Fall Leaves

The weatherman said there was snow in the forecast and I waited until the last second to get some "Fall" pictures of the kids. We took the pictures and ran home because the temperature was dropping and the snow clouds were rolling in.

Jack in 6th grade. Age 11

Emma in 4th grade. Age 10

Lily in 1st grade. Age 6

First Day of School

It's a monumental year at our house. All three kids in all day school...at the same school. YEAH!

Tallest to shortest, the cousins are excited to start school. Jack and Ana are entering 6th grade together and Cameron and Lily are sharing the playground as big 1st graders. The outliers are are Emma and Brady as Fourth and Eighth graders.

Lemonade Stand

A successful lemonade stand happens on a hot day with a captive audience. We combined forces with our friends and sold lemonade at a library concert. It wasn't as hot as we thought it was going to be, I may have some leftover lemonade in my fridge (we'll be drinking it for the next three days). All the money that we made (about $30) will be donated to the library. The kids had fun...we'll have to do it again.

Lily gets to sample some of the lemonade.

Keeping Kids Busy

A friend came up with the idea for a service scavenger hunt. The kids actually seemed excited about doing it. We had a group of four families and then after the first house we split into two teams of two. The time frame was two hours which flew by. Of course the kids were getting tired by the end and the weeding wasn't as enthusiastic as in the beginning. Did we keep points? No. Did the kids have fun? Mostly. Do my kids want to do it again? Yes!

Summer Practice

I am determined to get more familiar with my camera. My kids are so over me and a camera. I have to pick and choose when to bug them. Of course I swing back and forth between taking too many and not enough pictures.

I tried a lensbaby which has the following effect;
This picture is all in the post production;

Boat

The "river" by our house has enough water to put the canoe in. With record rains and snow runoff the river is brimming. We dusted off the oars and spent the day shuttling the canoe between put in and take out points. It's nice to drive five minutes to put in, we just need to find a better spot to take out. Carrying the canoe with a kink in my neck is not so fun.

Graduation

Well, it's that time of year. The end of school. Graduation time. Thankfully we didn't have to buy the tassels or rent the robes. It was a short and sweet presentation of the kids singing a song, reciting a poem, a slideshow of the kids throughout the year, and candy awards. Lily received the "Lifesaver" award for helping save the day when her teacher needed a helper. Lily had great teachers this year!

5x5 (day six) A Happy Closet

I did start this project earlier in the week, but I didn't do the bulk of it until today. Remember all that stuff that I took out of Emma's closet? Well it had to go somewhere and the hall closet seems the best option. The good news is that I went through the totes and emptied three out of five. That's not bad. The rest of the shelves got reorganized and stuff got shuffled around to fit better. Tada.... a closet.

5x5 (day 5) Ummm....

I got nuttin'. It's Friday and I'm pooped. Here's my list of excuses;

I french braided Emma's hair for school, that never happens. She wore an "explorer" Indian costume that I made in November for Lily (that she never got to wear). A friend called at 7:01 AM to ask if I could watch her son at 7:30. I babysat her son until noon. Lily had Park Day for Kindergarten which meant I got to hang out in the park for a couple hours. By then it was almost time to pick up the older two from school, wherein I also picked up a couple extra neighbor kids to carpool home.

Whew. It's our last Friday before school lets out next Thursday. I'm happy/tired that school is almost done. By the time we get through all the tests/projects/field trips of May I'm almost ready for Summer to start.

Tomorrow I will do a 5x6 project. I promise!

5x5 (day 4) Piles of Piles

I make piles. There I've said it. My piles are procreating and making more piles. That's not good! I am (patting self on back) pretty good about keeping up with my laundry. I get clothes in and out and out the door pretty quickly. However, the dryer is the first flat surface once you walk in from the garage or the last surface as you walk out the door. I have a problem with putting things on the dryer to go out the door or putting stuff down as I walk in the door. Let's see how long I can keep this up.

The piles before:

A clean surface:

5x5 (day 3) If You Move A Bookcase

If nothing else, this challenge has me looking around my house for stuff that I would like to do, but never have the motivation to actually get done.

So far I've moved a bookcase from the basement to Lily's room. For those of you counting that's two sets of stairs.
Then books got moved from a hall closet to the bookshelf which opened up a shelf in the closet. (The bottom shelf had all kid books.) Yes, the others shelves are in need of help as well, but that's another day. Several baskets have now migrated from the basement to Lily's room, including one that needed the liner sewed up. I'm going to head back to the basement and go through toys. It's a thankless job that I'm dreading. Frankly I'll get more done if my kids aren't involved, but this might be a task where in I will lose myself and never find my way out of the basement. If you don't hear from me in two days assume I'm under the piles in the basement.

The good news is that I've filled 4 grocery bags and tossed them. I'm still not done though. I'm close but it's the last 10% that takes the longest. This is the before;
This is the "in progress";
I'll be honest. I haven't finished. But it is so much better than it was that I may be motivated to finish tomorrow. I keep finding things to move to different parts of the house; clothes that need to go to the repair pile, toys that have been misplaced, books that need to get donated, ...you get the picture.

Today is been really productive, but it's tough to see. I'd post a picture of my trash can that is now half full, but that's a little gross.

