What college students want

A couple years ago I got online and gave my name and email address to some scholarship-search websites. And they have been sooooo helpful! Look at the kinds of emails they send me almost every day:

This is exactly what I've been looking for! I am soooo happy that I get these fabulous emails. Who wants a scholarship when I can get this? (Stupids!)

I will be changing my email address when I'm done with school.

Well, what this college student really wants now is to tell you all about her schedule for her last, absolutely last, and Final Semester!

This semester I am taking Portfolio, where I will be making (of all things) a fancy portfolio of all my work in the fashion institute. Well, this isn't exactly true. I will be making a fancy portfolio of a bunch of new illustrations (and probably some recycled ones too).

I am also taking Public Speaking. This is in exchange for the Comm 1010 class that I withdrew from last semester. It is a seven-week class, instead of the full semester, which is why I took it. The downside is that I have to speak publicly (at least in front of my class) five times. I get really nervous, but hopefully I won't be too tongue-tied. My first speech is tomorrow. (By the way, my Public Speaking teacher talks A Lot.)

And I am taking the second Collections class. This semester I am sewing my collection (you remember—the Pianoforte line), doing fittings with the models, and actually showing my dresses in the fashion show—Raw Couture. Of course I'd love a big fan section, so you are all invited. :-)  It will be May 3 at 7:00 p.m.  The venue is still to be announced—as are the ticket prices. It seems like in the past tickets have been about $25 each, but if you know a SLCC student (besides me) they can get you two tickets at a discount.

And then, on May 8, I graduate!! One degree in Fashion with a Design emphasis, and another degree in Fashion with a Technical Apparel emphasis. Yaaaayyyy!!

That's what this college student really wants.

The Last Bit

Once the painting was finished there wasn't a lot left to do. I put together some flooring right inside the living room doorway—it was pretty easy: cut, peel, and stick.

cutting the flooring

and putting it in place

This was in preparation for the new carpet that was coming on Monday (the 5th)! I know I said I would never have carpet again, but I also know you should never speak in absolutes.  ;-) Someone—another man from Brother Pond's ward—donated new carpet, and they carpeted the living room and stairs and the new addition—Brandon & Ryan's new room, my new sewing room!, and the . . . (What should we call that other space? The Wenzell Wing? Maybe the Pond Room?). I actually love the carpet. So maybe I didn't need to give up on carpet altogether, but just have some that was nice-looking. :-)

the carpet guys, working on the stairway

My poor old piano was banished to the cold front porch for six hours while the carpet was installed. It is looking in at my new sewing-room window saying, "Please let me back in! I am already terribly out-of-tune." :-(

Once the piano was back in the house I took it all apart—yep, even removed the keys—and cleaned it out. No more pet hair or cobwebs.  (Don't try this at home kids!) 

And then I favored my kids with "Linus and Lucy" (the Peanuts theme) because the piano sounds different and is way cool to watch when it's completely opened up. :-)

I was a little disappointed that Bruce and I never did tear out and re-do the fireplace before this unexpected construction project, but an amazing thing happened: With the new carpet color I found that the fireplace isn't nearly as obnoxious as I used to think it was. In fact, it looks pretty good. Yay!

So all of the construction was done on Monday, January 5. Well, not all. They did come back a few days later and replace the old garage window (in the boys' new room) with a good window. :-)

Tom, removing the old aluminum-framed, single-paned window.

Anyway, on the 6th the kids and Bruce all went back to school, but I still had time off and a house to put back together. So I took the couches and furniture back to the living room—after cleaning everything within an inch of its life—and made the room utterly beautiful.

Before —waaaayyy before, when we took out the old carpet.

And now.
Seriously, this off-kilter photo doesn't do it justice. 

That evening I instated a new law: The living room must be perfectly clean every night before bedtime. So far it's gone pretty well; no family criminals yet.

Throughout the week (of Jan. 5) Brandon and Ryan worked on moving their bedroom, and I worked on moving into my sewing room. Their room looks pretty good—and still clean! My room needs some work (shelves will do wonders, I know.) We're also still organizing the . . . other space. I'll post pictures of the finished rooms when they are decent.

This is the new sewing room—before I brought all of my stuff into it. With everything in it, it really does need some shelves!

And here I am, sorting through boxes and boxes and boxes 
of  fabrics and fur in the . . .
. . . anteroom?

And now Lindsey is working on moving in to her new bedroom (formerly Brandon and Ryan's room). It needed some major cleaning  and a paint job—which is still in the works. I want to paint her ugly, old dresser too, but I might have a mutiny—Bruce and Lindsey are anxious to get her moved into her new room.  We'll see.

This is what the boys left behind after they took everything they wanted from their old room. Yuck! (Yes, I made them clean it out.)

