peach and black

I haven't downloaded the pictures from our letterboxing or Besh Ba Gowah but we all had a great time! The wedding was a lot of work but really enjoyable. Here's some pics of what we did.

Tomorrow

We're off to Pima / Thatcher tomorrow at 5:00 am for the Goodman wedding. Stops for letterboxing and a visit to Besh Ba Gowah in Globe for the trip there. Lydia and Quayde are thrilled to be able to stay in a hotel again. Did you know it is almost impossible to find a bathing suit for a teenage girl at the end of August? Finally after 4 stores and multiple clearance racks I found one. Maliea will be a happy girl if it stays sunny enough to swim. Off for an adventure!

more wedding stuff

Tonight's creation was a mailbox for the guests to place any cards for the couple. I personalized it by printing their names on a magnetic sheet then glueing the cording around it. I can just take it off and replace it with a different couple later. This was a lot of fun.

Next

Finished some of the floral for the wedding this weekend. It's really sad though.... They have had a member of their family die this week so they must do a funeral the day before. I hope that we can bring a little sunshine for them by making the wedding beautiful.

Lydia

Today in Church , Lydia's class had some kind of lesson on obeying.
They had a substutite teacher who gave them badges that they were supposed to write their names on. Lydia apparently either didn't like the lesson or just doesn't like the idea of obeying. She didn't write her name ...she wrote NOP.

We listened to two different perspectives on slavery, the South and Civil War yesterday. Audio books are wonderful tools for homeschooling. The one called "To Be A Slave" was incredibly interesting. The authors took quotes and sources from all different people from books, Library of Congress resources etc... to compile the various narratives. Growing up out here in the West , my perspective of prejudice, civil rights, brutality etc.... was all history. When I went to meet Mark's parents for the first time in Tennessee (1987) and got stuck downtown when a Klu Klux Klan rally was about to begin, I literally went into shock for days. Are we not more educated, more intelligent, more loving? Hate is not something I ever want my children to use in their daily life. It would be wonderful if they never experienced it at all. I find that with all the politics around border patrolling and illegals that our culture just has created a new form. I think it is really fear that helps create the hate. Children learn from our example, our opinions, our way of life. If we really really want to have world peace be a possibility in our lifetime, we need to start in our homes. Is the spilt milk worth screaming over?

before and after

We had a lot of fun doing this one. It was supposed to be outside in a courtyard area but the weather forced us to do it inside. Okay so Michael and I really wanted to do it inside anyway. :) sorry pic are reversed of before and after

Saturday was crazy. My sister called with a message from a teenage girl wanting to know when we were arriving to set up chair covers for her sister's quincenera. I hadn't ever heard back from these people after our original call three weeks earlier. NO Contract, NO anything. So I quickly called her to find out what was going on. She wanted 200 chair covers with pink. I had 160 on hand of one style and 125 of the other. I told her we would do the best we could. Of course I only had 80 pink sashes. 2 hours later we had pretty chairs with every other one with a white sash. Shawna came and helped iron them as we placed them on the chairs. I just put the full length ones along the outside and it worked! The facility didn't even have 200 chairs and they communicated with the Moose Lodge as about as well as they did with me. It was very interesting but they paid me $250 in cash.
We are just busy busy busy here. Having a wedding reception tomorrow evening that we can't decide if it will be nice enough to do outside. The backdrop which is black iron can't be seen very well with trees behind it , like they want..so I am trying to come up with a solution. If it is inside :) there's my solution! Found some really cool food umbrella's at a thrift store yesterday!! Today is all about fun and creating. I'm off (well we all knew that) ....to make beautiful stuff.

The new Maliea!

Maliea first spent 2 1/2 hours in the dentist chair this morning and then she had to go back in the afternoon for another hour in the dentist chair. Then she emerged with a deband bag full of all the candy etc... that she hasn't been able to eat for three years! What interesting dentist that give kids all they were deprived of. It was a long day for all of us but especially Maliea who had to go through a lot! She was just beaming today.
She has been quite the trooper through all of this and now she looks amazing! We still have quite a bit of dental work to go through but at least she can see progress.
It's a happy smile!

My day

My sister had post about what a toddler eats..well its definitely true around here. Today I took a bolt, green chalk, a piece of plastic, 2 wrappers, foil and a myriad of other small objects out of my son's mouth. He constantly is finding things, digging in the garbage and calling remote objects off of shelves to place in his mouth. NONE of the other kids ever were this bad. I didn't just "forget" I know that they weren't I've kept journals since I was 12.
I am feeling very overwhelmed today. We stopped to drop off Zack who spent part of the day playing and Lydia pulled out her trach tube. By the time I realized it, I was in the drivers seat , her in the back... her stoma had started to close. Needless to say I had to do some unpleasant necessary stuff to get that tube back in. No trauma internally but plenty externally. So.... now we are keeping an extra eye on her. Lydia acted like no big deal. I am not pleased.
So I came home at 8:45 and started cleaning the entry mud/library room which my loving husband didn't even notice as he walked through it.
It is starting to look like the outdoor wedding on the 10th might be indoors if the weather report stays the same as it is right now.
Tomorrow is a banner day.. Maliea gets her braces off!!! She is very very excited. So we are headed to Phoenix bright and early tomorrow morning. As soon as we get back I will try to post a picture of her new smile for everyone who supported us in this. WE ARE TOTALLY GRATEFUL!