What a change a week makes

Wooh! Last week I was all full of hope for everything working out. This week I'm full of faith that something will work out, but also full of fear of everything that isn't working and wondering how it is all going to come together. How's that for being vague? More obstacles have surfaced in finishing the dissertation and we're still hard at work at the job hunt without an actual job in hand yet. It's not my favorite thing.

Despite that, we did have a good Thanksgiving week. We invited some friends over for dinner and that turned out nice. We cut down a tree and decorated for Christmas. We made some sugar cookies last night. We went to a Christmas parade tonight. We're doing our best to be festive. Dang it, we're going to enjoy Christmas even if this is the most stressful month in the history of ever.

 Genevieve's drawing of Grandma and Grandpa Doug and Suzanne. I love everything about it.

 Pilgrim Aaron.

Foreshadowing for Chloe in about a decade, if she's lucky. Bill and I both got our first glasses when we were ten. 

Giving Thanks

A friend of mine put together a 21-day gratitude series and it's been perfect this month to be thinking about that. This has been an incredibly stressful month, what with job hunting, finishing up dissertation, adding edits to dissertation, and prepping for Bill's defense. So actively thinking about how to be grateful for things in a multitude of different ways has been incredibly valuable. When life gets stressful I find myself wanting to shut down things like putting out an effort to celebrate holidays, or wanting to do fun things. It's counter productive because those things improve life, but they seem too hard, which then decreases quality of life. So anyway, I'm grateful to be reminded to be grateful.

This week Chloe has decided she needs to be a ghost when she sleeps. She tells us that every day. In fact, rather than saying it's nap time I just say it's time to be a ghost, lol. Also, she has four afghans. Four. And two quilts. And she sleeps this them all. This girl has a posh life. Those aren't even all her blankets either. Just the ones that fit on her bed.

I'm working on a new quilt. This is the first block. It's big, about 26 or 27 inches across. There will be nine of them I think. Or maybe seven. I can't remember. Anyway, I love how it's turning out. Those points are so crisp!

 I tried to replace the broken wheels on my sewing desk last week, but it turns out the kind of wheels it uses aren't readily available at Lowe's. So back on the wheels went and I just won't move the thing around anymore because it scratched my floor last time.

Chloe feel deep asleep while I was running the other day. It was seriously impressive. It's not a particularly smooth ride on my current running route, but she snoozed the entire time until I picked her up to put her in the van.

Spencer had a visit from a fire fighter this week at Cub Scouts. It was fun.

Chloe helped me pick out fabric for the quilt I pictured above. She was very serious about her fabric picks. Hahaha! She's a remarkably intelligent and capable two year-old. She's constantly amazing me with the complexity of her thought processes and actions.

We all continue to wonder when her hair will actually grow. I've been noticing curls at the base of her neck for a goodly while now. She woke up from a nap the other day and had sweaty little curls all over the back of her head. They are so cute. She's our first kid to have any curls at this age. Aaron and Genevieve have curly hair, but just waves. I have no doubt they'll all have curls as they grow up and go through puberty, since that's when both Bill and my hair started being really curly, but Chloe is getting a jump on the curve.

This is the week

This week is crunch time. If all gets scheduled as planned, Bill defends his dissertation next week right before Thanksgiving. Last week was stressful because of job hunting. This week is stressful because of dissertation! And job hunting hasn't gone away, but hey, no time for both. So all the prayers and love our way, folks. This is it. We've had to delay graduation like four times because this project is just so huge, but no more!

In other news, well, honestly, there isn't really any other news. This is consuming my world. But of course I have pictures. Hang on, actually I don't. That's funny. I didn't take any pictures this week save for a few process pictures of this quilt top I finished in an effort to stave off the stress. I love it, by the way. Possibly the pretties quilt I've ever made.

So here's to a better week and finishing things up and taking a moment to take cute pictures of my kids because they're still cute and doing awesome and life is going to go on even though it feels all dramatic and insane right now. 

Big things in the works

Big things are in the works right now for us. Bill turned in his dissertation last week. This week is fall break, but hopefully in a couple days things will get rolling to schedule his defense. He also is interviewing at some engineering firms and we're hopeful to have something work out there. I can't tell you how hard it has been waiting for the last nearly two years as we thought we were almost done and then weren't, repeat that for four semesters. It has tempered us for sure. But suddenly it seems that things are happening and oh, I am so excited. Hopefully I'll have more good news to share soon on both of those fronts.

I've been fighting a lot of health issues with my hands this year and my painting aggravates it. I finished up projects and was thinking what next to do and decided to finally tackle this quilt I've had pinned for ages waiting to decide on a color scheme to make. I only have the picture so I've googled how to make a lone star quilt and then guessed on sizing and started cutting away. I made three diamonds before I got one that was passable. Diamonds are hard to piece! And definitely if you look close a goodly number of points are off, but I'm pleased with the improvement. I need to choose some gray fabric so I can do the last two diamonds, but I love what I've finished so far. 

I showed Genevieve a video of someone doing some art with oil crayons. We don't have any of those, but she went for it with markers and this is what she came up with a few minutes later. She's such a great little artist. Her attention to detail is already quite well developed. She went back and added more details later.

Aaron was tickled pink yesterday when he realized he's finally tall enough to climb door frames. Haha! His older two siblings have been tantalizing him with it for years and he's finally just tall enough. Maybe if he were a bit more flexible he could have done it before, but he doesn't seem to have inherited that particular trait.

I bought a new shirt and I adore the color. Got a haircut last week too, so this is my hair at its shortest. I love it.

Another Genevieve art project, straight out of her brain. No template this time.

Spencer made us some flour tortillas yesterday as what was supposed to be part of dinner but ended up being basically all of dinner for the kids. :) Bill and I kept giving each other pleased sidelong looks as we house hunted on Zillow in the dining room and watched him make dinner. Huzzah!

First batch of rye bread. It's tasty stuff.

We built a fire last night too, using the drum from our old washing machine that we harvested. Bill has wanted to do that for years. It worked great. It's finally cool enough to enjoy a campfire and it's not buggy anymore. Best time of the year.

My kids are blanket smellers. hahaha!