Catch-up after being sick

So last Sunday I told you we had people over for dinner and that it was delicious. What I didn't say was that the previous night I had felt a little nauseated, but by Sunday night was hungry and didn't feel any of that wooziness, so I ate my dinner. Well, about 2.5 hours after dinner, the wooziness came back. I felt bad that we'd had people over if I was sick, but I'd really thought I was fine. That night I was incredibly nauseated and didn't sleep much because of it. Steve stayed home from work Monday so I could rest, which was a huge boon. He even went grocery shopping! Tuesday, I still was sick, but I didn't want to keep him home again, so Cecily and I just had a quiet day together and the girls played by themselves after school. Wednesday, I was finally feeling like I was on the mend (four days later!), so we ran some errands and cleaned up the mess that 3 days of mom not feeling well will cause.

The rest of the week was pretty packed, but each day was good in its own way. I got to have a girls night with my friend, Camber on Wednesday night. Thursday and Friday were fall break for the kids, so they played with friends in the morning and Mira had an eye appointment in the afternoon. She will be the newest glasses-wearing member of our family as soon as they come in. I feel for her because she's scared to be a "glasses girl." So grandparents and anyone else sympathetic to her plight, if you'll pray for her I would appreciate it. I'm not sure how to make her feel better. The optometrist says that it's just an astigmatism (and not nearsightedness), but if she doesn't wear the glasses it will get worse faster. After the appointment, we picked up Camber's daughter, Cassie, for a sleepover, and Steve had D&D that night. Friday, we played in the morning, had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, and then after lunch, took Cassie home on our way to my parents' house. My mom had lots of fun activities planned for us.  Blinking monster eyes out of paper, cookie and kiss witch's hats, and we each got our own haunted house to decorate. I loved seeing how each of my girls made their house unique and creative. Saturday, Joe and Cindy and their kids came up to go to the tour of the Biblical Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant at BYU and to celebrate Steve's birthday. We played a lot of games and were taken out for dinner by Nick and Wilda. It was a fun day and we always love seeing cousins. Today, Steve and I were wiped out and so, after church, had a play computer games with the kids sort of night.

Mira and Emilia like dressing Cecily up. I love that they covered her entire head in bows for this outfit. I think she was the Queen of Cecilyland in this particular instance.

Playing with the pieces from Cootie...
Me: She looks like a cowgirl. Is she?
Cecily: Yeah. But she wears skates, cuz she likes to skate everywhere.
Me: Oh, okay.
Cecily: And she not from a farm. She's from a dance party.
. . .
Cecily: Now I'm making her dad. He has hands so he can grab things.
Me: Is he wearing a bow?
Cecily: (without any hint of humor) Yes.

While we were running errands, I took Cecily to a new donut place in Spanish Fork. I didn't have one, but she scarfed hers down, so I'll say it gets a thumbs up.

Cecily was very proud of this lego creation.

Our haunted houses from visiting Nana:

Cecily's:

Mine:

Emilia's:

Mira's:

From the Biblical Tabernacle tour:

Remember the b&w photo challenge I told you about? These are all photos I considered, but ended up not using:

These are the ones I picked to use:

And remember the leaf photos I told you about? Well here they are. I'm not sure what to do with them, but I think they turned out about how I wanted them to. A lot of these are Mira's designs. I am so impressed with her eye for composition. The ones that are her designs, I marked at the bottom.

The ones after this were all Mira's. She put the leaves where she wanted them and I took the picture.

Do you have any favorites? Any ideas what to do with them?

fall leaves, a funeral, and writing insecurites

On Monday of this week, I needed a break. So I spent a bunch of hours playing my favorite video game, Stardew Valley. I straightened the house and washed clothes and did dishes, too. But man was it nice being a slacker for a few hours in the morning. Normally I couldn't do that because I help Julia on Mondays, but she needed to change the day I come, so I'm going to be helping her on Tuesdays now.

I also needed to do a lot of work on my writing because my writing group met on Thursday and I needed to get a chapter out to them before that so they actually had time to read it. I stayed up pretty late Monday and Tuesday working on that. I also had to take time to read their submissions on Wednesday and Thursday. I always enjoy my time at writing group, and I did this time as well. But I also left feeling discouraged about my writing. I haven't met one of my writing goals yet. I sent my Alice in Wonderland book out on submission and haven't gotten any bites. I have gotten a couple of rejections that came so fast I had to wonder what turned them off in record time. I know everyone gets rejections. And it wasn't so much the rejections themselves that bothered me. It was more that I was lacking confidence in the story before I even sent it out. If I get an agent, I want to get an amazing agent that will sell my books for oodles of money. But that means I have to write a book that's worth oodles of money. I don't think I've accomplished that yet. And I have nothing tangible to show for all the time I've taken not meeting that goal so far. So I'm wondering if I need to change my goals. Or if I need to devote less time to it. Or if I need to be working on different kinds of projects. Just feeling a little lost.

Wednesday afternoon, I had a presidency meeting to plan our Christmas party and a funeral. So many tragedies lately.

