Banner continued

Ok. I was trying to figure out how to do the temple. Felt? Stencil? Then I went to a craft store, and lo and behold they had a vinyl version of the same size and view that I was looking for. When I talked to the lady whose banner I saw 3 years ago, she told me that she used something called ??Nillium?? Coat lining?? For the temple. No one on earth knows what that is. BUT the craft store lady came up with shiny gray/silver fabric used to make ironing board covers! So I put the vinyl thing on the silver stuff, and it looks pretty good! Here it is. Then I made some paper templates. I want a kind of sunrise look behind the temple with the words, "LOVE, WORK, ACHIEVE," one to a circle. I think I'll free-hand embroider those on. Traci, I miss you and your embroidery machine. But especially you. :-) Here are the circles. I just used a compass and cut 'em out of the felt. I free hand traced some bush and tree shapes and cut them out too. I have a friend who knows a lot of stuff I don't and she helped me figure out what to do to tuck under the excess silver to put the sunset pieces behind the temple. I didn't put a picture of that, but it's yellow, light orange, and dark orange circles. Then I think I'll hand applique everything on to the base fabric. I'm feeling very impressed with myself that I'm finally doing this after 3 years. It doesn't take a lot to impress me, obviously! Love, Amy

Hey! It's Working!

I can't believe how relatively simple this family banner making has been. Caroline calls it our "Tribal Flag." YEAH! I'll post some pictures as I go to show how I did it. These are blank patches I got at the Scout office. Everyone drew (on paper) something that represents them. Interest, talent, whatever. Then I drew them on the patches with fabric marker. These patches are Rob's and mine. Rob's is a picture of the amazing "SUPER SPINEMAN!" complete with cape, and of course,...a spine. I am a tree hugger. I love trees, planting trees, sitting under them, looking at them. Tree hugger. The next two are for Daniel and Scott. Daniel loves anything mechanical. Robotics, legos, inventing things. Also marching band (that's not a football field, it's a marching field, complete with trumpet, clarinet and drum, in case you were confused. Scott is a stick figure master. He can portray any situation with sticks. He also loves to ripstick (twisty skateboard on 2 caster wheels), so his pic is of him going up a ramp on a ripstick. The original showed him flat on his back headed for the ambulance, but we opted to keep it positive. :-)

The next two are for Caroline and Grant. Caroline "loves a good book." We can't keep her out of them. A couple of years ago her grades were starting to slip because she KEPT READING in class. The consequence was that I took her books away. Whole bookcase, out of her room. She had to get special permission to read. Have you ever seen anything like that? Ok, so I did the same thing. Sue me. Grant is a "math-head." Can you see his hair says, "32 div. by 8 = 4?" He is SO GOOD at it. The last ones are Julie and Allie. Julie is a friend-maker. We've always said that she gathers friends like ants gather crumbs. Allie is the Smile Queen.

They are very simplistic drawings, but I told everyone that did their own that they had to be-I wanted to see the detail, not just a smear of marker. I don't know how to move pictures around where I want them so I'll post this and then do another one for the rest of it.

3 a.m. insight

It happened again! I woke up at 3 a.m. with a HORRIBLE dream about my Grant (age 8). The dream itself didn't do more than make me frantic with anquish (he was being mocked by some older kids I didn't know and was hugely distressed, and the words I woke up with were spoken to the older kids: "your words nearly killed a boy today.") but I could NOT get back to sleep because I started thinking about some goals I made yesterday that I want to start working on. So here I am at 4:02 a.m., writing them down. You all knowing will maybe keep me on the straight and narrow till they're accomplished. About 3 years ago I went to a Relief Society thing where a couple spoke on how to strengthen marriage and family. It was amazing. I took precise notes, which are wonderful in themselves, still, after 3 years! But the thing that I loved was that this woman had made a Family Banner. She had appliqued the outline of a temple, with trees surrounding it, and around that was a kind of sunrise/rainbow thing with words on each of three layers. I changed it a little, but it was something like, "Love/Work/Achieve." To the left of that were several patches (blank ones you can get at the scout office) on which she had drawn (colored? painted?) something that represented each member of her family. At the time I thought I could, for example, draw a lego brick to represent Daniel...stuff like that. Then, across the bottom, was the family name, in fancy writing. BLACK. I am going to make one. I have no idea how to do it, quite, but I've had the materials for doing it for 3 years. Isn't that pathetic. For those of you who watched the Relief Society broadcast, do you remember Elder Uchtdorf saying, "create something that never before existed" or something like that? It really hit me, and then while I was trying to pull together a Family Home Evening lesson, that idea sprang into my mind. The lesson was on baptism, because Grant's getting baptized on Oct. 11. The attention-getter at the beginning was this: everyone's first names and everyone's last names were supposed to be cut out separately and scattered around the room. Everyone was supposed to look for their names. Then we talk about how we all have our own first name, but the last name belongs to everyone. What we do, good or bad, affects our whole family's NAME. What do we stand for? Integrity, kindness, belief in the Gospel, hard work, etc. Great start for a lesson! Except we have 2 names, Reeder/Black. That has always been a bit of a stumbling block for family unity. So I switched the idea around a bit. I put everyone's own name out, and EVERYONE got a "Black" name. We talked about how when Rob and I got married, sealed in the temple for eternity, we all became part of the BLACK FAMILY, regardless of what our last names were. Every time one of our kids is spoken of by anyone who knows us, they are referred to as, "Rob and Amy Black's son (or daughter)." Then we talked about this banner idea, and everyone came up with something to put on their patch. THEN we talked about how when we are baptized, we take Christ's name upon us. What are we doing with it? What covenants do we make? Are we honoring His name? I think it went quite well, and everyone was excited about the idea of a family banner. Wish me luck. I hope I can do it! I thought it would be really cool to bring out our FAMILY BANNER every time we have FHE, go camping, to the family reunion (anyone else want to make one??), etc. to build family unity. My kids get along remarkably well, but there's always room for improvement. Long post. I'll write more another time. Love, Amy

Things you think in the middle of the night...

Does anyone else do this?? I wake up as I turn over at night (for some reason I did that a lot last night), and little thoughts come out that didn't have a chance during the day. For example: "I need to teach the younger kids to write in their journals." I don't know why, but it occured to me that there are things I've taught my older kids that the younger ones haven't learned yet. All three of the olders know how to get a bathroom reasonably scrubbed. I taught Grant a couple of years ago but haven't been very consistent. Same with the journals. I think it's a great thing if a kid can write down joys and sorrows, frustrations and great accomplishments and look back at them later. I do that, even though I don't write very often. The other thing I thought when I woke up last night (different time) was: " I'm so grateful I didn't have huge mental problems when I was born because Mom had German Measles while she was pregnant with me." I know that some will beg to differ, but you'll have to go beg somewhere else. For those who don't know this story, the doctors told her she needed to have an abortion because I would be born so severely challenged. She was so worried, but did NOT want an abortion. My dad gave her a blessing, she felt completely at peace, and here I am! I hope it all turned out ok, Mom!

Milestone for me!

I always considered myself to be on the cutting edge of computer technology...after all, my dad is a brilliant electrical engineer, (as is my brother Paul), and I think we were among the first to have a PC in the house. Complete with Basic and that wonderful game called Zork (in which you have no graphics whatsoever, you have to use...*gasp!* your imagination...to maneuver around a cave to find treasure). ANYWAY, it turns out that I'm on the dull, scuffed up, bent edge of comp.tech. I have spent hours trying to put together this here blog. So if you think it needs work, tough tootles. Maybe I'll figure out a better font or something later (sorry, Julie, couldn't do it. See above.) Love, Amy