Fall at 90

I am quite happy with myself...our first day of fall was a success! I have been working on these little fairy dolls in hopes of having them ready for the girls on the first day of fall. I have been reading and reading and reading some more about Waldorf schooling and I am really trying to reset my brain into the way I want to teach Janie and not conform to the way I think society would approve of. I love the idea of her learning life's lessons from nature and having that sense of wonder at it all. I have read about having a nature table in the house and then got the ideas for fairies that "appear" on the first day of the season and disappear before the next begins.

I made houses out of those carvable pumpkins from Michaels and then had a fairy doll for each of the girls and a note from the fairy explaining that they are only here for a season and that they can't wait to be best friends with them....I set it all up while they were sleeping and finally headed to bed at nearly 3am after getting it all "just right"! lol They were thrilled and keep telling everyone that enters the house about the fairies! I love the joy I hear in their voices and see on their faces when they play....Now I have to come up with the same level of cute for the winter season (even if it is non-existent here!) In a strange way, it gives me something to look forward to too!

Stamp Happy

I had the nicest surprise today and just can't help but gush about it! Our neighbors a few houses down have recently found out they are moving in a couple months

:( and are totally into that rush of life that moving brings with it. Anyways, she has decided that she wants to get more into her stained glass art and less into the stamps and clay....I like to think of him as the "stamp fairy" (aka Will the cop)....he stopped by our house today carrying a large bucket/tub FULL of stamps!!! He promply set them down just inside my door and refused to take any payment for them. Even as I write this I'm still in shock at the excitement of it all. I'm sure he could hear the girls and I squeeling as he walked back to his truck and we started looking thru stamps right there in the entrance to the house! It felt like a dream as we started pulling out stamps that we have drooled over on more than one occassion at Hobby Lobby and later in the evening the girls were just hilarious as they insisted on showing Daddy each and every stamp! Now if only there were a few more hours in the day for us to try them all out! I am so thankful for the thoughtful, sharing people we have met here.... I guess I should chalk this one down for a bright spot in Texas. They really are so few and far between but we really are trying to find the good. Today was such a blessing!

Like I needed another obsession!

It happened in the middle of the night....I stumbled on to a blog with pictures of the cutest little dolls . I then combed the internet for how to instructions for two days, made a trip to the craft store the very next morning and the rest is history! I am addicted!

The girls don't know about them yet. once I get a few done I think I am going to hide them around the house and see how long it takes for them to be found! I am so excited but I have so many other things I should be working on!!!

There is something magical about them and I just can't wait to see the girls with them!

Another day...

Another day I can remember waking up to a dark room, annoyed to be woken up early. Then came the news of the plane hitting a building and still feeling confused in my groggy state. As I crawled down the ladder (from a loft bed) the tv juiced up and my feet hit the floor and from that moment on my life was changed forever.
I can remember sitting there numb in front of the tv listening to the reports, watching the second plane hit and here the vague report of a plane gone down in western Pennsylvania. There was such uncertainty that day, and pure fear I will admit. As a kid, I remember asking people what it was like when Kennedy died or imagined what it must have felt like that day at Pearl Harbor. In my mind I guess those events had been romanticized (for lack of a better word) but now that I was witnessing history of this magnitude I wished I could take it all back...We can't and neither can the family and friends of people that lost someone. I was lucky, all of my friends in question were safe but so very many others weren't.
As we go about our lives, and for many of us we went back to our "normal" lives eventually (altho forever altered), please take a moment today, if not every day, and say an extra prayer for those families and children. Please for a moment, put politics aside and be thankful for the gifts we have as Americans, in the land of the free and SO VERY BRAVE! The people we lost that day didn't volunteer to die on behalf of our country but they still deserve our undying respect and honor. On the other hand, there are troops at this very moment still fighting for our freedom and for the memories of those fallen Americans. It doesn't matter what party we belong to, or what country we are currently standing in....we are all Americans and we should all be acting like it.
Please take a moment today to remember the images of those buildings. It's an image I don't think I will ever forget and the feeling of pure patriotism in the days to follow are something I don't ever want to leave me either.

A piece of Alaska for all

As the RNC closes tonight, I sit here in awe...I am so proud to be an American woman and although I have different goals for my life as a woman (and hope my girls will too) I am so thankful that they are growing up in a nation where they can do and accomplish anything their hearts desire.
There will be much debate about this election, but for me there is so much hope by electing someone "real" , a hockey mom if you will and for me it seems like there is a little piece of Alaska seaping into the rest of the country...it's just what our nation needs.

Drill baby drill!