God Sunlight

Today I'm missing Jeffrey!  He spent four days here, and I got used to having him around...I love that he was able to spend those extra days with us!  I think his traveling is probably harder on him than it is on Ellie and I, but at least he has an apartment down there that is fairly homey - more so than a hotel room would be!

Despite my longing for my husband, however, I had another good day.  After waking Ellie up to go get Victor and Lorena, we headed over to feed the horses...the sun was still below the tree line, but was shining through magnificently.  I had a flashback to all the Bible picture books of my childhood - "God" was always depicted by sun rays, and so in my little brain, whenever the sun shone like that, God was speaking to someone.  I still call it "God sunlight," it just doesn't mean the same thing as before!

ok, so he's cribbing, but it's still a good shot! :-)

Halloween is just around the corner! I can hardly believe it!  I only have a few weeks to get ready for our Halloween Bash...I know it won't be like our crazy LA parties we used to throw, but I'm still excited for the opportunity to host and entertain!

I met up with my mother at Starbucks after taking Ellie Graye to swimming to really start the process of planning and designing Halloween costumes for Jeffrey and I!  It's soooooooo awesome to have a mom who's a costume designer...and a talented one at that!  If things go as planned, it's going to be spectacular!  After Starbucks, we went to the Goodwill on the search for all the components.  We found several items that are going to work perfectly for Jeffrey's costume, and a few for mine...on top of that, I found a fog machine and a black light for an awesome price.

I hadn't been in a thrift store with my mother in decades.  The Goodwill we went to in Beaverton was absolutely humongous and actually was clean and organized. I did, however, make the comment to mom that I'm SOOOO glad that we didn't have a Goodwill that big when we were kids, because it would have been hell for us!  I'm SURE we would have spent more time there than we did at church - and that, my friends, is saying something!  It was cool to see mom on the hunt.  I have so many great memories of her designing theater costumes and then creating them from random items she found at thrift stores and garage sales and what have you.  I do believe that much of my ability to see the potential in discarded items comes from the hours spent looking at random stuff, hearing, "THAT'S PERFECT!!!!", and then a week later seeing a candelabra emerge out of what used to be a plastic planter!

Ellie Graye had a bit of an upset stomach this afternoon/evening and a slight fever - I was supposed to go to dinner with Kelley from Swimbabes, but I didn't feel right leaving EG at Victor and Lorena's when she wasn't feeling well.  It was probably the right decision since she asked to go to bed at 7 pm...

Which means, I should be going to sleep, too, since it'll probably be a bit of a rough night...

RANDOM PHOTOS OF THE DAY 

The morning fog off the lake

Good morning, lake!

The Willamette River - taken from our front field

The Willamette - just across the road from our property

The hugest spider I've seen in quite a while...