5x5 (day 2) Hooks and Buttons

I did wake up with a plan. A very small plan. I just needed to get some hooks for Emma's closet and put them up. Not as easy as it should be. Thankfully Michael was able to lend a hand. As Michael finished, I thought "hey, it looks like an octopus!" Michael noticed the same thing.
This is Emma's closet a little more organized. The bins above need some tags so that I don't forget what's in them. The basket, well let's hope Emma knows how to use it.
One more small item on my never ending to-do list. This jacket has been without two of it's buttons for close to two years. It's a small miracle that I didn't lose them. I finally sewed them back on today.
Please notice the unfuzzy pictures. I did take the time to break out the "real" camera and put away my phone camera.

5x5 Challenge (day 1)

The challenge for the week of doing 5 awesome things for 5 days was thrown out late last week. It seemed like such a great idea until I forgot about it over the weekend. Admittedly I was a deer in the headlights as I fast and furiously tried to think of something to do. Emma's closet has been begging for an overhaul and thus the first "makeover" for the week.

(Don't ask where the stuff went!)

Amusing

Lily is my little shadow these days. She's in half day kindergarten and is quick to point out that she is almost in first grade. (be still my heart)

She's my little helper...when she wants to be. I needed to dust off my camera and she became my amusing muse running around the park.

Easter

We did a neighborhood Easter egg hunt the day before Easter. Lily knocked on our bedroom door at 7 am informing us that it was snowing. I start emailing the other moms trying to come up with plan b. By 10 am the snow had melted and by 3 pm it was dry enough to have the egg hunt. We had about 30 kids show up prepared to find lots of eggs.

Could I get my kids to look at the camera?! They were too busy counting eggs.

Birthdays

I'm not one to freak out or make a big deal over my birthday, but it made my day when my neighbor brought by these lovely bits of fluffy cakes. The red velvet had to be by favorite.

Under Pressure

I am motivated by deadlines. Especially when they are REALLY close. I'm not saying that I pull everything off without a hitch, but sometimes if you spend TOO much time on a project, it gets to be overwhelming.

This year has been the year of costumes at school. I don't have a large costume closest to pull from (something about kids destroying everything), but I've been really lucky with finding items and getting very friendly with my sewing machine and hot glue gun. Thanks to fearless sisters' encouragement, I too have become less fearful with "whipping" up a costume.

Lily is having a Fairy Tale ball at school and initially wanted to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I tried to talk her into being Grumpy from Snow White, surprisingly she declined. When I decided to go look for fabric, there was not a yellow fabric in sight that would work...then we found a pink prom dress.

me: Hey Lily, how do you feel about pink?
Lily: Oh yeah, I like it. There's a pink princess I'm sure.
me: Excellent. Off to work we go.

This is what we started with;

Best curtsy.

Looking like a princess.

Strep

This is Emma. Last year she did not miss a single day of school. She was VERY proud of her perfect attendance award.

This year she had a fever and they frown heavily on kids being sick at school, so they asked if I would come get her. I got her into the doctor's office that day and she tested positive for Strep. She was NOT very happy that I had to keep her home one more day.

Two weeks later, she's not feeling well, so I take her in to see our very nice doctor. He seems doubtful she has strep again. He does the rapid test and she tests positive.

At this point the word "carrier" is thrown out and I get a little concerned (I've watched too many zombie shows lately). I am supposed to bring her back in after she finished the antibiotics and when she is "healthy". No problem, except the appointment where I'm supposed to bring her in healthy...she has another sore throat.

Another rapid test is done, this time it's negative. Hmmm.

Fast forward two days. I just got a call from the doctor's office saying that the longer test is now positive. Awesome. When Emma decides to get sick, she does it spectacularly.

Yum

I did it. I got sucked into the world of ebelskivers. My first attempt was pretty good, the kids gave them two thumbs up.

I might try mixing it up and putting some filling in them, I suspect that we're classic and will like them mostly plain. I didn't have many options for toppings, the butterjam was so so with my critics. Any suggestions?

Valentine's

This was an odd year with Valentine's Day being a Monday. Emma's class decided to party on Friday...makes sense to end the week with a party, but kinda a bummer when everyone else in the school did parties on Monday. This is Jacks last year for a class party. He really didn't care about what he took for Valentine's, but he was bummed that I didn't let him decorate a box right before school. I did give him a nice bag he could put his name and stickers on.

Lily had a couple hours before school and that worked to Lily's advantage. We had enough time to pull off this cute card. I saw this a few years ago and filed this in a mental "oh, that'd be cute to do" file and promptly forgot it.

She took a picture for me and we stuck a lollipop through it to give to her class. This is the before picture.

The after picture. I forgot to take a picture with an actual lollipop. To insert a real lollipop, use an exacto knife and cut slits in the photo above and below the hand.

Character Day

It's Literacy Month and the school decided to gave the kids a pass on uniforms for a day. I put the kids back in uniform and called it "Hogwart's Uniform". I'm kinda tricky like that. Jack has been fast and furiously reading the last book of the Harry Potter series in hopes that we let him see the movie. Emma got a bunch of her friends to be HP characters and she decided to be Ginny Weasley. (No comments on the Harry/Ginny relationship) I don't know what motivated me to get all this done yesterday, but the kids were super excited that I was able to pull it off.
Lily is "The Mitten" by Jan Brett. She could be any character and last minute she wanted to be a dog. Well, I compromised and said she could be a dog IN THE MITTEN. Happy as a clam.