This & That

Contentment and Where to Find It...

I've decided that we live in an interesting world.  To me it seems as though most of us are striving for something better....in a good way, usually.  There are those, though, that seem to be striving and are unstasfied in the pursuit.  OK, so I'm a little esoteric today.  I guess what I've been thinking about is why pursue if you are dissatisfied in the journey?  If you can't be content where you are while on the path, then what's the point?  Maybe it's my age.  The older I get, the more I think that life's too short to spend it being dissatisfied and whiny.  Everyone makes choices, right?  And the results of those choices bring you to where you are right now.  You can't go back and undo what you've done, but you can make progress in whatever situation you find yourself.   I have someone in my extended family who is in her 40's and still waiting for someone to make her happy.  She hasn't yet figured out that SHE is responsible for that one.  I read a quote the other day that related to this and really hit me:

"The truth is--there's no better time to be happy than right now."

And another one:

"The single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude."

Maybe I'm just a little tired of people who have good lives chronically whining that they want something different, thinking that if they could just change this or that, they'd be much happier.  My guess is that it wouldn't be long before they'd find something else that was "wrong" in their good life.  I'm not trying to say that we should sit stagnant and never want changes, I just think that we need to be careful what we wish for and try to be more content as we move along the road.  Life is meant to be enjoyed!  So find joy in the journey!

Bored....Nothing to Do

I think we've offically reached the "dog days" of summer.  Those days that are almost too hot to be outside and just drag on forever.  All summer activities have lost their allure and we're just treading water until school starts in a month.  I am totally scrap blocked as well so it seems like we have just stared at each other for the last couple of days.  It doesn't help that DH has taken the older boys and flown the coop to Canada for about the fourth "once in a lifetime" hunt there.  I think this one was billed as the "last big adventure for DS#2 before the wedding".  Uh-huh.  We're bored, with nothing to do.  I guess I COULD clean......

Feelin' the (Chalk) Love

Just the cutest thing!  The girls that went to camp last week from my church came by on the sly and chalked my driveway with fun drawings saying "thanks" for me going to camp last week.  Gave me warm fuzzies!  Made it worth the lack of sleep and the ugly bug bite! 

It made me feel like this:

It's Officially Too Hot....

It's no secret that I hate hot weather.  Makes me cranky.  We reached the stage where the AC runs almost constantly and it doesn't really cool off at nights, which spoils one of the very few things I like about  warmer weather....sleeping with the windows open.  I'm thinking I'll be spending most of the day sitting on an AC vent.  So the blog challenge this week on Scrap Addict is to list five favorites. 

People:  DH, my kidlets, my mom, my sisters, and Robin (I know that's more than five...it's five groups!)

Food:  Potatoes, bread, Milky Way, Payday and my Thanksgiving stuffing...I am the Carb Queen.

Places:  Home, Victoria, BC, the mountains (but I have to be semi-civilized...a cabin is good), the English countryside, Hawaii

Movies: Princess Bride, Lost in Time, Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one), Brigadoon, 7 Brides for 7 Brothers

Songs:  I really can't do this one.  It changes from moment to moment.  Right now the list includes "My Shepherd Will Supply My Needs", the Mozart Requiem, John Rutter's "Candlelight Carol",  "Who is He", and "A Might Fortress" (the last two sung by my boys in the BYU Men's Chorus.

Leaving you with a layout that's a sneak peek of an August kit.  Not a great photo, in fact, it's a tiny little corner of a photo that I enlarged (that accounts for the grainy look)....wasn't the photo focus at all, but it was a sweet moment caught of DD and I a couple of years ago.

Unbelievable?

My boys are giving me a hard time about camp....they're telling me that they don't believe I went....that I really took time off last week and went to a spa.  I had to get them proof.  So here I doing my part in the Stake YW leaders skit on skit night.  I was part of the pseudo-gospel group, "The Sisters of Shine"....playing the part of the "Out of Step-Sister" since I wasn't dressed in the black gospel robe....got the nice, shiny yellow one instead--in keeping with our theme of "Arise and Shine Forth".  It was an easy part to play.  All I had to do was be off the beat.  This was right before we all burst into a chorus of "This Little Light of Mine"

Yeah, I totally rock!  LOL!

Back...

Back from camp.  As always it was a good/hard week.  Once all the prep work is done beforehand, what's left is just to enjoy being with the girls.....and being able to survive on little or no sleep.  So other than chronic fatigue and a very strange bug bite that itched, swelled to the size of a lemon, turned angry red, then purple, things ran pretty smoothly.  The music we had prepared came off pretty much without a hitch and all in all there was a really good spirit there. 

That said, it was SO good to sleep in my own bed.....

Outta Here Again....

Heading out early tomorrow morning for church Girl's Camp.  I'll be back later on Friday.  No phone, no TV, no outside world at all.....which is good in some ways.  On the other hand.....200 teenage girls....LOL.....'nuff said.

Me...in the Words of Some of my Kidlets

Last week's blog challenge on Scrap Addict had our kids describing us in five words.  Four of my kids were home last week, so I had them offer up their descriptions and it was pretty interesting.  After the bickering about who may have copied whose ideas, that is. 

Those of you who follow my challenges on the site will see this layout posted in about a month for one of them.  Heads up for you.

Catch-up is a Killer

How do I sign up for a vacation from my vacation??  I think I need a solid week with no other obligations to get myself back on track.  And Girl's Camp looms in the not-so-distance!  I've squeezed in a couple of very simple layouts (are there any other kind??) to finish off a kit.  I have really loved working with these papers...they have been a lot of fun.  Anyway, the photo was taken by DD in the "girl car" on our trip last week.  There was myself, DD and MIL in one car and the boys had to switch out riding with us.  From what I hear, they would all rather have been in the "cool car", but DS #2 can manage to be pretty content wherever he's stuck, so thanks, kiddo, for being a happy camper. 

DD wanted to try out her photo skills with my small digi camera.  Not too bad for her first time out.

Sing With Me Now....I Like Me!

Another blog challenge on Scrap Addict.  It is to list five things I like about myself.  I'm acutally a little ahead of the game here.  Last September, for another challenge, I did a layout on this very subject.  Things haven't changed much since then.  So here are a few things, modestly offered, that I like about me.  The basic design for this was taken from a Cathy Zielske layout in her first Clean and Simple book.