At the beginning of the school year, I needed a bit of help with fulfilling my kids’ school supply lists.  What is up with that?  30 years ago, we took pencils and notebooks to school.  I do not even recall having a backpack.  Now?  I swear we outfit the school with everything except toilet paper!

Anyway, I emailed a lovely friend from church and she talked to the ladies in her circle and the WOW women as a whole (the Women of the Word are broken up into circles of women) and they offered me funds in exchange for my sewing skills as they had committed to putting together backpacks for Lutheran World Relief and then they would fill them with school supplies for children in third world countries.

In August, it sounded like a great idea.

I cut all of the backpacks out on Friday night, with plans to sew them on Saturday.  Except my husband had plans to do a number of things on Saturday such as butcher chickens and he failed to tell me.  Which left me consoling children in the house.  Children who had named said chickens and whose emotions were running high over their pets were being … well, eventually put in the freezer.   So, I had to be the Mom and my backpack plans had to be put on the back burner.

Eventually, I was able to finally get down to sewing – but, by then a miserable migraine had invaded my wee brain and I was not able to make them on my own so I called in reinforcements.  With the help of first my middle daughter and then my MIL, I got all 15 backpacks made – and my obligation fulfilled (by 11:30 p.m.) and the ladies at church were very happy upon delivery this morning!