Our Turn

Me: Ains we need to get ready to go. It's our family's turn to clean the church today.

Ains:With Heavenly Father?

(Still not sure how she got the idea in her head that we would be meeting up with Heavenly Father at our building to get some cleaning done.)

Advent Calendar

I have wanted to make an advent calendar for several years, I just lacked the motivation. I had planned to make one with John's mom when we lived in Salt Lake, but I guess since I didn't have kids that were old enough to use it at the time I put it off. Well, last year my sister decided that she wanted to make one, and so she dragged me along with her, and now a year later I finally have it done. We didn't have a pattern so we just traced and measured my mom's old nativity that we used when we were little. I must admit I always like this one because of the tree and the manger scene. I was disappointed to find out that My mom hadn't made our calendar though. All these years I had envisioned my mom at some homemaking night putting together our calendar, come to find out, my Aunt Peggy had made it for my mom and her sisters one year for Christmas. My mom was such a slacker!

Anyways, Kort was determined to get us going and bought most of the stuff, all I had to do was the work of getting it all together. Last night I finally finished. I must admit it's a little ghetto, but it fits my skill level perfectly. I did do the sewing, notice the fine detail work (by fine detail work I mean semi-straight lines). I was too lazy to sew the numbers on so they are just glued on (they'll probably have to be sewn on eventually if I want this thing to last forever). And the manger scene people are stuck on with self adhesive Velcro (again, something that will have to be sewn later if I want it to last). But for now my calendar is done and in working mode for the holidays. My, I'm such a crafty person!

(By the way, just moments after the first picture was taken Owen managed to grab off one of the numbers, but I'm blaming that on not completely dried glue. Also, due to my severe lack of any sort of counting abilities I noticed last night as I was filling the pockets that I had an empty one, after all my counting and figuring I'm still one short...good thing I have left over ornaments!)

Lesson not learned

On Wednesday I was informed that Ains had been fighting a lot with her friend, B,at school. According to Ainsley B told her she was mean and then Ainsley told B that she wasn't being nice and that she didn't want to play with mean people, and then Danene (her teacher) told them that they couldn't sit by each other any more.

According to Danene Ainsley follows around B a lot, and B likes to play with Sadie. But when Danene suggested that Ainsley played with Hallie, and Ains and Hallie were having fun together, B got very upset. So apparently B wants Ains to tag behind her and not have any other friends. This is so foreign to me because Ains has never seemed to be such a follower before. I talked with B's mom in nice terms and I told her that I told Ains to let B play with who she wanted to play with and that she should be friends other girls too (B was also in trouble at her house for fighting and was having a lecture on being nice to friends). I also told her teacher that I was okay with there being a rule that Ains and B can't sit by each other, in fact I'd prefer it.

So in my opinion I think that Ains is following B a little too closely and annoying B (Ains is very sweet but can be a bit much at times). I think that B isn't a particularly nice little girl and ends up saying hurtful things to Ains when she gets annoyed. I'm baffled as to why Ains is convinced that B is her best friend when I have tried so hard to encourage other friendships. I'm now telling Ains to give B some space and play with Hallie (particularly since Danene told me that these two play really well together) and to not worry about what B is doing.

And now according to Ains she is to play with Hallie and tell B that she doesn't want to play with her...I'm just waiting for that to backfire. How do you explain to t 3 year old that there are some people that just aren't worth being friends with, but that you don't have to be rude along the way?

Look What I Did!

Last night for an enrichment activity we made these handy little boards with vinyl lettering and clips to display Ainsley's school work. I'm excited that I get to have my fridge back...and now I'm totally in to vinyl lettering!

Decisions

I finally decided what to do with the Halloween candy.....I ate it. Well, okay, I ate a majority of it but I still have this much left
And I might have to start using some severe will power to refrain from eating the rest of it. I've eaten most of the good stuff so it shouldn't be that hard, right? I've already gained some poundage from eating so much candy. Maybe I should try to remember that it's the kids candy, not mine!

I think I'm ready to talk about it.....

Although I'm not ready to post pictures. Color has plagued my last few days. I've ruined my hair and I've painted my living room twice. All because I am completely incapable of making good color decisions. Let's start with the hair.

