SUPER photos

The previous post was about the capes. Here is the evidence. (I like the first shot because you can see my husband in the background rescuing escaped balloons.)

SUPER YW

I spent 36-48 hours making 31 crude capes for SUPER YW in Excellence. My hand was cramping in the end. Then, I forgot my camera. I took some pictures on my phone, but they are incredibly blurry. *sigh* Much to my delight the girls embraced their inner hero and seriously enjoyed there capes and personalized symbols. I even made them for the stake leaders. (Their capes were black, all the value colors and I didn't get any pictures of their symbols, either.) Each girl's cape was the color of their value project, unless they didn't tell me, then they chose from what I had. (Orange was not popular at all, but Luke got one.) I tried to do their symbols in colors I knew they liked, but several I just guessed. If I get some decent shots from somewhere i will try and post them. (The one below is from my phone.)

A real service project

I am trying hard not to be judgmental and gossipy. I really am. I have tried to let this one go, but I am having a hard time with it. Since, it is venting, feel free to skip this post.

Yesterday our young women watched several children at the church for 7 hours. We were asked by another ward so their ward members (including youth) could do temple work all day. While hesitant; 7 hours is a long time; we agreed to it.

For a couple of weeks we have been in communication with the ward and this week we got a head count with the ages of the children, 7 kids between the ages of 2-9. Very doable. Imagine our surprise when 3 children show up that were not signed up. Imagine our further surprise that one was a 10 month old. The mother left no instruction, no bottle, nothing, just a pb&j sandwich and a granola bar. (Seriously, who does that?) I am in awe that there was no, "She likes..."or "When she gets upset..." or "To put her to sleep..." or "She is weaned..." It was a hard day with the poor baby. She didn't seem to know how to eat much. She didn't take a bottle, really. She slept for about 1/2 an hour but was exhausted and starving by the end. I was putting away our art supplies when the mom came, luckily. I was not happy. (Not to mention the laws surrounding infant care. They are very strict and we would have said no had we known any child under the age of 18 months was coming. You know me and following rules.)

Top all this off with the young women I had "helping" me. They sat at the table by themselves and drew pictures for an hour, then left. I just thought, "And that is why I have never asked you, and probably never will ask you, to watch my children." I feel like I should have an activity on how to babysit now. What seemed like common sense to me is apparently not. My own children were amazing helpers, even the younger two. I was very impressed and feel so blessed to have them.

Venting done. By doing what we did, we enabled 35 youth to do baptisms, over 40 adults to attend and do work and several unendowed adults stand in the presence of the temple and learn more about it. Keeping it in perspective helps.

Daughter of God week - Day 7

This is the last day of letters for Daughter of God week. This letter is from our stake young women leaders.

Cover - 

 Inside left:

 Inside main:

Andy is going to wear the bee on his suit tomorrow. He gets to conduct for the first time and the bishop is out of town.

Daughter of God week Days 2-6

Every day I thought of putting these on here, but was not sure who was really interested. So, I didn't want it to be a wasted effort. (Insert crickets chirping.) Today I realized that even if one person was in fact interested I should do it. I now apologize, and am playing catch up.

In the envelopes each girl got a packet of M&Ms with this:

 Day 2 accompanied by a pencil (I had to come up with something fast since the person did not come through for this day. Hope it turned out okay.):

 Day 3 (by me) on being a temple:

 Day 4 on the atonement:

 This made me cry. I have read through it a few times now and am grateful that I read it.

Day 5 on Integrity - the woman that wrote it had her a baby boy on August 19th. (She named him Samuel David which I think is fabulous.)

 Day 6 on Choice and Accountability:

Remember those M&Ms I lovingly put into the envelope for the girls? Well, apparently dogs like them. One poor girl lost several letters because her dog ripped into the packet. I was able to replace the missing ones except I gave up my Day 7 envelope so she could have one. I hope to post Andy's so it is on here. 

Tomorrow night is a pizza party at my house for everyone and then we start our fast. I have completed the slide shows and now need to figure out how to put them on DVD.

Daughter of God week Day 1

For a while now we as a Young Women presidency have been planning this week.  We prayerfully thought about what the girls need to better know they are daughters of God. We attended the temple together and everything. 

Each day this week, starting with today, there is an envelope to open. In the envelope is a letter or story or activity or something to think about, and journal about. On Saturday we are having a pizza party and starting our fast together. We will be asking to better know ourselves, individually as His daughters. Then on Sunday we will have a testimony meeting and a meal with our families. It has now begun and I invite you to share with us as we go. Each day I will post what is in each envelope and you can read it if you would like. 

The weeks worth of envelopes. (The big one in the back is the one that contained them all.)

