This is for you, Kathleen.

Kay, so this is one of the Chinese shirts Benny bought me.  Sooo comfortable.  Kathleen wanted to see one on, so, voila.  That dang Dylan wouldn't get off the chair to take a proper picture, so you get to see a really awesome view of my double chin.  And I had just gotten out of the shower, so...no hair or makeup. Ah well.  You can't win 'em all.

I'd really like to find some cute fitted off-white capris to wear under this.  Or maybe red.

The Lesson on Councils - What I Did

I'm such a nerd.  I thought it was already August.  So I prepared one of the Sunday School lessons that was supposed to happen in August.  Ah well. 

The lesson is on councils - meaning, meetings that you have within the church.  I was a little worried at first - How am I going to teach a class for an entire hour on meetings??  But I did a lot of thinking and praying and research and came up with an outline and activities with which I was happy.

The online curriculum came up with this first idea, and I utilized it:

These are some scriptures on councils - why we have them, blessings we receive for having them, and the correct way in which to meet.  The summaries on the right don't necessarily match their counterparts on the left.  The curriculum suggested to have the kids look up all of the scriptures at one time and draw lines to match which scriptures go with which summary.  I tweaked it a bit.  We would look up scriptures at different times during the lesson - when the scripture demonstrated a certain point we were discussing - and then we would pause, read the scripture, and draw the lines bit by bit throughout the entire lesson.

The lesson talks about how important it is to listen to each others' ideas during councils.  Everyone should speak and contribute.  And everyone should be listened to.  I remembered an activity I did once in Young Women's - we each brought a white elephant gift to a Christmas party, and to decide who got what, the leader read this story aloud:

Every time she said the word "right" or "Wright," we passed the gift in our hands to the right.  Every time she said "left," we had to pass our gift to the left.   And at the end of the story, the gift that was in your hands was yours to open. It's really a funny process.

So I decided to have us do this game to demonstrate the importance of listening.  I arranged my students in a circle, then had them pick out a button from my button stash:

Then they passed buttons to the right and left while I read the story.  They had a good time, and it drove home the importance of listening.

Yes, some of them asked if they could keep their button.  No, they're not six-year-olds.  They're teenagers.  They crack me up. :)

Buttons make everything cuter.

Alright.  So a little over a month ago, I designed this card:

Those button-looking things there at the bottom left of the card - those are actually images stamped onto cardstock, with liquid glass poured on them and hardened.  I usually loooove liquid glass - it really adds dimension to a card.  But I wanted to make 30 of these cards, and the thought of applying liquid glass to 90 of these stamped images, waiting for the liquid glass to dry, and cutting all of them out by hand made me think twice.

I was talking to my mom about this conundrum, and she made a fantastic suggestion - why not use green buttons instead?  She told me that, at a local craft/framing store called Porter's, there is this enormous metal bucket choc full of buttons.  Buttons of all shapes and sizes.  And you can fill up a little ziplock bag with these buttons for only $1.25. 

If you sew (and I don't, but I hang out with people who do), you know that buttons are extremely expensive.  Like, you can buy three buttons for $2.  Yikes.  And I wanted 90 buttons.  You do the math.  So I thought I'd pop on over to Porter's with kids in tow and check out the button bucket.

I didn't want to spend a million years matching each button to the exact color of green that I needed, so I just picked all of the green buttons I could find.  I kept Sadie and Micah happy by letting them fill up their own ziplock bag with buttons of their choice.  They wanted to choose really huge buttons and buttons that weren't normal circles.  That was their goal.  They had a blast picking through them and actually just digging their hands all around in there, honestly.  (When I was a kid, I used to love playing in the pinto beans bin at the grocery store.  I liked the feel of them spilling through my fingers.  I'm surprised my mom let me do that - it's not very sanitary!  Haha!)

I'd say I probably was able to stuff 150 buttons into my little ziplock bag.   Here is a smattering of samples that I brought home:

So then I picked out 90 that best matched the color of green on my card.  And it didn't matter to me that they were of varying sizes.  In my opinion, that's what makes them so cute.