Last week Kort and I went with my mom to the beauty supply store to choose out a new color for our hair. I was wanting to get closer to my natural color. I've been dying my hair forever so I'm not exactly sure what that color is, I just knew that I was sick of having dark roots. There was no color that was pretty so we combined 2 colors. Something I've done before, but this time it backfired. I was going for a nice golden brown and I got a nice witchy black....I'm not exaggerating. It was AWFUL! We immediately tried to pull through some highlights to lighten it up. In our haste however, we didn't think through peroxide levels, and tried to put a light color on a dark color instead of trying to lift a dark color to a lighter color. So, basically, when we were done my hair looked exactly the same...exactly!

The next day my mom went back to the supply store to consult with the specialists. They were baffled as to why my hair went that dark. Their suggestion was a color lifter and then to reapply color. We put on the color lifter and my hair went ORANGE. ORANGE. Seriously....ORANGE. This was expected but still traumatic to see. Then we applied the new color that they picked out for me (still trying to get me to that nice golden brown). So we put dye on my hair once again and when we washed it out my hair was..................black. I couldn't believe it. It was black again. Not quite as dark this time, there is a subtle brown/red undertone, but I have very dark hair. At this point I'm worried that my hair will fall out if I try to dye it again (even though I spent a full 24 hours with a deep conditioner in my hair so my hair is actually feeling nice and soft). So I braved church with my new hair and endured the fake, "You're hair looks great!" comments and I'm waiting until I can pull some highlights through. I'm not ready to post a picture on the Internet, just know that it's not pretty...and I'm stuck with it for a while. I'm wondering how long it will be until I pass by a mirror without being shocked.

All the while my hair was changing colors so was my living room. I was sick of having multi-colored walls and chose out a nice new light brown (I thought it looked like a light colored chocolate milk). John and I stayed up late one night to paint and when we awoke the next morning we saw that we had purple walls. AGAIN! I think I sat on the couch that morning (with my severely black hair) and just stared at the walls for at least an hour wondering how another brown color looked purple on my walls! I went to the paint store (even though I looked like a freak) and was told that to get to that color of a brown there had to be a good deal of red in the paint. The red in the sunlight gives the wall that purple look. Apparently there is no way to get the color I wanted with out it looking purple.

So I chose another taupe color that looks fine, but wasn't what I wanted, and painted my living room again the next day (thanks to Syd and Merrill who came and helped me). So now I have wasted time and money trying to match the color of my kitchen that I LOVE and I have to repaint hallways and eventually my kitchen. I've thrown in the towel...completely given up...I'm done. I'll just count my losses at this point, live without being completely satisfied, and I'll be done with the whole painting mess. (As soon as I repaint my bathrooms!)

Halloween

I have to admit that Halloween is not one of my favorite holidays. I never really liked dressing up, I never ate all of my candy, I dreaded it as a teacher, and although we had a lot of fun last night, I'm kind of glad it's over and we can move on to other holidays. So here are the main events from our night. John took Ains and Owen out trick-or-treating while I stayed home to pass out candy...oh wait...you have to actually have kids come to your door to pass out candy and that didn't happen. I ended up leaving candy on our porch for the night with a note that said please take some! So I sat at home until John brought Owen back and then took Ains out for another round. She got a ton of candy for only going to a few houses. I thin we are tucked too far into our neighbor hood to get many trick-or-treaters because as soon as I pulled out of the garage to go and pick up John and Ains I saw a few kids on our street but then when I got to a more main street, just two streets away, there were masses of kids lining the streets (okay, maybe not masses but a lot!)

Then we headed out to go to some of Ainsley's friends houses that are a bit farther away and we discovered that she and her friend Ellie (Galloway) were both Snow White! Don't they look cute. We then ventured over to my parents house to take some pictures and to go to the ever famous "spider house" that Ains has been begging to go trick-or-treating to for months. She talks about this house year round because they have the HUGE spiders that they put crawling up their house, a grave yard in the front yard, smoke machine, lightning, and a witch that sits out on the drive way with a cauldron (and an outdoor heater...smart) giving the kids candy. Ains then got to go to some more houses with her aunt Syd and Merrel, Owen went to a few more houses at his own pace and wowed the crowds. And then we headed home, with and INCREDIBLE amount of candy!
We got home just in time. On the drive home we had a huge melt down and this is how our night ended...
So Halloween is officially over and now I just have to figure out what to do with all the candy that in no way involves me eating all of it in a week! Even the bowl of candy I left on our porch was barely touched. Darn those honest people who only took a few pieces of candy each!