dear friends,

When I was in second grade I danced in The Rag Coat, which was inspired by the picture book with the same name. If you haven't read it, there's a girl who needs a coat to go to school and so all the quilting mothers decide to put their scraps together and make her a coat. There's more to the story, but I love the idea that her coat has pieces of all these different people's lives. There's pieces of a baby blanket, a fancy dress from New York, a woolen jacket, fishing pants, and her dad's old feed sack for the lining. Here is a description from the book:

"Each day I hurried home to see my coat. It was looking like the colors of the fall days--the yellow-golds of the birch leaves, the silvery grays and purples of the sky, the deep greens and browns of the pines, and the rusty reds of the chimney bricks--all the colors Papa would have chosen. I decided to put a piece of his work jacket in there. It just seemed right."

I'm telling you this because I just want those of you who read this to know that you definitely make up part of who I am--I would be missing pieces without you! Thanks for donating pieces of your lives to mine! Especially with this mission, I feel so much support from friends and family, and that is what will "keep me warm" inside when I'm there. That's what patches me up, so to speak. Okay, enough with the puns and metaphors.

Te amo. (I love you.)

from Leah

A little girl in my ward (age 6) drew this for me in church on Sunday! I had never met her before, and I loved this drawing! Especially the spelling of "tething th gosple" and the way the girl on the left is turning but her legs stayed straight. Adorable!

Today's Creation

I love these corsage tees and I found out at http://enchantresses3.blogspot.com/2009/06/corsage-tee.html

that you can make them! This is the one I tried.

And unrelated, a pic of the sunset the other night! It was so cool (I think it was last Thursday).

P.S. Works as a ribbon headband too!

Make-Your-Own Zebra

Reader's Digest had a great story in it's Laughterpedia for the letter

Z:

Mohammed Bargouthi didn't let a little thing like an Israeli embargo keep him from having a zebra in his Gaza zoo. Using ingenuity and guile, he made his own. His recipe: one donkey, some masking tape, and a little black hair dye. "The children don't know, and they are happy to see something new." Source: Ananova News Service

I'm a little sad that there's an embargo on bringing zebras to Gaza, but then again maybe this is a new way to keep wild animals in the wild. Just use animals that you have around, like donkeys or maybe here it would be dogs... and dress them up/paint them/dye them to look like all the other animals you'd want to see in a zoo!

Sounds like modern art to me!

"Kites"

After you have watched the clip below, watch this one for more of the story! It's also just a minute long and it pulls from the whole video. Not quite as good of quality as below, but you have to see it to see what happens!

“Kites”

2009 Student Academy Awards® – Animation Category – “Kites” | Video | The Academy

My great-aunt showed me this five-minute movie made by BYU animation students. It's a beautiful story of a boy who finds that his grandpa really isn't gone; or at least he has left him with the skills he needs to soar! This clip is only the first minute or so, but you should watch it! You'll like it.