YW in Excellence: Follow Up

Sigh.

Last Wednesday was Veteran's Day, meaning I didn't have work and the young women at church didn't have school, so I took the opportunity to schedule some extra practice for YW in Excellence. Instead of spending 8 hours in the office, I spent 8 hours at the church building, meeting with each one of the performers in the afternoon and then all of the girls in the evening.

Thursday morning I woke up feeling just a little ill. Next to me, Nathan woke up feeling a lot ill. I decided to stay home from work and take care of my house. Mike promptly swept Amy in the car and took her away so she wouldn't catch anything from us. All good decisions, as it turns out. By Thursday afternoon I was full-blown sick. Fever. Aches. Fatigue.

Yuck.

The illness persisted. I did work from my bed or the couch, and I continued coordinating YW in Excellence. I firmly believed I would recover by Sunday and thus still perform my role in the awards show.

I was wrong.

My fever broke by Sunday, but a cough and a sore throat developed. My loving fellow leaders in the YW program noted that this development made me "sound like a man." They weren't wrong, but I definitely didn't need to hear about it. Especially because it meant the death of my acting career.

So when Sunday night came, one of the other leaders filled in on stage for me, and I hunkered down behind the scenes, plotting how I could write this tragety into the script for next year.


Oh! And even without my sparkling presence on stage, the show was awesome.

Young Women in Excellence: Baby, Look at You Now!

Some background: Our church has a very active youth program. Nate works with the young men (YM) and I work with the young women (YW). Kids in the program are age 12 to 18.

Both the YM and YW have a program to help them develop spiritually. The programs are basically a series of goals; things like reading scriptures, doing acts of service, learning new stuff, etc.

The young men's program is called Duty to God; for the YW it's Personal Progress. Once a year, the young women have an awards ceremony as part of Personal Progress where they receive awards for completing their goals. The name of the awards ceremony is Young Women in Excellence. This year, our ceremony has the theme "Baby, Look at You Now!" We've decided to do a fancy ceremony -- dresses, glitter, dangerous shoes, cake, black table cloths... all the works! I'm pretty excited about it (and not just because it's an excuse to get fancy, although I totally love that part).

Somehow I managed to end up being in charge of the script, and by association, apparently I'm directing a lot of the activities. It wasn't my goal to run the thing; I just had some ideas I really wanted to use for the program. But, alas! Be careful! Sometimes you get more than you bargained for!

So far my responsibilities have included a lot of writing, hand wringing, hair pulling, a few nighs of tossing and turning...
Sharing my closet of gorgeous gowns, going to the dry cleaners, doing some sewing, borrowing stuff from my mom and grandma...
Printing reams of paper, buying folders, sending emails, setting schedules, making more phone calls...
And on and on!

Do I love it? Absolutely.
Will the young women love it? Oh man, I hope so.


There's more to come on this topic... probablly after it's all said and done.

My mom has a blog!

My awesome mom reads my blog and my work blog, and sometimes she leaves comments on them. She left a comment on my work blog last week, and I happened to click on her user name. (I was trying to figure out if "Julie" was my mom or someone else named Julie.)

Lo-and-behold, clicking on her name led me to a blog. To her blog! Apparently my mom has a blog! And there are two, not-quite-an-actual-post posts on her blog.

So, world: Go visit my mom's blog. And encourage her to use it.
www.JulieBike.blogspot.com

Mom: Blog!!!

Making a dress?

My mom is pretty cool.

A few weeks ago she emailed me some dress patterns to get my opinion. Apparently she went shopping at the department stores, couldn't find anything she liked, and decided to make something for herself. She's a great seamstress, so she'll whip out a fabulous dress in no time. I admire the way she can just shrug off the store and do her own thing.

I was in the fabric store last week and saw some great fabric that was on sale. I knew it would make a cute dress, and I had an idea of what kind of dress (although I didn't have a pattern). So I got the fabric, and now I've got to figure out what dress I want to make. Granted, it's not going to be nearly as well-done or creative as my mom's dress, but I'm pretty excited about it!

So here's the fabric:

Obviously you can't tell from the picture, but it's stretchy and light. I have a dress out of fabric like this, so I already know that I love the way it feels.

Here are some patterns I am considering:

I think the first pattern is my favorite. I like the design on the left; I'd use black around the neck/waist/sleeves. I might also add a black trim on the bottom, like the picture on the right.

But I also like the waist and the tight, 3/4-sleeves on the other two patterns.

Hmm.