This is what the boys' new room looks like now, today. Pretty good—although there's a little stuff on the floor by the beds (which we will have to discuss).

Lindsey and her friend Michaela, painting her room.

Painting the bedroom door

So it's been an exciting holiday for our family. Really exciting. And it's still going on! So I'll post pictures of Lindsey's room too, when it's finished.

The Great Paint Adventure!

Gavin and the guys (that should be the name of a boy band) . . .

All the drywall was finished on a Wednesday night, then Gavin and the Guys left the painting to us.  So on Thursday morning we pulled out the rollers and started putting primer on the walls. The kids were still out of school for Christmas break, so we had lots of help. The only icky part was doing the storage area over the top of the closets.

This is me, painting the walls and ceiling eight feet off the ground, in a space that's about eighteen inches high. None of the kids wanted to go up there, and Bruce was busy with another task. Bear in mind that I am the girl who must stand at least fifteen feet away from a high balcony with a sturdy railing, and who cannot watch her kids looking over said balcony. Also remember that climbing up   to someplace is much easier than climbing down again.  And I had to come down blind. 

Just remember that.

So when I finished the painting, one of my boys held the ladder, and I'm wriggling backward on my belly, and I realize that the only way I'll reach that ladder is if my legs are completely hanging off of the shelf (so I'm bent at the hip), and I can't see where the ladder is at all. I can't sit up and look for it, because the space isn't tall enough—no, not even for me. So I told the kids they were just going to have to get their dad to help me down.

So Bruce comes in and says he's holding the ladder steady for me and I just need to scoot back and let my legs dangle off the edge. He says, "Most of your weight will still be on top."

And this is me: I can't . . . I can't! I'm scared! I can't see where I need to go! I can't ever  get down—I'll just have to stay here forever!  It's scary 'cause I can't see where to go!  etc. etc .etc.

Finally I did get brave enough to twist around and see where the ladder was and to swing my legs over and let Bruce help me down. (No, I am not typing this up on top of the storage area.)

That was probably the most exciting (you know, like edge-of-your-seat adventure!) part of the job. Seeing the painted walls was exciting, but not in the same way.

Kaylie painted the other storage area. She was OK with that because she could go down via the refrigerator. I was OK with it as long as it wasn't me and I didn't have to watch her climb up or down. I am very brave like that.

Everyone helped paint. Bruce did some finishing in the storage space . . .

. . . and I stayed right where I belong.

 On the ground.

More and more and more surprises!

It all started with Jason's farewell/open house. Or maybe when we tore out our carpet last summer.

About a week or two before Thanksgiving our bishop told us that a "Gentleman from West Jordan" wanted to help our family with Christmas this year. (This happens to us a lot, and it's a good thing, because we often can't afford to do much for Christmas.) So we gave him a list of things for the kids and then didn't worry too much more about it. Until the next week when the bishop asked us for a list of things that Bruce and I might need or want. Well, that's a little  different; usually it's just the kids. And we weren't sure what to ask for. What do grown-ups really ask Santa to give them?

A few days later, while we were still thinking about that, the bishop told us that the West Jordan Gentleman's ward also wanted to help us out with some home repair. And at that point he thought it would be easier for us to be in direct contact with the Gentleman himself. And who should this Gentleman be but Brother Pond—Jason's seminary teacher who came to his open-house in October?

My very first reaction was amazement and delight; we have so many home repairs that we haven't been able to afford. What a blessing to us! 

By the next morning, I'm sorry to say, it felt a little different. Not that I was ungrateful, or didn't want the help, but . . . It's kind of like when you're a kid and you tell your friend about how goofy your little sister is, but when your friend tells you how weird your sister is you get defensive. Bruce and I often feel poor, and we know how far our money has to stretch (and sometimes it doesn't stretch nearly that far), but to have someone else notice . . .  That feels a little different. And makes us wonder, How poor do we look?  Well I guess when a nice man comes to your home for a party and sees that instead of carpet in your living room you have a cracked concrete floor it's not a huge leap to guess that there's not a lot of money flowing around the house.

I am happy to report that my little misgivings wore away pretty quickly, and I was back to just being grateful. I mean, if someone came and just fixed the leaky kitchen pipe that runs down the girls' bedroom wall  . . .  that would be incredible!

On Thanksgiving Eve, as I was making pies, Brother Pond and his friend Brother Wenzell (who is a contractor of sorts—he flips houses) stopped by to look over our house. While I worked in the kitchen Bruce showed them everything—missing carpet; a basement room with sheets for walls and a working toilet but nothing else; broken windows; the leaking pipe; the not-quite-finished deck; the list goes on —they even looked in the garage. After a while I was able to take a small break from the cooking so I joined them outside. 

