Another excellent week (if you dont count H1N1, migraines, fall leaves and obnoxious elections)

Worst--

1. non-stop headaches. Not fun. I can't figure out why they are so bad right now--I'm not stressed, not sick. Frustrating. Nothing seems to make them go away except percocet, and I cannot take that all the time.

2. Now I have to really start working around the house, since I dont have any excuses not to. (see best #1)

3. I miss my "kids" already. (see best #1)

4. The leaves are falling in droves. With so many kids gone, we are going to DIE trying to rake all the leaves this year. I actually fear how bad it is going to be.

5. Election day is Tuesday. We are getting 3-5 items in the mail every day, and get phone calls as often as every hour. This is insane!

6. H1N1 Swine flu. Everyone is dropping like flies. I sent two kids home Thursday, two on Friday. Families in our ward are reporting new cases every day. Last week, the high school reportedly had 300-400 kids out. EVERYONE KEEP AWAY FROM ME AND MY FAMILY!

BEST

1. I finished my long term sub on Friday. It really was a great experience, and I enjoyed it. (I didnt enjoy the 10 hour days, though.) My kids were so sad. Many brought in nice cards or gifts. (I got gift cards, chocolate, books, etc.) We had a really easy, fun day, with a 2 1/2 hour read-a-thon at the end, complete with candy, cookies, cupcakes, punch, etc all provided by excellent parents.

2. A lady I quilt for brought over 7 quilts for me to quilt, bind and tag. It will be A LOT of work. But I will make between $500 and $600. Excellent! I already have some of the money spent (in my mind anyway.)

3. Halloween was fun. Lots of trick or treaters. I gave away air heads. Molly was a princess, her best friend, Katherine, was a frog (Princess and the frog-new disney movie.......). I handed out candy while Molly, Katherine, her brother Andy, and Molly's friend Paloma trick or treated around the neighborhood. I tried to sew, but found I was interrupted too often to get anything done, so I gave up.

4. The stake High Priests annual dinner and social was Friday. Good company. Good food. We sat at a table with Kirk and Shawnee Marsh, some of my favorite people. One crockpot casserole was so good, I sat by the crockpot when the activity was over, waiting for the person to pick it up so I could get the recipe. It turned out that it was made by Ed Reid. It was an easy recipe that he just told me right there. I am making it for Sunday dinner. The entertainment that night was a sing-a-long, led by Pres. Erickson and his banjo. We sang a collection of unknown and bizarre ( but funny) songs--typical of Pres. E.

5. Michael Buble has a new CD out. I love the song "I just havent met you yet" Google the music video on youtube and watch it. It is so fun.

7-2 It must have been a good week.

Worst:

1. Headaches are back in full force. Migraines that last days. With medication, I function, teach, etc. But the same medication that takes an edge off the pain also makes me dizzy and loopy. I'm not even feeling stressed right now. I cant figure it out.

2. My house is becoming less clean. I am actually looking forward to some time to do deep cleaning.

3. nothing else???

Best:

1. My school kids have been fabulous this last week, especially when I've been suffering from headaches. M-Th will be pretty easy days this week. Friday is halloween math, PE, art, and a long read-a-thon. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Then I am done. I will love the free time, and time to accomplish much, but will miss (most of) the kids.

2. While still officially teaching, I have applied for some discount cards. Barnes and Noble, Virginia Science Museum, and will try for a couple more this week.

3. Next week, my first week off, I will attend a quilting retreat on Friday and Saturday. I am having fun anticipating endless quilting. I finished my homespun quilt this week (see pics on facebook since my computer wont let me download pics to the blog). I also made a super cute fabric box and started a purse.

4. I am reading "Three Cups of Tea" and loving it. I'm trying to convince Molly and her group of friends (who are starting a club to do service) to fundraise for this organization. Pennies are easy to collect.

5. Spartanfest was yesterday. I took Molly and two friends. I spent less $ than usual, got a new longarm quilting client, and also bought some cool stuff, including a long wooden board that says "Let us be silent that we may hear the whisper of God", a cool clipboard, notebook and mini scrapbook, fudge, etc. Next year, I am hoping to rent a booth and sell some quilts, maybe purses, and longarm quilting services.

6. I have signed up for Relay for Life walk. If you are able, I would love for you to contribute a little to my fundraising efforts. For years, I have helped fundraise for ACS (American Cancer Society). When I was a poor college student and diagnosed with choriocarsinoma, my insurance covered very little of our bills. The ACS gave us a grant to help with medical expenses. I have always been appreciative. This is another way to give back.

7. I bought a YUDU machine. To do silk screening (t-shirts, bags, etc). I am super excited. Used quilting money to do it.

no brownies, dishwasher or coffee for me

WORST--

1. Working from 715 to 445 every day (9.5 hours), only getting paid for 7, and never quite getting everything done is wearing on me.

2. Even Molly, the "go with the flow" girl mentioned this week that she is going to be glad when I am done, so that we can eat regular dinners again. :o(

3. David's Cookies (traveling booth) arrived at Costco this week, but is NOT carrying their life altering brownie pack! Are they kidding? Why bother coming at all?

4. Our dishwasher finally arrived! But Rob can't install it until at least Monday. I guess if I did without for 2 1/2 weeks, I can do without for another 1/2 week.

