinis growing out there. Who knows what would have happened if I'd waited any longer. Maybe it would have started eating the neighbor kids.

I also picked all of these on Wednesday.

And on Saturday, I turned them into these:

On Thursday when I was heading to my mom's for family history, Cecily asked me to take her to the art museum. There's no way I could turn that down, so I took her on Friday. They were doing a quilt exhibit, which was highly disappointing to Cecily. I found it fascinating. Especially since I just put together my second quilt of my life. I learned a bunch just from making this super simple quilt and was awed by the talent (and patience) displayed. But, since Cecily was so disappointed, I got her a donut when we stopped to get buns for dinner at the grocery store. We also had friends for dinner that night and I stayed up late finishing some revisions and new chapters to submit to my writing group.

Saturday, after cleaning the church and canning salsa and mowing the lawn again, Steve and I took a load of new stuff up to the Childresses. Then he scrubbed the kitchen floor, showered the girls, and put them to bed while I went to the temple. Isn't he a good guy?

The temple had so many beautiful blooms and I love the spirit of peace I feel when I'm inside. It was nice to go. And when I got home, Steve and I watched BYU get beat by Berkeley and stayed up too late reading (for me) and playing Stardew Valley (for Steve).

Today a returned missionary from our ward gave a talk in church that was amazing. He talked about how doing the small things, like reading our scriptures daily, praying daily, attending church, etc. is the way we receive God's power in our lives and how those small things make huge positive differences in any person's life. I loved his stories and his obvious closeness to the Spirit. It brightened my spirit and my day.