A poem

No Title
A woman came to my home today
To watch everything I do and say.
She came in and said, " Have these floors been swept?",
And, "Is this the way your house is kept?".

She judged my house and noted things to be done
By the length of the list there must have been a ton.
Dishes, windows, fan blades to dust,
My refrigerator cleaned out and sterilized a must!

When she was done with the house, she turned on me,
With a magnifying glass she said, "Let me see."
"Your make-up is not done and your hair is a mess."
"Did you think of style, when you got up to dress?"

"Your arms are too flabby, your feet to big,
You slouch, your tummy sticks out like a pig?
You move too slow, you don't do enough!"
I must say her critiques were really quite rough.

She did not note the time I spent
With my little girl and how much it meant.
She did not care when I listened to my son
About the things at school that he had done.

She did not think that dinner time was nice,
She was too busy saying, "This is missing a spice."
She did not write down when I listened to a friend,
Or was quick to help a heart on the mend.

All that mattered was the things you could see
And if I measured up to the woman next to me.
The lives I would shape and touch did not matter,
The questions were superficial like, "Would you get any fatter?"

By the end of the day I felt really small,
And that really my life didn't matter at all.
Would you let somebody treat you that way?
"Of course not!", I hope is what you would say.

Then why are you that woman you let in your home,
To judge yourself with a fine tooth comb?
Remember do not criticise or beat yourself up,
If in your sink there sits a dirty cup.

Think of all the good that you do,
From listening and caring, to tying a shoe.
Make sure you give credit and realize,
You are the one that touches many lives.
By Me

* Just a little side note. I am not talking about my mother in law, that's what my husband thought when I read this to him. I was just thinking that as women sometimes we can be really hard on ourselves. I wanted to do some fun things for myself today, but I kept thinking "Oh, I can't leave these dishes, etc. ect. So I sat down and wrote this poem. All you women out there are amazing and I am including myself in that.

Church at home

Church was cancelled today, due to weather problems. Don and I decided we should try to do something at home. It was not 3 hours long, but we did pretty good. Don picked out some short clips off of the FHE video. We would watch one and then ask the kids some questions to make sure they were paying attention and got the point behind it. We did a little role playing, bared our testimonies, and read a small scripture and sang a song. All in all I think that it went well. You never know how much sinks in until later.

The kids are down for a nap, I think we might write letters and color church pictures latter. Oh, and I get to torment Don with soup today. Ahh, ha, ha, ha!

Our Living room is like an onion, it happens in layers

Well we have come a long way in our living room. We are getting closer to the end, but I thought I'd take you on the journey.

We start at the beginning. With our green and brown paint and the one light in the entry.

















Then we painted and installed more lights.










Then we put in crown molding.










Next came a chair rail and a different color paint.










This last weekend we added curtains.
I love watching it change and come together!

Saturday Projects

Today we worked on a couple of projects. (WARNING THIS IS A LONG ENTRY. if you want to know the basic concept, just read the first sentence of every paragraph).

Don made my first two rotating can racks. I was going to make them out of cardboard, but Don didn't want the homeless feel. So these are out of pressed wood, which we probably won't use next time. Do thinks there ugly, but I love them! Each has four rows and each row holds 11 cans. I told him we only have four more sets to make.

The other project was unpacking the last two boxes. They just so happened to be my craft stuff. This picture doesn't do my desk justice. It does look soooo much better. I should have done a before and after picture. I also put together these wire racks. We are going to make a faux cabinet to kinda go over it. (I'll take pictures when we do it and then it will make sense). I love being organized I want to go to the container store some time. I am kinda sad, I didn't feel like I had enough storage bins and my labeler is out of label stuff. I will be really excited when we build the cabinet shell. I love closing doors to visual clutter. Okay, I am a little off the deep end.

It was a good Saturday.

Let it snow

I guess this is the most snow Knoxville has seen in some time. It is the top story in all the news reports. We're suppose to 4-6 inches. Don and I thought yeah right, but when we woke-up this morning there was a ton of snow outside.

We had this great idea to go sledding in our backyard down our slope, using our trash can lids. Well, it didn't work the lids weren't smooth enough. Here Don is trying to get Josh started, and Josh wasn't so sure this was a good idea. After we gave up, we started throwing snowballs and Josh took one in the face. He was not a happy camper. Holly on the other hand loved it. She was laughing and throwing these little clumps of snow. Josh came back after I finished the first snowman and helped decorate it. I have to give it to the kids my hands felt awful, I was wearing knit gloves. Holly had the same kind on and Josh had none. They did finally give in and went back inside.

Don and I shoveled our walk and deiced it. It was our exercise of the day, unfortunately it is snowing again and the drive is covered again. This is serious stuff, so serious that church was canceled for tomorrow. All of those that are reading this from Utah and Idaho please don't laugh. This is a serious four inches.

By the way...

By the way thank you for all your comments about the weight lose. It makes me feel really good and it's almost as awesome as fitting into my clothes again. THANK YOU EVERYONE!

Miracles do happen!

So, the other day when I was putting on my pants my shirt got tucked into them. I looked down and I could see my feet, not my toes, but my FEET! Now I am not saying that all the bulge is gone, but it is shrinking.

I left my shirt tucked in. I haven't done that for so long, I can't even remember. Here's a picture. Sorry about my legs. I had one knee bent, but here it just looks like I have to pee.