I have been stuck

I have been stuck for months. It is almost done. It has been almost done since before Christmas. I have been working almost every day in January and this far in February. Josh had his practice tuba in my sewing room.

But Saturday I turned on my sewing machine and picked up the quilt. I tackled the elk head. It was not appliqued flat. I had to quilt it into submission. I'm not really great at free motion, but I have been getting a lot of practice. I'm getting better.

Now I just have to quilt the quilt. I have it bound and quilted the grid. This is just the part I dread. But this is the last Christmas quilt.

I also need to get going on some baby quilts. One sweet boy is already here and I really need to get going.

The last Blue and Gold Banquet

This year is a series of lasts. Boaz  is getting ready to graduate to Boy Scouts. This is his last year in Cub Scouts.

We had our last time at the Blue and Gold Banquet.

The theme was Under the Sea.

Our lady who does the Pack Meeting found a very cute idea for the cupcakes.

We had a frosting party at her house and I had to take a picture.

This is a OCD person's dream when they see the big bag of M&Ms. There was also a bowl of red ones, but they were almost gone by the time I took the picture.

The little fishies.

And . . .

There were also some green ones. Although these poor yellow ones are upside down in this picture.

To get the awards, they had to crawl through the Black Lagoon. This is a picture of Boaz preparing for his turn.

He has big goggles and a flash light to help him find his name with his awards.

His friend got the Arrow of Light and when we got home we looked at where we were at. We have decided to try and get the compass points. We have a three month plan to get the rest of the Activity Badges. He seems excited to do it. It helps that he knows that Josh did it almost four years ago.

Crazy.

Trip to the museum

We have a very good museum near by our little town. The Museum of Idaho has wonderful traveling exhibits. We have seen the Bodies exhibit, King Tut, Sue - the TRex. We saw the advertisment for the new exhibit that is here. Boaz's teacher talked about how cool it would be and Boaz got excited about it. We used that excitement to finish the Traveler Activity Badge for Webelos. We looked up the route to get there, how much it would cost in gas, and Boaz was navigator and learned how to read a map.

The  exhibit was CSI bugs. I love to watch murder shows. Craig laughs at me. When I told him about the exhibit, he said he would drop us off and go golfing. Josh was not interested. So on a day off of school, Boaz and I implemented our plan to go see the bugs.

The exhibit was all about reading the cards. There were a few pictures of real crime scenes and the information they got from the bugs. There was a cool life of a fly wheel lit by strobs. I wanted to read all the cards and Boaz was very disappointed.

I felt bad.

But, I still read all the information and went to all the displays.

We took advantage of a photo op:

He iis not really excited. We took the first pictures in the middle where the numbers were not. So he humored me and we took the pictures again with the numbers. I'm not sure the measurement is accurate, there was a space between the screen and the floor.

Boaz took this picture. I don't know why I closed my eyes. I am wearing a bit of a heel. I am not that tall.

After the museum, I drug Boaz through Kohl's. He thought I was a very mean mom. But we ended up at Chick Filet, and he ended up happy with his chicken sandwitch and fries.

What a bummer for Boaz.

But the next exhibit is all about pirates, ship wrecks, and sunken treasure. That one sounds more promising for the boys.

Pretty shoes

I taught in first grade this week. There was a girl who wore fancy, dress up shoes to school. I noticed them right off. They were strappy, glittery and bejeweled. They had kitten heels and she liked to tap, tap, tap in the halls. She also wore a tiara. I'm not sure what the special occasion was, but the shoes hurt her feet from the beginning of the day.

I asked here where her socks were. She smiled and said she didn't have them.

All day long she pranced on her shoes.

The afternoon recess came and I sent the class outside to play. I didn't notice until they came in that it had started to rain. As the kids came in, they brought in a bit of water and left it on the hall floors. The poor hapless princess slipped and fell. She hurt her ankle. I felt bad, but honestly was a bit irritated that she even wore those shoes at all.

I told her she could take off her shoes while we were in class. She soon needed to go to the bathroom. I told her she needed to put her shoes back on, because she could not go barefoot into bathroom. She told me she had boots in her back pack. I told her she should have been wearing those boots all day.