BEST-

1. I have every subject planned, papers copied, tests written, etc for the next two weeks. All I have to do now it carry it all out, grade everything and do quarter grades. Maybe only 8 hour days for the next two weeks?? probably not.

2. Started a quilt top that is so so so cute. Three ladies at a table, quilting. (Originally it was 3 ladies at a table drinking coffee, but whats the fun in that? So I changed it to quilting.) I should be able to add the borders today and be done. Its quite small so I'm not sure how to quilt it.

3. For dinner today, I am going to make my niece, Sami's recipe for meatballs. Delicious! Katie and Connor can't come for dinner today, though, so that will be sad. (Of course, that means I don't have to pick up the house, instead, I can quilt all morning. :o)

4. I got a ton of things done this week, including lots of laundry, organizing, de-junking, cleaning, etc. I also did tons of dishes, but that is obvious, with no dishwasher. I also re-watched about 1/3 of conference. Most of the major work was done each day before 7 am because by the time I come home at night, I'm too tired to do much.

5. Molly and I went to the Apple store on Saturday to attend a youth workshop on photos (iphoto, photo booth, editing photos, etc). Then we went to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory with a gift card from a friend that I had done some sewing for. Whole lunch out of pocket cost was $1.46

so so week

WORST-

1. Long weekend. No free time. Not a lot of fun. Run errands. Dr appts. Ward dinner/social to help with. Messy house with no time to clean. Cannot keep up with endless dishes (see #2) and so have turned to using paper/disposable products.

2. I hate my dishwasher. I rinse dishes so clean that you can hardly tell if they are clean or dirty. Then I put them thru the dishwasher cycle and they come out dirty. yes. it is the truth. ask anyone. This week, it got worse, then the dishwasher stopped working at all. No water will come in. So I have a completely full dishwasher of dishes, and a sink full and no dishwasher.

3. my days of laziness are over. I finally have a new calling. (I've been callingless since the end of July. I have to say, I love it.) Although I am sad at having to contribute again, no complaints at the calling.--activities committee. I know! I am a slacker!

BEST-

1. I mostly finished a quilt I started in August. (still have to bind it) Quilted it today in a pretty difficult pattern (for me). It is a little inconsistent, but I tried something new, and most of all, IT'S DONE! I put a picture of it here, but my computer, in combination with blogger.com will not download pics to add, so i had to try another method. It worked except it made the picture HUGE. sorry. Just patiently scan down. :o)

2. When we discovered that our dishwasher was 10 years old, we wisely decided not to fix it. We bought a new dishwasher. Ranked as one of the best by Consumer Reports. Found an amazing price at Lowe's (so low that we thought it might be a mistake....) and then Lowe's had it for 20% off AND Virginia had a tax free weekend for energy star appliances! So we got a great price plus 25% off! The only bad thing is that we cant get it delivered for more than a week. yick. Paper products, here we come.

3. I only have 3 weeks left of teaching. I have started a list of the things I will have time to do when I am not working full time any more. (organize quilting room, organize storage room, go thru garage, make more quilts, help molly with homework without sighing first, etc.)

4. We got molly out of the psycho teachers class. Things are much better now.

JOY

Best

1- Sunday's General Conference--especially loved Pres. Holland's powerful testimony of the Book of Mormon, Brent Nielson's story about praying for the saints in Russia and his son then serving there 30 years later, D Todd Christofferson's talking about moral discipline, Ann Dibbs talk about using safety equipment And H David Burton's talk about "-ity" virtues. LOVE GENERAL CONFERENCE TO THE POINT OF OBSESSION!

2- Saturday's General Conference-- especially Whitney Clayton's saying that our biggest burdens are self inflicted by not following commandments, Russell Osguthorpe's saying that if you rely on the Lord, you will be able to do things you thought were impossible, Jorge Zeballos saying that the command to become perfect is a challenge to be our best! and Tad Callister warning us not to trade things we DO know for things we do not know! LOVE GENERAL CONFERENCE TO THE POINT OF OBSESSION!

3- passed my hump-day for teaching. (On Wednesday). I now have done 5 weeks and have 4 left. The kids were great this week. And to top it all off, this week, our class had art! (Let me explain this--our class goes to art every other friday. For 1 1/2 hours! I drop the kids off at the end of the day and get planning/free time for the last 1 1/2 hour--no kids, the end of the week, yay. love this.)

4-Finished 2 quilts for Shawna's twin boys. Quilted a quilt for pay and have 3 more in the living room to quilt for pay. Finally started sewing a quilt that I started cutting out before I started teaching, and started planning another quilt, this one an amazing doozie of a quilt that will probably take me until I'm 65 to finish (or Christmas, which ever comes first.) It is really really intense!

Worst--

1- General Conference is over for 6 more months.

2- Ate so much during our 2 full days at the Beans (where we watch conference and eat endlessly), that I have gained some very unwanted weight. However, the chicken chili, regular chili, jambalya, sloppy joes, mango salsa, rice, taco salad, fruit and fruit salad, cookies, muffins, pies, doughnuts, nachos, etc were so good! (note: I did NOT partake of all those foods, but they were all there, and more.)

3- School is back in session tomorrow.