A Day of Lasts

Our two Billings Stakes having been doing a community service project called "Hearts and Hands" for the past 11 years.

I have been pretty much living at the church since Thursday.

Today was the big day

We cut, sewed, pinned, packaged, separated, tied, and gave from 8 this morning until 5 tonight.

I am completely tuckered out.  It hurts to move. It helps to know this is our very last Hearts and Hands, EVER!

When I got home tonight it was time for Megan to go to prom.

Her very LAST prom.  I would be really excited about that

 if I weren't totally pooped. I might even have done a dance of happiness if it didn't hurt so much to move.

Tomorrow I get to sit in the car all day as we drive 150 miles to make a stake visit to Colstrip.  Then I get to sit in the car for 150 miles as we drive back.  Have I mentioned I'm driving?

However, sometime around Monday or Tuesday, when my old, tired body has recovered, I'll be posting a long-winded "Prom 2011-The Day Chris Retired From All That Stuff". 

You've been warned.

Our Three Day Weekend!

My weekend started on Friday when I got this mysterious package in the mail addressed to "C. Jones".  What could it be???  I bet it's a yacht.  Or a live-in maid.

No, wait!  I think it's a 10 day European vacation!!!

On Saturday I baked cookies.  Oodles of Coconut Oatmeal With Chocolate Chip Cookies and bunches of Snickerdoodles. "What?" you ask, "are you replacing your ice cream obsession with cookies???"  Uh, no.  I was making cookies for the fifteen sack lunches we  provided for the regional Stake Presidents' meeting.  My presidency met at the church Saturday morning to assemble them,

then I ran off to a Hearts and Hands meeting.

Sunday my presidency and I visited Skyview Ward, and I spoke in Sacrament meeting.  It was a long two days, but don't worry, I ate 328 of the leftover cookies to keep me going.

 Today (Monday) I spent the day working on some cleaning/organizing projects

 including sorting, throwing away,

organizing,

and finding Kailyn's lost backpack!!!  Can you believe it Kailyn? It vanished one of the summers the Bassetts were staying with us, and despite some serious looking, neither I nor Shelly could find it. Today I found it in the bottom of a stack of empty laundry baskets.

I guess I'll have to visit you in, oh, March or so, and return it! 

Stan spent today working at the sucking hole of the duplex.  The wiring is, to be polite, wacky. My favorite electrician has been rewiring everything.  For all you electricians out there, the laundry room and storage room had two hot wires instead of one, which meant the lights in those two rooms have never worked and we're probably lucky the duplex hasn't burned down.

My favorite drywaller (who happens to also be my favorite electrician) also filled in a door that use to connect the two sides between the storage room.

  For some reason, our renters have never wanted a door

to connect them to the people who live on the other side. 

In between all of the package receiving, cookie baking, meetings, and duplex fixing, we also enjoyed  spending time with and caring for our favorite local pumpkins.

 As for Megan, I think I saw her for 2 minutes on Friday and 3 today.  P-Dubya left Friday to go finish his senior year in his hometown, and Megan has been noticeably AWOL.

 Rumor has it she did an overnight snowboard trip with her girlfriends and Harvest Church at Big Sky, followed by movies, hanging out, and general get-you-through-this-tough-time sessions with her pals.

 As for that package, have you guessed what was in it?  Yep.  A dishwasher part.  We had a new problem-the control panel died.  Fortunately, it is STILL under warranty.

 My SECOND favorite repairman, Don, fixed it this morning.  See you next month, Don!

A Sew Sew Day

This past spring, someone donated the beginnings of a quilt to Hearts and Hands, our bi-stake service project.  No one seems to know how to sew these days.  No one owns a machine, either. That means by default, I get to take the fabric home.  I'm not sure what the original person had in mind, but I spent the day getting it put together for tomorrow's stake quilting bee.

I was even lucky enough to have some company while I worked.

Hailey is an in charge sort of girl.  My mother would have called it "bossy". 

 I prefer to think of it as "assertive".

I was instructed to not disturb the babies.  That means I couldn't go upstairs unless I tiptoed.

It was a little annoying.

To be honest, I don't think they were sleeping anyway.

Hailey and Makayla were willing to break the "no food out of the kitchen" rule for me so  I could work while I supervised them.  They can be surprisingly flexible when it comes to rule-breaking. 

 Here they are rule-breaking at my family room work table.  I think Hailey is enjoying it a little too much.

I managed to figure out a fairly quick way to finish the quilt top.  It's not ugly, but it's not colors I would have chosen.

Have you ever noticed that when you get involved in a project, other parts of your life fall apart?

Hearts And Hands

Hearts and Hands is the annual community service project sponsored by the Billings and Billings East Stakes which took place on Friday and Saturday. There are 38 organizations who receive various donations, ranging from quilts to food to baby layettes to school supplies. All donations are used locally. Below is a picture of the finished products, ready to be picked up by the organizations.

Long shot of the distribution tables.

Last year we added a used clothing drive for women. Donated clothes are checked for stains, then sorted by type (dress, pants, shirts, shoes, purses) and sized and hung for sisters to sort through. Anyone can take anything and any amount of clothing they want. Some clothes are pulled for Billings "Dress for Success"--a charity that gives professional-type clothing to needy women for use in interviews or jobs. Leftovers are picked up by Salvation Army.


Below is a picture of the stage where elementary school kits were assembled. These kits include a new backpack, new pencils, markers, glue sticks, notebooks, markers, crayons, and scissors. If we have more supplies then requested by local charities, we donate them to School District 2.


These are finished backpacks in the teen room. They have school supplies and hygiene items. They are intended for charities that service homeless or runaway kids. We don't always meet the requests made by the charities we work with, but we do the best we can, and the charities are delighted to get our donations. It's heartbreaking to see the amount requested each year and know there are that many needy kids and teens in our community.

Below are sisters assembling teen kids

Below, a picture of the 100+ clothing protectors for nursing homes.

A shot of the gym where quilts were being tied. We try to involve other churches, and one really wonderful church participates every year, including their pastor and wife, teenage sons and their friends.

We make baby, twin, and lap size quilts. Most of the quilts were finished before the service days this year, freeing up valuable time. For the first time in many years we finished every single quilt. Last year we sent home 40 quilts to be finished and donated later.

Each assembly area had a sign that listed what was to go into each kit. Donated items were separated into piles and sisters walked around the tables, adding one of each item on the list to their bag.

Piles in the layette room:
toys

diapers

clothing

receiving blankets and burp rags

Other projects that I didn't get pictures of were the friendship bags---basically a bag of food for people who are in need of their next meal, the hygiene kits for Women's shelter, Salvation Army, and Family Services, the knitted caps for cancer victims, and the clothing and book donations for Head Start, and the blood donation area. We provide the biggest blood donation days for the local blood bank.

I am always so amazed at the generosity of people in our community. There were many pieced and hand or machine quilted quilts. At a time when many people are in need themselves, there were so many donations.