Hearts Full of Joy

happy halloween!

 

halloween skirts

another  fun project from my new favorite sewing book, and here's another post about it too.

i was thrilled to see that mary abreu, who wrote the book, commented on the second posting!

i should clarify that most of the patterns in the book don't have aprons, but i love using the cute panels we have in our shop for the aprons - can't resist.

the skirt on the left is for my little one, and the one on the right is for her little friend who is turning 3. i made them both last night during the last few hours of summer - quick and easy and ready for fall!

this little girl is at the most scrumptious, delightful age - wish I could keep her this way.

a bump in the road

what a week this has been! tashi flew to utah to start her new life at BYU (very emotional for us all to let her go, and sad to see how hard it was for the little ones), and as my mom picked her up at the airport, she called and told us that my brother's wife was waiting for a breast cancer biopsy result. this was almost eerie, because last year on the same day, my dad found a lump under his arm, and i got the call that he had cancer just as i was dropping lexi at her college dorm for the first time. both diagnoses, last year and this year, happened at my mother's birthday, which has been very difficult for her.

also this week, our littlest started pre-K, and brock started a doctorate program several states away. he traveled there this week for one round of classes, and he will travel there 2 more times this semester. he was accepted to teh program in may, but we have been waiting for news of a fellowship to determine if we was going to do it or not. he left on wednesday, still not sure of the fellowship, but it has come through. we also had visits from lexi & bear, on their was back to SVU (southern virginia) after their summer in california, and brock's parents. and our garden is producing faster than we can keep up with it, so there has been lots and lots, and lots, of canning, which i love, but we're tired - emotionally, physically, and mentally.

there has been roller coaster news about my sweet sister in law, but things are looking better than at first. my brother has started a blog to follow their journey:

A Bump in the Road

 

my sister lost her husband to bone cancer when he was only 25, my mother survived breast cancer 7 years ago, my father died of neuro-endocrine cancer in april, and so this is our family's fourth time around. we are very hopeful and i do strongly believe there will be a positive outcome.

a kitty tale: a tribute to adoption & motherhood

our kittens are over 3 weeks old now, and so, so fun. they want to explore and play with us and wrestle each other. we have always felt that gigi, their mommy, is the best little kitty cat in the entire world (she found lexi & i as a tiny ktten when we went for a walk last summer, and wanted to come home with us), and she has proved to be a wonderful mother ~ staying in her box and nursing her babies even when she was weak from hunger. we would bring food & water to her, and she would gobble it desperately, but she wouldn't leave her babies.

(first time out on the lawn)

on monday, the day after their 3 week birthday, a cute little neighbor boy brought us a tiny gray kitty he had found in their barn. they heard it crying on sunday, but couldn't find it. he finally searched until he found it in the rafters after school on monday. it was so tiny, about 1/4 to 1/3 the size of our kittens.

this little kitten confused us because he was so small, about the size of our kittens at birth, but he had his eyes open. our kitties didn't get their eyes completely open for over 2 weeks. then we noticed that he still had his cord. our kitties lost theirs within a week. lexi googled and discovered that kittens can open their eyes as early as 3 days, so we think he is less than a week old. this tiny guy is so sweet and affectionate. he purrs and cuddles, which our other kitteis wouldn't do for us, they just wanted their mommy at this age. we put him with our kittens hoping that gigi would feed him. she was unsure, but did allow him to stay. but he was so weak, and the other kittens so big and pushy, that he didn't have a chance at nursing....

so we force fed him some milk through a syringe, worried that he would get it into his airways, and decided it would take a miracle for him to make it through the night.

little mia is our animal lover and she put him in a doll sling and carried him around that evening. she lovingly and patiently cared for him and kept trying to feed him.

finally we put him with the other kitties for the night, hoping for the best. when we went to bed, we found two signs on our bedroom door:

"please check on buster (that's what she named him) every 30 minutes"

and

"did buster die?

yes/no

at what time

     :         "

we wrote that he was alive at midnight and went to bed.

in the morning he was alive and willing to be fed more milk from a syringe.

and now for the really interesting part of the story (at least we think so)....

mia took buster to gigi before she left for school, and had a long talk with her, telling her how important it was for her to feed him. gigi listened and then picked him up by the scruff of his neck...it took her a long time to accomplish it, because there isn't much scruff. it looked like she was eating him....and carried him to an empty cardboard box in the garage and let him nurse. then she carried him back to the box with the other kittens. she has repeated this over and over and will take him to his own box whenever we ask her to. now, wednesday afternoon, he can hold his own and feed with the other kittens.

i don't believe in coincidences, but do believe that most (if not all) things happen for a reason. i wondered if this little kitty may have been sent to us for a reason. i asked mia what she and buster (pronounced "bustard" by gracie, which inspires endless amusement) have in common. she noted that they were both small. i contributed that they both had birth mothers that couldn't take care of them for some reason. then i asked if we, or gigi, love him any less because he is a different color, or different size, or was born to a different mother. i saw the light go on in her eyes that i had hoped for. and that brings me joy. she struggles with these issues. i'm grateful for an orphaned kitten and a devoted kitty mother and what they can teach my precious little girl.