Thursday, one of our cars needed to be registered, so Cecily and I took an outing to do that. We stopped for a walk around the city buildings and came home with a handful of beautiful leaves and a big idea to do some photography of it. My ideas are never small are they? So I spent a bunch of time on Friday and Saturday collecting and photographing leaves. On Friday, I also had to cut and arrange wildflowers for centerpieces at the funeral. Then Saturday, I was at the church for about 5 hours preparing food, setting up tables, and serving food for a luncheon. It's always nice to be able to ease the burden of people who are grieving at such tragic times.

We also babysat Dylan and Lincoln on Saturday and Steve had to mow the lawn for the last (or maybe second-to-last) time for the year. We both attended the temple this weekend, too. That was long overdue. I took a name of one of my ancestors for the first time and it was a very sweet experience I will remember for a long time.

Steve's parents are in St. George this weekend, so we had to make our own dinner tonight (rough, I know). We always invite someone from our ward over when that happens. We had baby back ribs and biscuits and grilled zucchini and sweet potatoes, and then had gluten-free brownie cookies for dessert. I am still stuffed. Yummmmmm!

Most of these photos are from our walk on Thursday. I also got challenged on Instagram to do black and white photos of my life for a week that don't include people. It's been an interesting challenge and I'm only on Day 2.

It's definitely fall around here

I didn't realize that I didn't post last week. We had General Conference for church and it threw off my schedule, so I completely forgot to do it. We got to go to my parents' house on Sunday and watch and eat and play with them, so it was an enjoyable day. We spent last Saturday cleaning up the house and yard while we listened. I also made a halloween wreath for our door.

I'm not going to remember everything we did that week. It was too long ago. I took this picture, though, of the bookends I received from my friend Megan Taylor after arriving home from our California adventure. There was a note with them that said she was sorry we weren't able to experience Europe, but she hoped these would tide me over until I could. I was so touched by her thoughtfulness. I've also been surprised at how many of my friends have come up to me and expressed true sorrow over our not being able to go. It's made me feel very loved.

I also took a picture of Cecily dancing at the store when I went shopping for fall clothes for the girls. So I guess I did that, too. :)

Cecily got out the ViewMasters this week and was looking at them. I have to keep a close eye on her with those because she thinks it's fun to rip the two circles apart and pull the film off of them. She hasn't taken them out for a while, so I forgot that little detail until she was pulling the last film off one and announced, "I like pulling these off, okay Mom?"

I've been particularly enjoying some aspects of motherhood lately (like getting hugs and "thank yous" from my kids). Other aspects, like whining because of their entitledness, are getting on my nerves more than ever. At least it evens out.

Whenever Mira makes her bed, she takes a picture of it. I think she's proud of her styling abilities, so I let her and then delete 40 of the pictures and keep the one that's in focus. :)

This week was packed full of good busy-ness.

I was able to help my friend Julia on Monday, which I was glad of. She's taking care of her daughter who has a debilitating illness and she is not in the best of health herself, so she's been too tired to do much lately. But I was able to clean her bathroom and vacuum her windowsills and peel potatoes and carrots for her this week. I've had a lot of people tell me (at church) that I'm such a saint for going to help her each week. But I have such a testimony that helping others does more for you than it does for them. It uplifts my soul, makes me grateful for what I have -- physically and monetarily and cognitively, and gives my a chance to get outside of myself and my problems -- every week! Admittedly, there are weeks, where I'm busy and I wish I didn't have to carve out that time, but I'm always so glad that I do.

Also, last week on Friday evening, I had a neighbor call and say they weren't going to be able to use the seeded grapes they grew this year and would I be interested in taking them? Since my parents own a juicer, I thought, "Why not?" because I'm a glutton like that. It all ended up being a good experience in the end, but man, juicing those grapes was a lot of work. When I took them, I had an inkling that seeded grapes could be hard to work with, but it still seemed like more work than I imagined! There were about 35 lbs of grapes and all those seeds gummed up the juicer and I had to keep cleaning it out. Then I blended up the pulp and strain it to get more pulp separated from the seeds. Then I cooked it down, burning it to the bottom of the pan, but thankfully not ruining the whole batch. Then it took three days to bake it into fruit leather.

Thankfully, it all turned out good and my girls are even willing to eat it!

My parents also gave me plums off their tree and I made it into plum sauce and more fruit leather. It was so beautiful and yummy.

Since I was being all domestic, I also borrowed the dehydrator and dehydrated all of the parsley I grew. Parsley is prolific.

A cute friend I found while working on the parsley:

I took Cecily to the local pumpkin patch on Friday to award her for being so good all week while I worked on preserving stuff and helping friends. She loved being up high on the haybales and going down the slides.

Saturday, we took two of the Childress girls to Cornbelly's, the local overrated corn maze and fun stop. We had fun, but for the price and crowds, will probably not go back again ever.

And finally, I took some pictures of the family to put our names in for an opportunity to be in an advertisement. I don't think we got the parts, but I thought the pictures turned out well.