My Beautiful Mess

4 Random Things

This is a picture of me in my jeans because this weather in Colorado has suddenly turned crisp! I had to break out my jeans for the first time since probably early May on Monday. I love Autumn, it is by far my favorite season but after last year's cold and snowy winter I can definitely wait on Autumn, a few more months of Summer would be nice, actually! Ready or not, Autumn here we come!

Since Autumn is on it's way, my kids finally coaxed me into getting out some of our Fall decorations too. And today after school the kids and I sat around the Living Room with a new Highlights Magazine I bought at Costco and started planning a Halloween Party for next month. Oh, what fun!

Random comment number 2: Yesterday Rilyn asked me as I was finishing up in the bathroom (the bathroom is never a private place to me, a Mom never gets any privacy) why I was using "that thing". I explained to her that "that thing" was actually a strainer to strain my urine (gross I know) to catch all the remnants of the kidney stones that they blasted last week so they can be sent into the lab and tested. And then she said, "Oh, so is it kind of like a game for you to try and catch them?" I had to keep from laughing as I told her, "Sort of." I find it amusing she thinks of catching kidney stones as a game!!!

#3

This is the greatest book that I just discovered!

It is called Scripture Stories and was published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1980. It was Laren's when we first got married and I don't know that I was ever "aware" of the book even though I've owned it for nearly 14 years (inherited with marriage) until now. I guess a double move does that to a person. It turned all of our stuff topsy turvy, some stuff we still can't find (like my flute) and then there are things like this that we find that I never knew we had.

Anyway, this is such a wonderful book!! It tells a short and scripturally correct version of the main stories in the Bible (Old and New Testament, and Book of Mormon). My kids and I have been sitting up in the "loft" outside of their bedrooms this week after PJ's are on and right after family scripture study and teeth brushing and we read one or two of these stories a night. They are even helping me because I have what I call Scripture Amnesia.

I read stuff from the scriptures and then I forget what I read. I don't do this with other books, so what is it about the scriptures? Anyway, the kids and I read this book and then take time to discuss the stories. When we talked about Cain and Abel they were very surprised to hear that despite Cain's wickedness that he became a vagabond and still roams the earth today. They thought anybody wicked should have been killed. I told them about possible Cain sitings in the recent few decades that I read about a few months ago and they were quite intrigued.



The pages have nice illustrations of each story and then as you can see the pages are not too wordy. Each story takes about 10 minutes to read and then we spend about 10 minutes discussing it afterward.


And finally...

Entryway cabinet.

We got this at Costco for $99.98, it was marked down from $400. Costco doesn't usually put things on sale, but this is a new Costco and they have a few pieces of furniture left that they are trying to get cleared out to make way for Christmas stuff. And I guess the price would have been the same to sell it to us for $99 or to sell it back to the manufacturer so they decided to just try selling it at a reduced price (75% off) of some of the items they only had 2 or 3 left of.

I have been wanting a nice entry way chest for awhile now. Of course we weren't looking for this when we saw it, but when we saw how nice it was we just couldn't pass it up for the price! Now I need a nice mirror to go above it!