It's all beautiful...

 I've been doing a lot of avoidance strategies lately: facebook, netflix, reading blogs. I realized I was so busy for a while, it gave me a great sense of purpose. When things slowed down a little bit, I had a hole I needed to fill. Add to that a scare I had the other day (well, it hasn't gone away yet really) with a friend's health, and I found I was trying to escape my own life. 

 I was reading John Scalzi's blog, and ran across a post that really resonated: It's all beautiful and nothing lasts.   He talked about a dream he had, and this is something he says in the dream. What struck me, was that it wasn't defeatist, it was motivational: it doesn't last so enjoy the heck out of life while you have it --whatever it is. 

 I went to my daughter's choir concert last night, and they had a mentally handicapped girl there participating. At the end of the first song, she screamed "more more" so the choir sang her favorite song for her. She was so over-stimulated that she kind of lost control, and was rubbing her face and shouting, and flailing, and I thought --her parents! The pain they must feel right now! The pain they feel every day! But I looked at the choir, and those kids just saw that they were making this girl happy. They saw beauty. I realized that you could see the moment in two different ways. I've been looking at things wrong a lot. 

 Excuse the clichéed simile with autumn and death. Each week I see more and more leaves fall, each week the beauty moves down the mountain. At first the brightest colors are the furthest away, but as winter and death gets closer, the color moves down towards the valley, toward my own front yard. Soon the aspens by my driveway will be bright gold; then they will be dead for winter. 

 With more intense feelings, even bad ones, come more beauty. I valued my friend more as I feared for her health. I mourn the loss of having little babies in the house, and passed a mom with a 6 month old in the grocery store yesterday, and said "you are so lucky!" I saw the beauty in the little baby girl precisely because my baby days were over. I don't remember if I knew how lucky I was when I had babies. I hope I did, but there is beauty in the remembering and yearning too. 

 So I run up the mountain, and enjoy the beauty even of the leaves that have fallen. When winter comes, I will no doubt exclaim over snow and ice crystals. I hope I can stop and enjoy listening to Ari and Kai's chatter after school today. Tia still thinks I'm funny sometimes. I hope I appreciate that now -- It won't last!

 To see the beauty, I have to look for it in each moment. Remember with fondness, and not block the pain --there is beauty in the fallen leaves too.

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Autumn.

 Fall. Oh my goodness. It's gorgeous around here. Jeff and I took our Friday night treat up the mountain with lawn chairs and just enjoyed the sunset and beautiful valley. We talked about how it seems like since we started spending more time outside, we've gotten to really love where we live. We are so spoiled. 

We are NOT good selfie takers! 

 The sky is a deep, deep blue.

 The bushes look like flower arrangements.

 We did steal one frame of honey from our bees, maybe next year we can track down a spinner we don't feel dumb paying to rent. With only 7 frames full we couldn't justify renting a 9 frame spinner. Next year...

 I just cut and slow -melted the one frame's worth of honey. 

 I love my babies more than I love running and autumn trees, but it seems like I never post pictures of them. I have three little readers. I wonder where they got that from? 

Kai has a few good buddies I'm really grateful for. All of our kids are very settled in our little town. Here they are on another mother's roof --probably good I wasn't around, but I'm glad they had a little adventure. 

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Little Jerusalem.

 Jeff works with the youth in our neighborhood --our local church's "Yong Men" program. Recently they had an amazing activity. One of the men in our church works for the movie department, and let all of the Young Men, Young Women, and their leaders go out to visit the movie sets where they film movies about the life of the Savior. Lucky Jeff got to go with our girls. 

 They've constructed what looks like a real stone city out in the Utah desert. 

 Jeff took almost 5 dozen pictures. There were a bunch of sunset shots as they arrived in the evening. It made for some pretty dramatic lighting.

 As I looked at the pictures, I saw that a number of leaders brought their other kids. Kai and I should have stowed away too! We had a nice evening together at home, and took a walk together, but this would have been a blast.

 It was neat to see scenery that I recognized, like the balcony where Pilate stood,

 Porticos where the sick were healed,

 Massive temple columns,

 Steps where he stood and preached.

 Fantastic, mind blowing architecture.

 Twisted ancient trees for Gethsemane.

 Seeing what was meant to be Calvary at sunset was particularly poignant.

  

 Can you make out the dome in the background?  

 It impressed me how much trouble and expense was put into this enterprise. Nothing but the best when filming such an important subject I suppose.

 I'm jealous, but someday maybe Kai and I will have our turn.

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"I want a carnival birthday!"

If you ever hear those words out of your child's mouth, drop what you're doing and IMMEDIATELY run the other way. Or, instantly make up a rule that they can't have a party on their ____ (fill in the blank) birthday. Or, burn the house down. Become an astronaut. Do SOMETHING so you don't have to deal with the huge chaos that is now in your current future path. I did try to tell her she'd need to choose between a party and a present, but the party won. No dice. Needless to say, the party cost way more than what I'd ever spend on a present.

I had one thing going for me. I'm the second counselor in our youth group organization, and there is nothing those girls like more than a party. I had one big handful of enthusiastic volunteers. In fact, Tia (who's in the group) is the one whom I need to blame for talking Ari into picking the carnival party. So we gave out tickets, and had 8 different "booths" for the kids to go to. The picture above was from the "photo booth" where they got a picture of themselves with Ari in a carnival frame. I was a little worried Ari wouldn't dress up like a clown. I don't know WHY I worried....how long have I known her? She was all over it.


This was our balloon animal booth. We started out thinking one of my girls would make them an animal, but it was fun for the kids to learn how to make their own too. We got some pretty crazy hats too.



Here's the top of our fishing pond....

...and here's the bottom. Kai nabbed this job before anyone else could.

Of course Tia wanted the face painting. She made up a sign with all of the options to pick from first. In fact, Tia made all of our signs. I kept thinking about the posters I made in High School to run for Sophomore class president (which I won only because nobody ran against me) and they SUCKED compared to what Tia could do freehand at age 12.


Pig Trough. You find a piece of gum in a plate of whipped cream, and blow a bubble to win. The only catch was half of our guests had braces. So we modified it to say you could find a saltine and whistle a tune instead if you were braced up.

My girls had a little too much fun with the whipped cream. You should have seen their shirts after their whipped cream "fight" Their moms probably hated me yesterday...

This was the big expense: the cotton candy machine. I was originally planning on renting, but it was the same price to buy this small one from Bed Bath and Beyond. it worked fine...but needs some supervision. It was a little bit of a prima donna. It worked if everything was exactly right. It got a little frustrating for my helpers though.

The popcorn popper was free --borrowed from my catering partner Audrey. What a mess to clean up! I found out later my girls were adding some extra oil to flavor it up. Ah. That explained some things. Audrey, I can get you some more oil
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Can you see the beautiful rainbow my girls drew me? This was a penny pitch "over the rainbow". Fun and cheap to do. My Mom in Law took charge of this one. (My father in Law was taking pictures of the whole thing for me!)

Here's everyone waiting for cake. Look at those cool hats! The cake turned out to be a lot more trouble than I thought it would be, but turned out pretty cute I guess. Not like the google images I WANTED it to look like....
It's a carousel. Here's the top canopy, which was card stock frosted to match the bottom.
Here's my little horsey. I started out thinking I'd just put animal cookies on there, but they looked like amoebas. They went on the sides instead.

Here's the whole thing. If you squint......not too bad.

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