It's been October for 11 whole days and I have yet to fully appreciate it's beauty. The last few days have been hectic. Babysitting for friends, kids awards assemblies, and buying a new giant van. Yes, the Mormon Limo. A 15 passenger shaggin' wagon. The last row has been removed so it's only a 12 passenger, as is, but with lots of cargo space. With 6 kids we didn't all fit in our normal mini van anymore, and we've been taking two cars everywhere we all need to go for the last 14 months. Decided it was finally time to just do it. I am LOVING it. We are taking it up to Mesa this weekend. We are going to visit some family and do some pumpkin patch stuff.
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| Aaron and "The Beast" |
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| Nathan with his straight A's and advanced placement (He goes to 2nd grade each morning for read) |
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Abigail with her Advanced Placement and Straight A's.
Not pictured is Olivia with her same awards. Aaron was actually home for that so he took her, and I didn't ask him to send me the pictures yet. |
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Got Eliza this cereal and it was the best $6 I've spent in a long time. Just look at that face.
I also got a new laptop. Abigail asked if we won the lottery or something because all of a sudden we got a new computer and a new van on the same day! I actually ordered the computer a week ago, and the van we've been looking for a while now, this was just too good of a deal to pass up. But funny how it worked out that way.
I've been on yet another self improvement kick. Finally rejoined the gym and have been going consistently for about 4 weeks. I'm reading some good books (Starting Monday and The Obesity Diet and A Slob Comes Clean). Trying, always trying to create good habits. Also participating in a 10 day social media fast. I'm not counting blogging as social media since there are so few actual interactions on here, and it's really just my (public) journal. I've been carving out time to meditate and really study my scriptures. Still waking up at 4:30am to teach English to kids in China. Still loving it. And tonight I start a pottery class! There are no words for the excitement. It's a lifelong dream to stick my hands in wet clay and spin it around on a pottery wheel and make a bowl or something. I have no idea when or why this dream started, but I'm so excited for it come true tonight. And it feels great to be doing something just for fun. I've said going to the gym is the thing I'm doing for me. And I am. And it's good. But it's not really fun. This is going to be so much fun. My friend is coming with me, her daughter is going to babysit and put my kids to bed. I can't think of anything better. Oh and she's bringing dinner. So when I go clean my kitchen right now, it can stay that way at least until breakfast tomorrow!
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I took pottery as an elective my senior year of college. I am the queen of making 20 pound bowls haha (I'm sure there's still one somewhere at my mom's). My professor actually gave me an A because I quote "I have never seen anyone try so hard and put so much effort into their projects and yet fail so spectacularly, but still not give up." For my midterm project, we had to create a decorative, yet functional item. I made a turkey candy dish which he informed me defied all laws of physics since the head weighed twice what the body did, yet somehow it still stayed attached and the entire thing never tipped over. And you don't even want to see what happened when we moved to the pottery wheel.
ReplyDeleteLove reading this! Congratulations on the new van and to the kids for doing so good! Glad you're doing something for you! Have fun at class!
ReplyDeleteYou know I love me some Brene Brown and she has a whole section of her research about creating. She thought taking time to do artistic things was indulgent at best and generally a frivolous waste of time. But then she found it an important part of whole-hearted people in her research so she started applying it in her life and found it to be somewhat of a game changer. I think this ceramics class might be that for you! Gym for what your body needs, ceramics for what your soul needs. I took one with my mom years ago and it's really nice to 1) be away from kids 2) challenge yourself with something new 3) work on something that gets done and stays done (unlike laundry, cooking, cleaning, general parenting). Can't wait to see what you create!
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