They were discussing putting a storage shed in the back yard. Wonderful! We have a pretty hard time fitting our family and our stuff in our little house. With a shed we could shuffle some stuff out of the garage, and then keep other things there.  Bro. Wenzell—Gavin—asked me which corner I would prefer to put the shed in. I liked the southeast corner until he implied that we might have to remove our peach tree to accomplish that.  Give up our luscious, sweet peaches as big as softballs? That would never do. So I said the west corner would be fine. Then Gavin turned to Bruce and said, "Did you ask her about the garage?"

No; we hadn't been together until just then. So we went out to the garage and Gavin said, "What if we turn this garage into two bedrooms?" He showed me how there was plenty of space to do it, and how we could also build in some extra storage, and then waited to hear what I thought.

That nearly knocked me over! We had never, ever considered such a thing. (Unless you count the times when I've said we should make this kid or that kid sleep in the garage so we'd have an extra room in the house. ;-) )  My very first words were, "I really like not having to clean ice off of the van in the winter," but even as I said it I was realizing how amazing it would be to have extra space for the family—and all our stuff! . . . which was the next thing I said: "We could really use the extra space!"

We all talked a little more before the two men left. Bruce kept saying that whatever they wanted to do would be great; we had no expectations. When they were gone Bruce and I spent the rest of the evening—the rest of the weekend!—feeling kind of bedazzled.  As we talked it over, we figured Brother Pond and Brother Wenzell would take our list of needs/wants/ideas to their ward, they would all discuss how much they could really do, then we'd hear back from them and be thankful for whatever we got.

So when Gavin Wenzell called the next Monday to let me know a concrete truck was coming to pour the foundation for the shed, it was still a little unbelievable.  And things just rolled on from there.
I know you're dying to see what happened next, so here are the pictures:

Gavin came and framed the foundation

then the cement truck came

 It snowed that night, but the concrete stayed warm enough to cure properly. That Thursday Gavin and Tom (another ward member) showed up and started building the shed. I had my kids take pictures of the progress at each stage. I wish we'd all been less shy and gotten more—and better—photos of all the men working.

Tom and Gavin framing the shed

walls . . .

roof trusses . . . Can you see Tom in the middle of this picture?

There he is! Nailing the roof on.

And there's Gavin, putting trim/edgy-stuff up.

They finished the whole shed in about ten days! On a Monday afternoon Gavin pronounced it done and told us to empty the contents of the garage into the shed so they could start on the new rooms.

So we all stayed up late, working madly. But the next day was a school day, so around 11p.m. we gave up and Michael and I finished the clean-up on Tuesday afternoon.

 

We were in such a hurry that we just hauled stuff from the garage and dumped it willy-nilly into the shed (some of it ended up in the living room and kitchen too). When I took a good look at the shed the next morning I fervently hoped that Tom and Gavin would have no need to go in there for anything and see what a disaster we'd made in their beautiful, new work!

Here's what happened next:

Tom and Gavin started framing rooms in the garage.

Tom, framing the basement bathroom

Once the framing was all done, Kelly Schaefer (another ward member who happens to be an electrician) came over and got all the initial electrical work done. It's unfortunate that we don't have a picture of him; he's a really nice guy. Then the insulation went in, the sheetrock went up, and they did the drywall. Yuck. Two men, Steve (below) and Brian, I think, helped with the sheetrock and drywall. Bruce says Steve actually likes doing drywall. Yay! (Someone should.)

insulation . . .  Bruce helped every day that he was home.

sheetrock . . .

Steve doing the drywall

the kids helped sand the walls

And they did one more thing . . .   

. . . they changed the first step of our stairway. 

The red arrow comes from the end of the hallway to the stairs. When the house was built they put a railing at the end of the hallway so you wouldn't try to go straight down there (and fall down the length of two stairs instead of one).  But the rail was totally in the way. It was right behind the pantry door so you couldn't open the pantry all the way, and it was also behind the refrigerator door. In fact, if the refrigerator door was open you’d be trapped in the hallway. So we just took the rail off.  But, even though we were all used to it, it really could be a hazard for some unknowing person walking down the hall. Well, we figured if we made the  first step the wide step (instead of the second one) we could eliminate that whole problem. And they did it for us! Yay!

Men from Brother Pond's ward came every day except for Sundays and put in about eight hours of work each time they came. They even worked until around 2 p.m. on Christmas Eve, and again on New Year's Eve. We got used to them coming and going each day and it was incredible and exciting to see how quickly the rooms got built.

But, at the same time, I couldn't help wondering,  Why us? We don't deserve this any more than anyone else—and maybe less than some. Why? 

