But does it feed my soul?

I've been pondering life a lot lately. This is causing me to wake up early... like today.. 3:17am. The good thing about waking up early is that there is no excuse to not work out. The bad thing is that by 5pm I'm done.

Anyway... back to life pondering.

The fundamental question that I keep coming back to as I question who I am and what I want to be is "does it feed my soul?" This is a hard question for someone like me that is interested in everything and who jumps into every new encounter with both feet before checking to see how deep the water is and if the alligator has his mouth open!

What I am learning, albeit, very slowly, is to stop and ask myself if this is going to feed my soul or am I going to burn out quickly. I have a graveyard full of burned out projects, ideas, activities and dreams. I get frustrated with Lexi for not sticking with things, but I am the same way. It's a part of our personalities. We want to try new things, figure them out, and move on to the next new challenge.

But moving from one challenge to the next is draining. I crave challenging tasks, but I can't do them constantly. I have to do something that refuels me. That's why I love painting, puzzles and playing the piano.

I also crave family time. I gotta have my quality time with Doug and the girls.

So all this to say, what do I do?

I don't know.

But while I'm figuring out life, I sure am thankful that I get to ponder life with my loves!

Better than Carved Pumpkins!

I did not grow up carving pumpkins. I have no sweet memories of pumpkin guts and Halloween tales. I'm not sorry about that. However, I do want my kids to have a frame of reference when others talk about Halloween, so we participate in the fun stuff and explain to our kids why we don't participate in the rest.

Anyway... since I'm not into pumpkin carving, I looked for alternate decorating ideas. 

I ended up with some WINNERS!! 

For Kylie's pumpkin, I sprayed painted a base coat of silver and then gave her paint sticks to play with. I LOVE paint sticks.

Paint sticks (I use Playcolor) are awesome. The paint dries in seconds and blends and is fun with NO MESS!! And the paint sticks last way longer than you would think, so while it seems expensive, it isn't near as pricey as it feels!

After Kylie painted, we put on the BOO bling that I bought at Walmart. The overall effect was great. And except for me having to pull the BOO off the liner, Kylie was able to do the entire project herself.

In fact, next year I'll not prime the pumpkin first. The youngest child at our little pumpkin party at age 3 painted her pumpkin herself and it looked great on the orange!

Next was Lexi's project. I sprayed it with gloss white as it's base coat.

Lexi decided to do melted crayon on her pumpkin. I was leery as I have seen so many melted crayon projects literally fall apart as the crayon pops off the base. But I figured why not.. the pumpkins were only going to be around for a week, so we might as well try it.

I got out my craft heater and we peeled some neon crayons and she was ready to go. 

The only real issue was that the heater sprayed dots of wax all over the kitchen table. I'd put something down to protect the table next time!

Ten minutes later and we were finished!

Two fun pumpkin projects and NO GUTS to clean up!! That is a win!

Support Signs for Marching Band

Maddie is in color guard. That means that she is part of the marching band and that means that I have support signs to make!! I'm having a ton of fun!!

Last week was region contest. Here are the signs I made.

We put the signs out before the band had to report Saturday morning.

And then when the band was leaving town, we had a send off. I quickly moved the signs, got the girls and our cans and set up with the other band families!

(Kylie does have shorts on.. really.)

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And here we are cheering the band on! It was soooooo hot! Doug was there.. just not pictured.

We were so excited that the band advanced to Area competition!

So I made more signs for this week...

I'm hoping to have more to add next week...

Go Yellowjacket Band and Colorguard!!

All the way to state!

A little crafting and a lot of sickness

In the midst of Maddie being sick, I've been sick too. In fact, I haven't run in 12 days. I have the respiratory junk. I finally made it into the doctor on Monday afternoon and got a steroid shot and some antibiotics. I'm hoping to feel better soon!

Anyway, I have been doing a little crafting.  One of my friends is pregnant and we had her baby shower over the weekend.  I was in charge of decorations. So I put a different slant on it.  I'm not good at making party decorations. I just can't get excited about spending money or time on something that is only going to be used for a couple of hours.  So instead, I made decorations that we used on the gift table, but that were for the nursery.  I was way more motivated this way!

I really like how they turned out.  I only had a picture of the bedding to work from, so the chocolate color is exactly right, but I think it works.

Here are the completed pieces with the bedding!

Didn't they make cute table decorations!! I made the two matching large canvases, the small square painting, the L button canvas and I put together a chalkboard flower thingy.

The food was delicious. I used the valance from the bedding as part of the table coverings!!

Isn't this adorable! He wanted a cake pop SO BADLY! I think he ended up eating 5 of them! :) 

And here is Mandi. She is 8 months pregnant. If she wasn't such a nice person and a friend I'd have to hate her. 8 months and adorable.

Her boys. She's having a girl this time!

On a different note, I also finished another tshirt quilt!  I am really excited about this one as I didn't know how a jersey would work in a quilt. But it turned out great! The jersey squares are the two shimmery ones in the middle of the quilt.

And there you have it. A couple more projects completed.

What triggers a "relapse?"

I hope there are a lot of you out in blog land that have no idea what this picture is or means. But in our house, it's part of life. It follows my.. "I need some pee." So Maddie or on occasion a different child goes and pees in a Dixie cup and sets it on the counter for me.

Tonight's reading shows that Maddie is spilling ketones, blood and protein in her urine. All of this from a stomach bug.

Lexi had the bug too. They both started feeling bad Monday after school but Lexi was better by Tuesday afternoon and fine today. Maddie hasn't thrown up since 10am Tuesday morning and still can't get out of bed. You just never know what us going to throw her into a relapse.

I am really hoping that she feels stronger tomorrow. Her first colorguard/band competition is Saturday. When we were talking about it tonight, in her normal stoic way, she sighed and said she wants to be able to go, but if she can't, it's not the end of the world. 

I KNOW THAT! 

But I'm the one that's supposed to have to say things like that and reassure her. 

I'm mad that her body has robbed her of a carefree child-like approach to life.