Blogger's Quilt Festival

 This is a quilt that I made from a bunch of charm packs, using the dresden ruler to make the drunkards path.  I gave to a good friend who inspires me in her quilting.  I'm entering it into the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side in the ROYGBIV (color wheel) category.

 I really don't blog a lot about what I quilt, but it's what keeps me sane and with a project always in mind.  I'm amazed at all of the entries!  If you like quilts, go check it out!

the generous tooth fairy

I've told a few people this story but want to remember it.  Last week Aaron lost his third tooth.  He was soooooooo excited for the tooth fairy to come.  That night was one of many where Isabel woke up all night long and I was still shell shocked.  I got up at 7 a.m. to realize that Aaron was about to wake up and the tooth fairy (aka me) hadn't come yet.  I don't even want to imagine the disappointment.  It'd be almost like Santa Claus not coming.

So in the dark I hurried and grabbed what I thought were 50 cent coins.  I snuck into the room and lucky for me I had convinced Aaron to put his tooth in a zip lock bag so that it would be easier to find.  As I was making the exchange Aaron woke up.  I pretended to be so excited that I went to find out if the tooth fairy had come.  He jumped up with excitement and found the coins.  He was so excited!

He ran into the bathroom and said, "look!  The tooth fairy brought me 2 euros and 50 euros!"  It turns out one of those 50 cent coins was really a 2 euro coin.  Aaron was rolling in the dough in his eyes and was thrilled.  We went to choose a toy to buy.  To my good boy's credit he wanted to buy a toy for Jordan too.

Aaron blowing bubbles for Isabel.  So cute!

Remembering

 I had the priviledge of serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints in 2000-2001.  I served in Bologna for 3 short months with these two ladies.  Camille and Zoe happened to be taking a cruise out of Rome this weekend and came up to Bologna just for the day to visit.

I have to say that this was possible thanks to a wonderful husband who worked all night, didn't get to sleep after working all night and took care of the boys so that I could go with them for the day to see Bologna again.

In front of San Petronio

 As we walked around, memories came flooding back.  As a missionary you work hard, really hard.  You sweat, you panic, you pray with all your might to give what is most dear to you and it's mostly shunned and not many people care.  I had a lot of hard and good and bad experiences, but all of them were growing experiences.  I learned that there really is a God in heaven that loves us and is aware of us.  He has  a perfect plan for us, and He wants us to be happy.  He also lets us struggle a little bit in order that we can grow.  And I also know that His church is on the earth.

I associate knowing that there is a God with feeling His perfect love.  It buoys me up, it fills me to overflowing, and on really bad or hard days, I can seek those feelings again to give me strength and grit to do what I need to do.

Two towers behind us

 A mission gave me the opportunity to grow spiritually.  It also happened to be in the best place on earth for eating!  Come on, I mean we're talking about Italy!  So we had our favorite gelato from our favorite place, and our favorite focaccia from Esselunga.  So delicious!

eating focaccia at giardini margherita

Via bonafede, 21- where we lived as missionaries

 We lived in the tiniest apartment where our bedroom was wall to wall beds.  Paolo met us here with the kids so that he could say hi too.  When Paolo was baptized we were all serving together in Bologna.  For his baptism, all of the  missionaries wrote their testimony in some scriptures that we bought as a present.  All 3 of us had written in it.  Good memories.

Something else I've learned: the good you do grows.  And it's still blessing my own family today.

 I got a laugh out of Aaron trying to take our pictures with my camera.

 Aaron actually took a nice picture so I wanted to post it

And this little champ only had one tantrum on our all day tour of Bologna.  That is HUGE for her (and for me)!

Fall time

 It's starting to feel like fall around here.  It's started raining non-stop and is so humid.  Typical fall around here.  Also the other day (before it started raining) I was riding my bike with Isabel and I saw this beautiful tree.  I just had to take a picture!  I love the reds and oranges of autumn leaves.

 We also had a fun weekend preparing Halloween decorations and crafts with some English speaking friends.  We also painted our faces.  I love this holiday!  It's not celebrated much around here, but I'm starting to see some costumes in the grocery stores.  It wasn't like that a few years ago.