Happy October!

Death-by-Chocolate Cupcakes from Rachael Ray's October EveryDay magazine

Shirts

My retired t-shirts. ^

Speaking of shirts... The other day in my abstract algebra class a guy sitting across from me had batman, superman, and flash on his shirt. Then I looked passed him a table over and there was a guy with an angry birds shirt and an angry birds sweatshirt. Then I looked to the left and there was a girl with a shirt that had a bunch of little superman symbols on it. 

Need I say more?

Lessons

In Gospel Doctrine class a while ago, a guy (Chris) in my ward shared a story about his little brother. He said that when his brother turned 12 he asked Chris if he would bless the sacrament for the first time that the little brother was going to pass the sacrament.

Unfortunately, Chris had to say no because he wasn't worthy. A little while later Chris was able to bless the sacrament. Chris said he will never forget his little brother's face when he stood before him ready to pass the sacrament.

No one else has quite the same effect as siblings can have on you. I've learned many things from having siblings - especially younger siblings. All good things. Thank you to Stanley who took one for the team and decided to be the youngest of us Dahlins. I love you!


Here are some thoughts I had the other night that I tried to explain to Tom...

Our spirits come into the world as baby humans and we're these tiny, helpless people that need to be taught and taken care of. Then slowly we grow up and become adults and go out into the world. It seems like some people don't like to deal with children but then they do when they turn into "adults." Weird?  They're the same person, just at different times...

So I think that when I was mean to my sweet younger siblings, I didn't realize that they would be older one day. And really cool. And I should have treated them as such and seen them for their potential.

DING DING DING DING!!!! We have a winner...

Get it?
Someone at one of our Stake Conferences said that we're raising adults, not children. And now I get it. Sometimes we don't think much of kids, but they're just like us! They're awesome. And it's possible that their spirits are even older than us.

I almost feel embarrassed to have treated my siblings like anything less than the amazing beings they are. This is why we need to be nice to kids. They become older! This may seem so simple but it's something I've come to understand a little deeper. And now I can use my understanding when I have kids. To teach them this and to treat them like adults (in the sense that they're human beings housing a spirit, like me - not like they shouldn't have fun or something).

And then that leads me to think about how awesome the role of being a mother really is. Moms get to hang out with these growing people and know them before the world does.

Cool, huh?

Tom's Blog

Tom started a blog! Click HERE to view it.

Photo by Tom

Motivation

This guy used to teach at Harvard. His class was called "Happiness" and each semester for the years he taught there it had the highest enrollment of all the classes on campus.

Great music in this one. Be sure to pay attention to the girl's race. So awesome.

Stamps

I have come up with a goal to help me use my paper and stamps more. It is: Use every single one of my stamps at least once in making cards.

Here are some "cards" that were hiding with my paper. Some of them are unfinished and/or just weird. They don't count for my new challenge though.

I really like this one. I would use it for someone but as you can see, the flower stamp got some water on it.

 

 Troll with Sunflower stamp

Weird

 I think the left side of this one ↓ is supposed to be the bottom..

Halloween

Christmas and Joy

 

 Stay tuned for better ones..

Also, I'm missing a stamp for these cards. Can you guess what stamp? ;)

 

Tomatoes

The Millers gave us some tomatoes again. A lot of tomatoes as you can see. Brother Miller was saying to Tom that we can give them to other people too since there are so many. Tom said, "We will."  ...

We didn't.

I've been eating tomato sandwiches, we had veggie pie, roasted tomatoes to have with our tuna sandwiches, put them in our roast beef sandwiches to begin our fast ↓, and we made salad!

Here's that puzzle you (Mom) got me that you mentioned when I was home. I put it together the other day. :)

 

My side of the bed...