 

to blog?

I can hear the leaves falling outside my windows, making a rythmic rustling, and I love it. Autumn is heaven where we live.

It's been 4 months since I posted.  And the more time that passes, the harder it becomes to post.

I love my blog, but it is difficult to balance blogging into my day, along with family, exercise, spiritual uplift, relaxation, recreation, serving as relief society president in our church, and keeping our businesses running. I spend so much time on the computer with our online shop that it can be hard to justify spending even a little more time in order to blog.

The past 4 months have been full of wonderful moments, and I will try to fill them in...as best I can.

she is a stinker

this mother's day card from lexi made me laugh ....

 

first: it is undeniably true!

second: this little skunk looks exactly like lexi would have drawn it, if she had drawn it herself.

too funny!

....i love you too lex!

growing up

it was a full day. lexi went to early church because baccalaureate conflicted with our church meetings. we went to the first half of sacrament meeting (where noah waxed wise - see previous post), then baccalaureate. afterwards, i ran back to relief society, and lexi suprsied me by joining me a few moments later (she had already sat through 3 hours of church,  rehearsals, and then baccalaureate. and then she and tashi stayed at church for a sunday evening discussion with susan easton black. they zipped home for a bite to eat, and then back to seminary graduation.

lex gave the opening prayer at seminary graduation, and both she and tashi recieived highest honors and "lettered" in seminary - this involves 90% attendance (at 6 a.m.), 200 days minimum of daily scripture reading, memorizing all the scripture mastery scriptures, and memorizing more like the first presidency and quorum of the twelve in order.

it hit me as we sat there, what amazing girls i have, and how incredibly grateful i am. we don't get up in the  morning until after they have left for seminary (so grateful they can drive). they do this all by themselves. and i give them very little credit for it. they amaze me.

next sunday lexi will graduate. and next year at this time we will do it all again with tashi. so many thoughts and emotions (mainly denial), but sotly too busy to stop and think or feel them...... i somehow missed the memo about how incredibly busy you life is with a graduation senior.

11 years ago, when lex and tash were 7 and 6, i was going through a rough patch. i found myself a very young stay at home mom, with both kids in school all day in japan. and a hoped for pregnancy hadn't happened. i missed my girls everyday, although i enjoyed my alone time (and got so much done!) everyone told me how lucky i was and to enjoy my time. and it was exciting to get to do all the things i hadn't been able to do since becoming a mother: to work out for an hour everyday, to take the train and meet brock near his work for lunch, to study japanese in depth, to go to the temple at least twice a month, etc, etc,. but i discovered that as wonderful as those things were, they weren't anywhere nearly as fulfilling as being a mother, and i was panicked about what would happen when my girls actually left home. the thought was too much to bear. i asked a friend who has seven children, and whose oldest was a senior, and youngest were twins that were tashi's age at the time, how it felt for her to be losing her oldest. she smiled and said that it was difficult, but that teenageers had a way of preparing you for their departure.

i do understand her feelings now. i can see that lexi is ready to go, and i am excited to see her spread her wings and fly. but i'm sure that sorrow will hit me when she is gone. i'm so grateful for the younger children that finally joined our family. because i would be falling apart right now, if they weren't here with us.... if tashi would leave next year, and that would be it. of course i would be in better shape (more time to exercise and eat right), i would be more sane, i would be more accomplished, more relaxed, and have a MUCH cleaner house. but i wouldn't take any  of those things if i had to give up my children to get them.

i do love being a mother.

a beautiful life, well-lived

i followed stephanie nielson's (nie nie) amazing and inspiring blog, and loved her long before her plane crash, as perhaps many of you did.

today i found a link to this youtube video and was deeply touched. i think you will be too.

red crayon in the dryer

I have never had a laundry incident of this colossal magnitude. everything was covered, including the inside of the dryer. a kind friend lent me two red towels to add to every red towel, bathmat, etc. that I could scavenge up around our house. i ran that red load through the dryer several times to *mostly* clean up the crayon left on all surfaces inside the dryer. all of the clothes are in a hefty bag, waiting for garbage day....excellent advice, thank you kristen....

it's all just stuff right? .....life continues onward.

my first born

the time that our oldest will fly the nest is fast approaching. this is the sweet valentine she made for me. she is in the throes of settling on a university. you can read about her dilema on her blog.

when i was the age she is now i was approaching the end of my second semester at byu. i started young  because of a funky deadline in the school district where i entered kindergarten. i enjoyed graduating from high school and starting college young, and wanted that for her too. but she wasn't born in time for the school deadline, although she'd been threatening to come early for months and doctors promised that it was impossible for me to carry her full term (she was actually 8 days late). i always planned to have her skip a year, but she first entered american school as a sophomore, after 12 years in japan, and it didn't seem helpful or wise to move her ahead at that point. and it turns out that i am very grateful that we've had this last year with her at home because she has been most enjoyable (after several years of not being so enjoyable), and i'm grateful for the happy memories and improved relationships that we've forged this year.

here is one of her many quilt projects (she has almost as many in progress as i do), the "kansas twister", a repro pattern by judie rothermel, which she is hand piecing.