It's a strange feeling, this . . . astonishment  that complete strangers (although fast becoming friends) would care so much for us that they would donate all the time and effort and  materials to do this. I think you have to be on the receiving end to understand what I'm talking about. It's just amazing and awesome (not like, "Awesome, Dude!" but more like the original sense of the word: inspiring awe) and humbling that someone would even think of or want to do this for us. And here they were, every day, doing it. What can you say to a gift like that? Only thank you. Just thank you.


Well, on a lighter note, they didn't stop with the drywall. But this is a pretty long post, so keep watching. There will be more. :-)

Happy Holidays

Well! I just haven't had much to say lately.

Or maybe I've been too busy to say much . . .

In either case, I am finally posting holiday happiness today—beginning with Halloween:

this is Ann;
Rachel had the posture
and walk down perfect

Here (above), as the family gathers for dinner, you see Jessica dressed as Heidi, and Rachel dressed as Ann
(a character from Studio C). It's funny that we have a traditional Halloween dinner when I don't think Halloween is such a great shakes of a holiday. In fact, we hardly manage to even dress up. But it is my annual excuse to make slime punch and snake for dinner. And this year I found instructions for this cute cake—the meringue ghosts are held up on glow-sticks. They don't really look so glowy unless you turn off all the lights; then it's kind of a fun effect.

snake dinner and ghost cake

For Thanksgiving this year we decided to just stay home and be our own little family. We were pretty partied out from sending Jason off, what with the bake sales, an early Thanksgiving dinner, extended-family family-home-evenings, an open-house, and just getting him out the door. And then  we had a big, extended-family Halloween dinner party at our house the day after Jason left. We were pooped out! (OK. That's a weird expression!) As Thanksgiving approached, however, we realized that Bruce's dad hadn't been invited anywhere so we asked him to our house.

 While I performed surgery on the turkey Bruce and the kids made snowflakes and hung them up.

 It was a nice day.

The day after Thanksgiving is our traditional "Decorate the House" day. Kaylie really took on most of the decorating this year.

On December 5 we all went to see Honk! Jr., the Entheos musical. Kaylie and Rachel were in it this year and they did a really great job. (I mean the whole cast did a great job; Kaylie and Rachel were fantastic! ;-))

Honk! is a musical about the Ugly Duckling. After the closing night performance Grandma Johnson gave these little swans to the girls.

Some time around Thanksgiving the kids drew each others' names to see who they would be making a hand-made gift for. So Santa's workshop was in full swing around here during the month of December.

Yes, that is a scroll-saw in my living room; Santa's elves were hard at work in our garage and we couldn't work out there. But what are the kids making?

On Christmas Eve we finally made our gingerbread house—and this one didn't fall apart before we could even decorate it. 

The kids put crushed hard candy designs into the windows . . .

and then I pour clear, hot candy into the windows to set them.

I build the house and the kids decorate it. (I'm there to operate the frosting bag and put "glue" wherever the kids want it.)

I'm not sure how much decorating Brandon actually did. But he did ham it up for the camera.

And here's the finished house:

front

back

aerial view

and the artists

This post is getting really long, but here are pictures from Christmas morning:

Ryan was the first to open his home-made gift—a messenger-bag with embroidered patches to sew on, made by Michael.

Michael got a creeper figure, made by Ryan. This is the second year running that they drew each others' names.

Brandon got a "snake with a mohawk" T-shirt designed and hand-painted by Rachel.

Jessica got a hand-puppet, made by Kaylie.

And Kaylie got a little wooden box that Brandon made for her.

 Jessica made a scarf for Lindsey,

and Rachel got this wooden cat puzzle from Lindsey. (I wish I could have captured the surprise and delight on her face when she opened it!)

Bruce didn't get a home-made present. He's just silly.

The hand-made gifts were the favorites again this year; this tradition is a keeper. In fact, Michael suggested that we just make gifts for everyone in the family, starting now, and forget the store-bought gifts. That's an idea . . .

We visited my parents and Bruce's dad in the afternoon, and then we got to call Jason on the phone for Christmas, and talk to him for nearly an hour. That's about five minutes for each of us, and an extra five for me. Yay! He's doing great. So we had a really nice day.

You'd think we would have slowed down and relaxed a little after Christmas, but that's not so. But it's also a story for another time.

For New Year's Eve we had lasagna for dinner, then we played a game together and had fresh chocolate-chip cookies and milk. 

yum!

After that we started a movie; I fell asleep in front of the movie, Bruce looked at facebook in front of the movie, and the kids went their separate ways. This is how we finished off New Year's Eve:

Lindsey playing a video game while Jessica, Kaylie and Ryan look on. Rachel was there too, but she was reading a book.

Bruce looking at his lap-top.

Michael playing a video game while Brandon watches. (Seriously, how fun can that actually be?)

And I went to bed at 10:30. What a bunch of dead-heads!

And now it is New Year's Day. Happy New Year!