March -- Happy Birthday, Grandma

At the beginning of March we celebrated my mom's birthday.  We'd worked together secretly across the country to put together a quilt for her.  The quilt included blocks made of white fabric with iron-on transfers putting pictures on them.  It was a lot of fun and turned out pretty spectacular.  I made the birthday cake, with the owl motif from the starting square of fabric.

(Also, little James -- bottom left -- enjoyed doing his best to use my cane. He had the right idea, but it was still taller than him!)

There was also a book my sister put together of memories and stories of life so far.

The amount of food coloring required to make the cake frosting that shade of blue left everyone looking a bit cyanotic.  My mom also got some beautiful hand-knit mittens and a scarf and pin from Thailand!

All in all, a wonderful celebration of a wonderful mother / grandmother!  Love you, Mom!

February 2013

 February was a flurry of ice, snow, and pain.  There were a few delightful highlights, though.

One benefit of lots of cold and snow, is that it makes the perfect opportunity to try out snow sculpturing.  The girls made this snow dog in our yard.

I enjoy working with the 8-12 year old girls from church.  We arranged a Daddy/Daughter Dinner in February.  We served breakfast for dinner and played some fun games.  I was in charge of decorations.  We decorated with blue, white, and silver and snow.  Pompoms strung on invisible thread, silver glitter mixed with epsom salts in vases holding up pipe cleaner stems for tissue paper snowflakes (cut by the girls), snowflake table scatter shapes, etc.  It's wonderful to see the girls with a father, uncle, brother, or friend who they love.

Since Sabrina is our youngest, this is the last year for me to see the 1st graders production of "The Little Engine that Could".  Sabrina was chosen to be a narrator.  It is done entirely in choral readings / recitings.  The narrators do most of the talking, so they got to read it from a folder.  She loved it.  Especially the poster-paints she got to use for the "costume"

Around this time I took over sorting, scanning, and captioning photos from my mom's house.  There are quite a lot, many of which I don't remember having ever seen before!  Ginger was very suspicious of the scanner, though.  She often stayed handy and occasionally growled at the box that seemed to growl back.

January 2013

 Ginger has become quite the fan of air hockey.  She figured out how to pull the puck out of the return slot and played for quite a while with it.

Also, Ginger fits perfectly in a Cuties box.  She prefers it to be in front of the fireplace when it's turned on.

Playing games on Mom and Dad's phones while hanging out at Grandpa and Grandma's house.

In January the last book of a series Michael and I have been reading (him for some 20 years, me for only a dozen -- The Wheel of Time series) finally came out.  He let me read it first.  I was rather sick at the time with some ear / sinus infections. One morning while I was sick and reading the book, Sabrina brought me breakfast in bed.  Chocolate cake, grape tomatoes (with individual toothpicks), and a peeled clementine.  Not a standard breakfast, but awfully sweet.  There were so many things I wanted to talk to Michael about as I was reading the book, but since I was reading it first he didn't want any spoilers.  So I used post-it notes and stuck the book full of all my questions and observations.  It made a real mess as Michael was reading the book and pulling the notes out as he went.

A Sunday afternoon game of Phase 10 (woo hoo!!!  3 wilds!).  

A play-doh flag made by Sabrina.

And a "beautiful" funky mole that I had to have removed from my shoulder (end result: nothing evil.  yay!).  Good times, right?

Complicated story made shorter: I got to be a guest lecturer for the Timpanogos Gem & Mineral Society.  I spoke on paleontology and making rock / fossil hobbies a family matter.  There was a beast of a storm that night and I was told the numbers might be small because many are senior citizens and don't get out in the bad weather.  There were still around 80 people there!  It was a lot of work, but ended up being lots of fun.

One last reminiscence:  When I was young there were often two choices with Sunday afternoon popcorn and reading time, or early morning scripture study time: hot chocolate, or postum.  Then several years ago Postum production was stopped!  Apparently now you can find it in a few stores, including our favorite local grocer.  Michael brought this home for me one cold, dark day.

Welcome to 2013. It's halfway over. Good luck with that!

This year had some rough starts.  Once again I went through a series of infections which set off severe myofascial pain that just wouldn't quit.  Several doctors, several medications, several frustrations later and it eventually cleared up.  I had had it at the time, though, so I kept putting off posting anything.  I realize now that I should have kept up anyway.  I've got a load of pictures to catch up!

Over all my health has continued to be a bother.  I finally had to give up volunteering in the girls' classes at school and passed the organization of the Boxtops for Education collecting / sorting / cashing in / etc. on to another parent.  I have been in to see a rheumatologist and am waiting to get in to a neurologist next month.  Despite everything we've tried my pain has continued to worsen.  For now I have to greatly limit my activities and be grateful for what I am able to do.  It's been a hard year.  I am tired of always posting about the next flare, the next doctor, the next diagnosis, the next frustration.  Thus: I dropped off the grid for a while since my life is currently balanced around all of those things.  Pretending it's not a major aspect of our lives, though, it would not represent our lives at all.  So for the sake of reality: life is painful and often frustrating, but the important things are all good.  :)

Now, January, Part 1: Outdoors

This past winter was bitterly cold and very white.  We never got enough snow at one time to result in a day off school, but we also didn't see the curbs or grass for weeks or perhaps months at a time!  It did make January a little more cheerful since it wasn't full of brown and mud and darkness.  The snow was pretty and usually had a fresh layer and reflected what sunlight there was for a little more cheer.  It also kept our local snow sculptor busy!  I missed getting pictures of several of them, but they were fun to see.   The perpetual snow also drove deer down to the valley to forage in people's yards.  Our cherry tree didn't survive the winter (with many days below 0), but we got lots of "natural fertilizer" from the deer.

When the gutters started groaning under the weight of the icicles we decided they had better come down.  They were spectacular!  They also came back almost immediately over the front porch.

Ginger was very fond of hunting the deer.  And a wayward wasp that somehow was alive and in the house!

It was sometimes amusing watching the girls plow through the snow drifts to and from the school bus stop.

Finally, one afternoon we caught a beautiful sunset.  The way the light reflected around the snow and shone back off the snow capped mountains was engaging.  This is the best I could do catching it on camera.