MaeLyn's Musings

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. We have a lot to be thankful for: After two weeks of frantically stripping, sanding, painting and repainting, I screwed on another batch of newly painted kitchen cabinet doors Thanksgiving morning. I just have the upper east side of my kitchen to go: four cupboards, seven doors. My new goal is to finish those by Christmas. I love having sisters living close enough to visit! Heather and her family returned to Colorado from Alabama, where they've been for the last six months, just in time to join us for Thanksgiving. April and her family also came up from Fort Carson to join us. We had thirteen people sitting around our tables for Thanksgiving, and I loved having them! (It's a good thing I'm not superstitious at all.) I'm also grateful that they didn't mind feasting mostly on side dishes while they waited for the turkey to finish cooking. Cousins gathered to watch Steven play a game on his cell phone.  I'm thankfu...

My computer is sick. Very sick. I think it has caught a virus of some sort and it really isn't up to its normal speed. We have antivirus software (McAfee) installed on our computer, but it didn't catch whatever it was, and it still refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem. McAfee's realtime scanning keeps switching off for some reason, and then freezes when I turn it back on. The worst part is how slow the computer is. I log on and come back five minutes later to actually open a program. Five minutes later that program might be open. Anything related to the operating system is as slow as molasses in Alaska in January. I haven't been online much, just checking email quickly and getting off, before random tabs start opening up when I least expect it. I'm getting really behind in things that need to be done on the computer because it is such a pain to be on. Most of the time I've been on the computer in the last week has been spent trying to rid the computer ...

I don't like having my picture taken, but I took this one this morning. And then I photoshopped it to lighten the dark smudges around my eyes and get rid of the most annoying of the spots on my face. The point of the picture (I know you couldn't tell just by looking) is supposed to be my hair. You can see the ends of it resting on my shoulder. Steven cut several inches off it on Saturday so it went from almost down to my waist to just a few inches past my shoulder. While it has taken me a day to get used to it, I really like it. Thank you Steven!

Another Halloween has come and gone. I didn't spend much time or effort on costumes this year, but let the children choose what they wanted to be, and let them figure out their own costumes, helping as needed. While we didn't get a family picture, Steven took these pictures at our ward Trunk-or-Treat on Saturday night. Hannah chose to be a duck. At her request, I bought her a yellow shirt and a couple foam visors and made her yellow pants. She made her own wings and put it all together.(You can't see the yellow visor that formed her tail. It was really cute!) John wanted to be homework. I bought him a couple sheets of posterboard, which he wrote on so it looked like a sheet of homework. He had Hannah cut a bite shape out of it, and I attached it at the top with some pieces of yarn so it would hang from his shoulders. In hind site, I probably should have attached it at the sides somehow too. Oh well.    Joshua had his heart set on being a monkey, so we recycled a mon...