I told Craig about this princess at the end of the day. I could hear the smile in his voice.

He told me that he knew a lady that wore innappropriate shoes in the middle of winter. They were strappy, high heels, and open toed. Sometimes this lady doesn't take her shoes off as soon as she gets home and he can hear her tap, tap, taping around the house.

Here is a picture of that silly woman's shoes.

Craig hates these shoes, but I love them. It has been an unusually warm winter and I have wearing them in defiance and obstance.

Craig calls them my mid-life crisis shoes.

Isn't that interesting that we are most bugged by people that share our weaknesses.

The last Pinewood Derby

We have gone to six straight derbys. But Boaz is a Webelos now, and getting ready to enter the ranks of the BSA. No derbys there.

I think Craig was very happy. I was a bit nostalgic. The closing of a chapter - of sorts.

He did okay. It was a Legos Derby, so we raided the collection. We took off a few pieces for being a bit over the weight limit.

A few pictures.

Josh helped out and ran the gates. He had just gotten back from a youth temple trip.

Boaz looking down the track, standing by his brother.

In the pits.

The photo op center.

His car is the third one. He has a Star Wars figure racing on his car. It looked really cool. The best it came in was second. But some cars didn't even finish, so he was successful.

The ending of an era for our family.

New ponderings

The most common "proof" people have that there is no God is that bad things happen. The common question, "Why would God let that happen?" 'That' being some person doing horrible, evil things. The argument, "If there was a God, He wouldn't let that person do that horrible thing."

My new thought - the war in Heaven was all about agency. That isn't new, but this is. When that argument is used, God shouldn't let bad things happen, the people using this argument are using the very argument and demanding the very method that Lucifer propossed. Agency suplanted, somebody else in the driver's seat of our life.

Using Satan's argument as proof that God doesn't exist seems particularly perverted to me.

Having made our choice, living our life, in the middle of our test; some are wanting to change sides and switch the rules.

I know people who have been harmed by other's choices. Well, we all are in that group really. But I know people who have lived through horrendous things. People who were abused as children - the very worst thing. When they have that hard question, "Why would God allow that to happen to me?" It is a difficult thing. The answer is never glib or easy. It is never okay that people choose evil and damage and ruin other people and their lives.

The only answer is Jesus and His atonement. It is not really even understandable - that answer. But I have seen ruined lives healed as they embrace Christ and have faith in His power and promise.

No easy or new answers. Just a new way to look at the argument.

Physics project

One evening I saw Josh coming down from working on homework. I asked him how it was going. He said he forgot about an assignment, it was due the next day, and it was impossible to get it done. He was writing it off. 

Not okay.

I  asked him what the assignment was. A mouse trap car.  

I have never seen a mouse trap car, let alone made one. I googled it and found some Youtube videos made by a BYU student showing step by step instructions. The supplies were common and the only tools needed were pliers, wire cutters and a hot glue gun. Oh, and a small saw.

That  was my kind of project. 

Craig had spent the day with his mom and the evening with a high school friend who was recently widowed. He called and stoped at the store for a few supplies: round toothpicks, ballons, ball point pens, and I can't remember the other stuff, but it feels like there was at least one more.

Oh, the paint stir sticks. They were the body for the car.

I pulled out the phone to snap a few pictures after it was almost done.

We had old CDs for the wheels. We cut a ballone and used them for traction on the rear wheels. Josh is wielding my pink hot glue gun.

The mouse trap was placed toward the front wheels. The trap was modified and a longer lever was used to provide more accleration.

The ball point pens provided the elements of the axles.

The car -  the lever extension was added later. The fishing line (forgotten item from the shopping list) attatched to the extended lever and wound around the rear axle provided the acceleration.

A few hours later - the video said it could be done in an hour, not bad for novices - and it worked. We blew past the required five feet. 

With help from the computer and his dad, Josh managed to do the impossible. Hopefully we will learn a better time management habit. We just saw the impossible done, right?