Oh, and I am teaching next Sunday...and the stake leaders will be there. No intimidation at all.

Kick Off

On Sunday we start Daughter of God week. (Details coming on Sunday.) I put together a sweet slideshow. The problem is that the DVD burner doesn't work on this computer anymore and my email won't let me send it to Andy. Now I am not sure what to do. Hey, I just had a thought...maybe I can put it on my flashdrive. Well, until I figure it out I wanted someone to see my efforts, so you get the not quite finished version. (Go to the full screen version to see it clearly and I am in it a few times, too, by the way.)

Super Heroes again

This is probably the last installment of my Super Hero logos for YW in Excellence. I will make one for myself (or have Andy do it) later, which will be Batman of course. Here is what we now have.

The Incredibles logo

 Sister Branske's logo

 The Man of Steel

 Sister Stevens and one of my young women

 The Avengers

 My A girls

 Flash

 Sister Tyler's

 Wonder Woman

 Flipped over it is for my M girls

 A little reworking and it is for my N

 Green Lantern

 The B babes get it

 X-Men (my favorite)

 For the Ks

Phew, that was fun. Now to actually make the capes. It is quite daunting to me.

Super Hero Symbols

You may think we have Super Heroes on the brain in our family. You may be right...

 The young women in our ward are not very girly. There are a couple who are, but really, most would rather be super heroes than princesses. For our Young Women in Excellence night we are going to have Super Young Women be the theme. I am going to make capes as take home handouts in the color of their value project (ie Faith=white, Divine Nature=blue, etc). They will have CTR shields with the value printed on them for the cape for the night, but I thought it would be fun to have their own logo. Based (sometimes loosely) on other super hero logos I have completed a few.

Based on Daredevil

 For the hard to figure out initials. (I can so use the one on the right for me, too, if I wanted.) Andy sketched it out for me. I designed them.

 Based on Aquaman:

 Turn it to the side and add a line for my 2 E girls. Again, Andy sketched it out since my artistic skills are lacking.

 Not so loosely based on Robin

 For my R girls (Want one, Mom?)

 The mighty Captain America:

 I messed up. I didn't do enough circles. I knew it looked weird. Now I need to decide if I keep it or let it go...

 The Amazing Spider-Man

 For Sister Yi. Amazing!

I started out with a nice Fantastic 4 logo for Sister Yi, but it wasn't working. Andy came up with this and it looked great. I cut it out and glued it down. 

I have to make 2 Superman symbols, Flash with a T, 2 Green Lanterns with a B, 2 X-Men with a K, 2 Wonder Woman flipped over for M and then reworked a bit for N, 2 Avengers for A, and an Incredibles logo with a b instead of i. Almost halfway there...then onto the capes. Those will be interesting, I am making up the pattern on my own. I have made crude capes for Marcus before but this is very different. (My logo for the night is the batman symbol Andy completed a while back using out last name in the bat part).

Extraordinary

Yesterday for young women's activity we finished tying quilts. The girls started them at camp but didn't finish. (I was in the kitchen making dinner.) There were a lot of complaints at the time about the yarn not pulling through the fabric very well. Anyway, we felt we should finish them. They are lap quilts for local cancer patients. In 1/2 an hour I finished 2 and helped one girl finish hers. (She didn't do much, she just kept talking.) I think only one girl finished hers last night. It wasn't that hard. I don't see myself as extraordinary but how is this possible? I could have brought the rest home and finished them, but that defeats the purpose of the girls serving. 

Then last night when I couldn't sleep (big surprise) I was looking at my book section of Pinterest. As I read the lists I had pinned I realized how much I know about children's books and early chapter books. I could totally make a list like those. The worst lists were the ones where the person would say they had never read a book, yet put it on the list. Most of those I was thinking that it was not appropriate for the age they were recommending it for. I knew probably 95-99% of the books. Now, what do I do with this knowledge? Why do I have this knowledge? (This is not quite as articulate as it sounded last night in my half asleep state.)

I see things as common sense or ordinary knowledge, but I guess that is not always the case.

Personal progress folders

There are going to be a lot of similar posts to this because I will be making about 20 of these. I wanted to chronicle them, so bare with me.

For my Hannah Banana whose favorite color is yellow.

 I am so excited to give this to her in July!

 Natalia's is more subtle, but still cute.

 I am proud of how these reflect the personality of the girl.

 Kayla loves puppies:

 Her mother insisted that I use the fabric I did. I am just worried that when she is a Laurel she will be less than thrilled. She is a brand new beehive.

I hope to finish 2-3 of these a week for the rest of the summer so I can have them ready as things get more hectic in my life. I have all the materials, just need the time.