After I attached the buttons to one card, I put it side-by-side to the sample card to compare and make sure I was making the right decision:

 Yeah.  I liked the buttons better.  So they stayed:

Ugh.  Now for the non-fun part - I reeeeally need to get my etsy up and running.  I get so overwhelmed by stuff like that.  And honestly, I wonder if there is even a market out there for homemade cards.  I kind of feel like the sending of cards is a bygone practice.  Only a few people still do it (and I am one of them).  Yet it would be fun to do something I like and make a teeny bit of money in the process, right?

Elder Sighting

My kids and I were in the car today when we saw two LDS missionaries waiting to cross the street.

Sadie smiled, waved to them, and yelled, "Hey, it's the dictionaries!!"

My New Chinese Dresses....ahhhh...Shirts.

Chinese fashion is really interesting.  The girls wear very uncomfortable three-inch heels everywhere.  Even on, like, walking tours.  Or to the grocery store.  Carrie Bradshaw has nothing on Chinese girls.

There are no bare midriffs.  No bikinis.  They don't like to show their stomachs at all.  Which I loved.  It was so refreshing not having that shoved in my face every second.  And they aren't really into showing cleavage.  (Um, a lot of them don't have cleavage.  Very flat-chested ladies over there.  I fit in quite well...)  Nothing is low-cut.

One thing they are comfortable in showing, though, is their legs.  Oh my.  Mini, mini, miniskirts.  Everywhere you look.

Ben went to the Silk Market in Beijing before he came home last month and got some clothes for me.  So sweet of him.  He bought me a couple of pairs of pants that say "XL" on them.  Um, they may have been extra large to the ladies over there, but to me, no.  I couldn't even get them up over my thighs.  I'm going to pretend that it's because my quads are so buff.

And Ben felt badly, but he really shouldn't.  I should be the one who feels badly, right?  I'm the one who has a little bit of a "weight problem," as Chris Farley would say.

Anywho, he bought me some shirts that actually did fit:

Aren't they fun?  So bright and vibrant.  I love me some bright prints.  They're extremely comfortable and cool.  They cover everything up top, so I don't have to wear a shirt underneath. (I HATE doing that. Especially in the heat of the summer.  Like I want to wear two fitted shirts layered one on top of the other...)  They're made of some kind of lycra.  They're flowey and wonderful.

Something funny about these shirts, though, is...they're not shirts.  Oh no.  They're dresses.  Dude, these hit me, like, right below the crotch.  At the longest.  I cannot figure out how a lady can wear this as a dress and not show everyone her underwear. 

And you may think, "Well, Chinese people are shorter, so the dresses are longer on them."  Not necessarily, my friends.  That really surprised me over there.  They're a myriad of heights, same as Americans.  Short, medium, tall.  There are a few chubby girls you see every now and then, but most of them are skinny.  And most of them have small feet.  I struggled to find shoes to fit my feet.  And, um, clothes to fit my body.

Two of these shirts came with ties that hit right beneath the chest, so that the dresses are kind of baby-dollish in style.  But I noticed that, when I wore the ties, I just looked pregnant.  For reals.  They looked like maternity shirts on me.  And I just couldn't handle looking pregnant when I'm really, really so not pregnant (and don't plan on getting pregnant ever again).  So I cut the little tie holders off the sides, threw away the ties, and now I just wear them more as tunics.  And I'm good with that.

She Did It!

Well, my Sadie Girl has officially figured out how to ride her bike.  She's immensely proud.  As she should be.  It was hard getting her to put the bike away and come to bed tonight.  She has big plans for tomorrow.

Two Very Important Announcements

1.  Tonight, Dylan got his blue stripe in Taekwondo.  A fantastic accomplishment.

 2.  I ate possibly the best Philly Cheesesteak sandwich I have ever injested in my life, courtesy of a little place called The Works.  Oh my gosh, was it ever good.  Their cottage fries...bestill my little heart.  And they even have a sandwich called Cheri's Choice, spelled just like my mom spells her name.  I had to take a picture of it for her: