Busy...

We are definitely keeping busy. We are deep in crunch time with our Destination Imagination teams. 3 practices/meetings a week now, but March 1st will come quite quickly! We decided to take our last weekend (before having a practice every Saturday,) to go to a waterpark. We had lots of fun.

You'll notice that Levi isn't there. Well, that's a very long story. He had gotten into quite a bit of trouble at school this week. To make the long story short, he is an evil genius and was able to remove all filters from the computers at school. Cracking passwords, and causing havoc. When asked why, he simply stated he "wanted to see if he could." So as much as we were a little proud that he was capable of doing this, it needed to definitely be punished, so he stayed with my dad while we went swimming. Here's a picture of him during his punishment, making a snowman in the driveway.

Oh, he is also banned from the computer for quite awhile at home, and at school he lost internet access for the remainder of the year, with only minimum computer usage. Also had some respect and boundary type assignments.

On a really wonderful note, I received 2 amazing birthday presents! On a craftster birthday swap I received these AMAZING place mats. (6 to be exact) with beautiful wrapping and an adorable gnome card!

My other gift was from Tim. I have been wanting these enamel dishes for SO long, and now I got them! I just love them to bits!

Birthdays and Presents

Well, my birthday was last Saturday. I turned 30. I see no difference, so I guess that's good. For my birthday I decided to treat myself to something I made. So I made myself a pink and brown purse. I used scraps from other projects. I used brown corduroy from a jacket I am making. I used a bunch of pink cotton fabric from a few baby quilts I've made. And this is what I came out with. It's certainly not my finest work, but it went together quickly, and it has lots of my favorite pink fabrics, and I just LOVE corduroy. It's big enough to carry the essentials, plus some. I can fit my big camera and a water bottle in it.
Inside of bag. You can see the zipper pocket, magnetic snap, and d-ring (which will hold my keys once I make a keychain for my keys. The little plastic vial in the middle is the extracted DNA from wheat germ. I should probably toss it, but the kids were so proud.


One side of the bag


Other side of bag

Steve You Will Be Missed

Saturday Night, our beloved gerbil Steve passed away. It was a miracle that he was even born, given that both of his parents were boys, (well, that's what the pet store guy "guaranteed" us. Obviously he was mistaken.) He was preceded in death by his father, Shrek. He is survived by his brother, Yar.

The boys were pretty bummed, but they took this death way better than when Shrek died. He'll certainly be missed!



Steve the gerbil
June 3, 2003 - January 19, 2008

Birthdays & Bonding

We had a fun weekend. This was our weekend to have my niece Jorden. The kids aren't the same since she had to live with her dad again. Breaks my heart really when she fights us to go back or when she yells at somebody who says she's "going home" and explains that my house is her home. Unfortunately there isn't much we can do, so we try to enjoy the moments we do get her.

On Saturday Lore had a birthday party, (it was a family birthday party, but they wanted the boy to have one friend there, ) to go to. The mom insisted that he bring no presents. Lore disagreed! He came home from school Wednesday saying that the boy told him they bought him a Transformer toy as a favor, and that it wasn't fair that he gets something, but isn't allowed to give his friend a gift on his birthday. (Can't really disagree with his reasoning.) So we set out to make a present. We had been wanting to make something we saw on Creative Kismet's blog for a long time, and thought this might be the perfect time to try it out. Lore's friend LOVES Superman, so that's the way we went. He drew the picture, I did a bit of photoshop and printed it out onto photofabric. Pressed, rinsed, pressed, then Lore found a backing fabric, cut them out and he sewed it, turned it, stuffed it. And I finished off the last bit of hand stitches. His friend loved it! And Lore was so proud. He was singing and dancing after he made it, so I wasn't able to get a great picture, but I did get a goofy one.



On Sunday we went to the Science Expo in Green Bay. It was quite nice. The boys and Jo learned alot. They learned about electricity and safety when there is a fallen power line. They learned about Bernoulli's principle from Professor Gizmo (we've seen him quite a few times, he's quite entertaining! They extracted DNA from wheat germ. They got to meet some of their favorite weather personalities from FOX11. But their favorite by far was making and launching their rockets.
Here they are outside holding up their rockets. (Yes that is Lambeau Field in the background.)

Dalek Doodle

My youngest son needed a new "take home" folder. Their take home folders are the only one they get to choose which designs and such are on it, and he was quite disapointed when I suggested the plain yellow one that we already had at home. I told him I'd fancy it up a bit, and he was ok, not happy, but ok with it.





This is what he came home to. He was so excited! He said it was way cooler than anything we could have gotten from the store (very high praise from a 7 year old who is also in love with Transformers!) I just free handed it with sharpies and a glitter silver marker I have.

My son must be psychic

Ok, now this is a weird post for me, and I almost don't feel right about posting it. But this is something terribly funny at least to my husband and myself.

