Dressed for Success

There have been some eyebrow-raising things happening in Billings this week.

Megan put this ensemble on for school on Monday.

The back of her shirt said:  "2011 The Mayans saved the best class for last". Huh?  I pointed out the Mayan calendar ends in 2012.  Her eyes rolled.  Apparently I should know that means 2011 will be the last year seniors graduate in America.  Okay, now I get it.  That's downright profound!

That's okay.  I'll get the last laugh.  She won't make it more than 3 minutes at school before being sent home for "inappropriate dress".

What?!?! Everyone at school is dressed like this?

That could only mean one thing:

It's homecoming week!

That means Tuesday was probably "Dress Like a Famous American" day.

Oops.  Nope.  It was "White Trash Day".
Oh, good! That's so much more uplifting!

Here's Megan in her leopard print shirt, Barbie purse,

  and pink heels.  Just so you know, everything you need for "white trashiness" can be found for a few pennies at Goodwill.  And I'm totally borrowing that shirt for Sunday.

By the way, Megan, you're way too cute to look white trashy.

Oh, look!  This poor young man forgot to dress up.

That would make Wednesday "Dress Like An Admirable World Figure", right?

Hmm. Nope.  It's "Gangsta Day".
Yeah!  Who wants to emulate decent folk when you can dress like a gangsta?
Thank you, Skyview, for making my daughter's year so ennobling!

 Megan borrowed P. Dubya's size 11 gangsta shoes.

Cute grill, Megan.  We could have just left your braces on.

I'm sure there's a whole lot of learning going on at school this week



ya, probably not.

Today was military day.

Oh, the patriotism!

Now if I think about how tomorrow is my last child's last toga day, I may feel all weepy again.  Let's not go there till we have to.

Walkin' in Sunshine

We broke the record in Billings today: we hit 93 degrees. Makayla, Hailey, and I celebrated the warm weather by taking a walk along the rims.

You can see most of the city from up here.

The rims are where Hailey's favorite collectible is manufactured.  Yep. She loves rocks.

We could see the trees starting to turn colors in the valley below us.

Oh look! Our diet and stretching program has been working! 

The city just put in several miles of walking trail which we ignored.  Why walk on a nice, paved trails when you can stumble through thistles and rocky ground in your sandals?

We found "Mommy's favorite flowers", which Hailey was going to pick and bring home until she saw the bee on them.  Then she hysterically graciously insisted I pick them.

The rims are the cradle of grasshopper civilization.  We counted seventeen trillion hoppers in the 30 minutes we were up there.

We couldn't get enough of the beautiful scenery.

Makayla was excited by all of these

flying overhead.  Our enormous international airport is just right across the road.

This, Hailey tells me, is a rock with bear prints all over it.  According to Hailey, he walked all over it, then rolled it over so you could see it better.

We could get use to all this sunshine!

Doing What I Don't Do Well

Number one thing I don't do well:

deal with stress appropriately

It's been an exceptionally busy 2 weeks in my life.

Stan may have worn holes in his best working-on-the-roof pants,

but I've been feeling a little worn myself.  Don't worry.  I've been coping by eating LOTS of cupcakes.

Number 2 thing I don't do well:

check the stake calendar regularly

It started when I was calmly surfing the stake calendar 3 weeks ago.  Imagine my surprise when I saw leadership on the calendar for September 18th.  Last time I looked, it was scheduled for October 23rd.  Turns out we were having a broadcast, and those are scheduled by Salt Lake.  I guess I didn't get the memo about the date change.

Fortunately, we had sketched out our leadership meeting clear back in May.  I'd even asked several of the Relief Society presidencies to think about various subjects over the summer that I wanted them so share ideas about.  My counselor came up with a great theme.  (This is Relief Society.  You have to have a theme.) She suggested "To Teach and To Inspire"  from this month's Ensign.  Perfect!  We pulled together some fall decor and samples for the taster's table (granola from food storage items).  Our meeting covered working with priesthood, transitioning, Hearts and Hands, the new monthly meetings format, and welfare.  It was fabulous, and the best part was I had only 2 weeks notice to completely stress out over it. 

Number three thing I don't do well:

Stay up past my 8 pm bedtime. 

 Next, we restarted our "Stake Sisters at the Temple"  with a Friday session and luncheon (soup/pumpkin bread) and a Tuesday session and refreshments (pumpkin cupcakes/ginger bread).  The food part of our Tuesday session tends to go until the temple workers encourage us to go home so they can too.  Let's just say I got home later than 10.

Number 4 thing I don't do well:

Think up clever, cheap ideas

Next was last night's wonderful Women's Broadcast.  We always serve a meal before it begins. 

I got busy with this $1.18 a yard on-sale fabric

and hit all the thrift stores in town for these

that cost around this much.

I cut the fabric into 60" x 24" squares and zig-zagged the edges.

I made a total of 14 of them.

Fortunately, I had my not at all goofy pals

to keep me company as I zigged and zagged.

 I turned my budget plates into these

using a plate, a cup, vase, or candle holder and some epoxy glue.

Voila!  A cake plate!

Now remember, this is a post about what I DON'T do best.  I don't think of clever ideas.  I don't have a knack for finding good use for cheap things.  I DO find good ideas on the Internet which I then copy.

While the glue was drying, I made a bunch of these.  I even piped a fancy frosting thing-a-ma-jig on top.  Did you know that one recipe of cupcakes takes one recipe of frosting unless you are piping on frosting?  That takes three recipes of frosting.  Let's not think about how many calories it adds.

Number five thing I don't do well:

decide what to eat

I put one of my counselors in charge of the meal.  She decided on finger sandwiches, tomato bisque soup, and fruit salad.  We met early to assemble sandwiches

freeze them

cut off the crusts and cut them into

cute little squares.  They have a ham layer, an egg layer, and a cheese layer.  My counselor made the egg and ham salads.

Number six thing I don't do well:

pink fluffy fabric clouds

Keeping  our cheap theme, I added some flowers from my yard into a Costco bouquet and stuck them in my hurricane vase candle holder.

and I scrounged around to find a second centerpiece, using some old pots I spray painted, leftover fabric, and some asters slated for planting in my yard,  my cement bunny, and my not-thrift-store cake plate. 

These were used on the serving tables.

All of my presidency made some fancy cupcakes and we put them on the cake plates. We had lime coconut, cherry chocolate, yellow with chocolate frosting, chocolate mint, white with white frosting, and pumpkin with sour cream frosting. My secretary arranged the fabric I zig-zagged into these lovely fluffy clouds to set the cake plates on. 

It looked pretty snazzy and the tabletops cost around $2 each (and we can reuse the pink stuff).

Here is a particularly cute cake plate one of my counselors made.  It had a bowl on the bottom, a dinner plate, a tea cup, and a saucer.  At the end of the evening, we gave our homemade plates away in a drawing.

Number seven thing I don't do well:

write a talk  in a few minutes (or days.  or weeks.).

This morning I spoke in one of the wards in the stake. 

Have you ever had one of those talks that just didn't want to come together?  I wrote 76 versions of this talk on "Seek and Ye Shall Find" over the last week.  I think I actually gave one of those versions this morning. 

 One of the speakers couldn't be there, so I got to speak exxxtra long.  I know.  I felt sorry for everyone who had to listen to me for 20 minutes, too. 

But after this morning we had almost NOTHING ON OUR CHURCH CALENDAR!  Just two more temple days, and one more training of a new presidency appointment before year's end. 

Of course, that was BEFORE the stake presidency stopped me to say we have a visitor coming in October....

I'm excited cause

Number eight thing I don't do well:

find myself with nothing to do.