Now a little background on politics in my house. My husband and I have our views but don't really share them with our children. We always vote but rarely even tell each other who we voted for. We differ on many points. So when it comes to our children we try to help them understand the "issues" and try to explain as non-biasedly as possible who stands for what, so our children can learn to make their own choices. Neither my husband nor I have an allegiance to any one party either.

Well, after the last US presidential election in 2004, my son Lore (3 at the time,) was deeply upset by George Bush's win. He was devastated! He started crying, then all of a sudden stopped. He said, and I quote, "He's gonna make a mess of things." My husband and I laughed and we asked him who he thought would make a good president. We were expecting to hear him say himself, daddy, Bob the Builder or something like that. He stated flat out that Barack Obama was going to be the next president. We laughed (I have to admit, as much as we do try to pay attention to politics it bores the heck out of us. And if it isn't local, state or presidential, we know NOTHING) we thought he had made up a name. (Mr. Obama I do apologize, but he was 3 and it sounded a bit made up!)

He was insistent on this for weeks. Finally we were talking to a family friend about this, and he said "you mean the senator from Illinois?" Can you imagine the look on our faces? Think white with jaw hitting the table. Our 3 year old named someone to be the next president who my husband and I had never even heard of.

That's why Mr. Obama's victory last night was awfully sweet for my son. He is his supporter from WAY back! Lore is now 7. And he is still a supporter of Barack's in the hugest way. I think we may have a future politician on our hands!

So this is for Lore;

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR FIRST VICTORY!!!!

MY SON PREDICTS MANY MORE IN YOUR FUTURE!

Now back to normal posting, I promise!

Fun With Christmas Presents

Every year at the top of the kids' wish lists is always craft stuff. Rarely do they get any from anyone besides Tim & myself. This year we got more than a few. One of the biggest hits, that I hadn't even thought of in ages were perler beads.
Here are some of our creations.

Liam made the big head. Lore made the small head and the multicolor hexagon, (it's a game, you find pictures in the colors he told me!) and Levi is working on the very precise hexagon in progress. Guess who made the Dalek.


It would be me. I wanted to show them that they didn't have to fill exactly the shape of the base. They love it.

Happy New Year!!

Well, I'm a little late, but I hope everyone had a safe and wonderful New Years! We are home bodies! We spent it loving every second at home. We had a pizza, (I don't like pizza, but I do enjoy an Eaton's Pizza every once in a while.) taco dip, the kids had sparkling cider and I had my POM juice. We played games, watched movies, and just relaxed!

I don't really do the year in review, because how do you pick highlights from your life? I don't really do resolutions, because then I think they are doomed to fail. About the only thing I do do is make a list of year goals. I don't always finish them all, and as with my Christmas list, things do sometimes get altered. They are never profound, but it's what I try to accomplish. So here goes.

• Make all of my boys a mommy made quilt.
• Make a Christmas Tree Skirt and Stockings (I told my husband the tree won't come down until I have made these, so I better get moving!)
• Make Tim things (especially a throw/quilt)
• Help Boys make a quilt for Grandma Wanda
• Make a window quilt (or more than one)
• Help the boys make and publish a comic book
• Make dessert for the family at least 2 times a month
• Make our home more OURS (Paint Kitchen and Dinning Room, etc)
• Spend one WHOLE day with each of my kids individually, doing what THEY want. (I know this may sound really sad, but this has never happened. We've had other people around, or had to get chores done first, or things came up, or whatever. I really want to spend a great one-on-one day with each of them.)
• Stop and breathe more.
• Open an etsy shop
• Work cleaning and excercise into my daily routine.
• Embrace quiet
• Call my best friend at least once a month non-prompted! (this is big, I hate the phone. I don't own a cell phone and don't ever plan to. My dearest friend is offline, she doesn't own a computer *GASP* She calls me always, I never call her unless I'm returning a call, and I don't check the answering machine ever, so I only get messages when my kids tell me. I didn't know she was pregnant until she was a month to her due date because we were playing phone tag.... this is WRONG, I will fix this!)

I'm sure there's more, but this is my most important list, that I can think of right this moment.

Christmas Gifts

I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday season! Christmas always hits hard here. We are always glad to see it end, but then the New Year comes too quickly. Here are the gifts I made (that I remembered to quick get pictures of.)
**EDIT- I can't believe I forgot to post this. I used a wonderful tutorial by Tonya for my letters, she saved my life when it came to getting these quilts done and looking so cute! Thank you!!**


This is a quilt I made for my husband's cousin's baby daughter, Lydia


This quilt I made for my baby niece, Clover


This quilt I made for my 1 year old nephew, Evan


These are cute little reindeer gift card holders I made out of felt. One went to my brother, one to my aunt. I got the pattern and directions at my little mochi's


This is one of 3 notebook holders I made for my sons' teachers. I only have pictures because my son was playing with the camera. This was for my son's 5th grade teacher. I made a black one with Packer's lining for my 3rd grade son's male teacher. And I made (my favorite) a cute building blocks fabric one for my 1st grade son's teacher.




Here's what the inside looks like.