Lots of projects

After finally having moderate success with that blasted recycled dress from the summer 2007 Ottobre, I'm fairly certain I can do it again perfectly. I am determined to get this dress right! i'm not sure if it's perseverance or stupidity.

I decided to cut in to that great pink skull fabric. I cut out a Rose dress from the spring 2008 ottobre for Kari and a romper for Lizzy.

I also had just enough fabric left over to create a purse for myself! yeah! it's not often I indulge my craftiness for myself. . . unless I'm scrapbooking. but i haven't scrapped in ages. In fact, I'm going to be purging my scrap closet this week in order to make room for sewing supplies! I'm not completely giving up scrapping...just going minimalist.

Hoppy Easter

The Easter Bunny snuck in during the night and hid all our eggs! Hard cooked inside the house and dozens of candy filled eggs in the yard!

Ben woke up at the butt crack of dawn and scared off the Bunny. I yelled at him to go back to bed and not come out til at least 7 a.m. And, in a haze, I went to check on the bunny's work. In the dark I had no idea if the bunny was tossing eggs in fire ant mounds or not.

Around 7:01 a.m. Ben was heard running up and down the hall getting everyone else up. Alex refused to budge. Smart kid. Stay in bed. Sleep. zzzzz

I managed to get up and the kids ate the breakfast foods the Easter Bunny left in their baskets on the table before tackling the rather lamely hidden eggs in the living room. They made quick work of it. Tho I still managed to miscount and several hours later we came across two more eggs.

Next, the two littlest girls went out in the back to find eggs. By now, Lizzy figured out putting things in her bag was fun. Even more so when she discovered how to open the plastic eggs and found chocolate!

Once those two were done, the older ones had the run of the yard.

Meanwhile, Lizzy was dumping chocolate out on to the ground.

We headed back inside and I realized it wasn't even 8 a.m. and the kids already had a sugar high. *sigh*

The rest of the morning was spent cutting out patterns and cleaning. I actually made it to the grocery store today and after reading Cookie Madness for the day decided to follow Anna's lead and do the cola ham for dinner tomorrow. I only have cherry coke. hopefully it tastes good!

A friend from church popped over and offered to mow the lawn! This was a great blessing as we were going to ask for help with it tomorrow at church. With D still not able to bear weight on his foot, he's not in a position to mow the lawn or chase after the Lizzy while I do it. I'm just glad we got the whole egg hunt out of the way before the forest was cut down. A freshly mowed lawn is counter productive to hiding the eggs really well.

And, in case anyone is wondering why on earth the bunny came on Saturday...

Church is at 9 a.m. My children are squirmy enough in church without adding in sugar. And they are impatient enough there's no way I'd want to sit through church listening to them whine about going home for the egg hunt. Plus, with my kids being the only ones not on a sugar high, it's like the only Sunday of the whole year when my kids aren't the most disruptive hahaha

Of course, there's the whole spiritual side of things. What exactly does the bunny have to do with Jesus? It makes a lot more sense to draw the line between the secular Easter and the Spiritual Easter by having them on two separate days.

To do list

Well, I have a few things left to do today

1. Whip children in to doing chores.
2. Make breakfast for dinner because I am lazy
3. Hard cook 24 eggs
4. Color eggs with kids
5. Put kids to bed
6. Sew 5 easter bags tote bags because I'm totally sick of buying easter baskets year after year
7. Make three tutus and pray I have enough fabric because according to all the tutorials I've read I don't have nearly enough! Maybe I'll just draft my own (ok stop laughing now! I MEAN IT!)
8. Sew a pair of PJ bottoms for Ben
9. Fill 48 plastic eggs with chocolate.
10. Set the alarm for 6 a.m.
11. Fall down in complete exhaustion.

Any guesses on how many of these things I'll actually get done before midnight ROFL

Sad thing is today I've already
1. Fielded several phone calls
2. Missed a call from the NIH about a genetic study we're doing
3. Went to LLL
4. Found out the bank won't cash a check made out to my 11 yo because his name only is on it.
5. Got an order from a customer for a high chair cover and a baby swing cover
6. Picked up scout stuff for Alex at the council office
7. bought more fabric for customer
8. picked up kids from school
9. rubbernecked on a house fire
10. helped with homework
11. blogged

All in all a pretty productive day :)

AND I even managed to do hair and makeup! yay me :D

it's like crack

The fabric store that is. I seriously should not go in to that place...even for thread. Or zippers. That's what I went in for today. Two zippers, some ribbon and elastic thread.

I came out with one zipper, two cones of maxi-lock, several yards of ribbon, the elastic thread, buttons, and three yards of fabric. I suppose it could have been a lot worse.

But this fabric was just too cute to pass up!

Report card day!

I am so proud of my kids I could practically burst!

Ben made the A/B honor roll. He got a B in reading, which I am going to talk to his teacher about. He is an excellent reader, so i'd like to know what's going on. Ben said it was because he was missing too much reading by going to speech. If this is the case, there's a big problem! Ben has been reading the first Harry Potter book outloud each night. A first grader who's doing that should probably have a solid A in reading.

Leelee had As, Bs and one C in math! This is a huge accomplishment for her. She has really struggled with math since moving to the advanced placement school. A C for her is like an A for any other student.

Most of the students had ample time to catch up on the grade they skipped. When students are admitted in the spring, they are given the curriculum for the year they are skipping so they won't "miss" anything and are expected to study during the summer. But Leelee was admitted in the fall, two weeks in to the school year, in fact, so she completely missed the entire third grade.

The biggest news of all is that Alex made A/B honor roll! This means the ADHD treatment is working! Last quarter he had Cs and Ds. He has made a complete turn around academically and behaviorally in school.

We took the kids to Sonic to celebrate. Happy Hour...half priced drinks. Cinnamon bites and ice cream. Mmmm mmmm good.

Too smart for her own good

I believe Lizzy is too smart for her own good. She figures things out. I can see her brain working the problem.

So far my little destructo girl can:

Open childproof lids on medicines and cleaners
Dump things out
If we move something higher, pulls a chair over to reach it
Climbs
Raids the pantry
Opens the dishwasher and climbs in to get to the counter
Pulls all the pots and pans out
Helps load/unload the dishwasher
Takes out the trash! (if the mood strikes her, she'll pull the bag out and bring it to the door)
Loves getting dirty.

She ran to the bathroom this morning saying "bath bath!" I was not ready to give her a bath quite yet. So...she reused to let me help feed her yogurt. Usually she'll take 2-3 bites on her own and then wants help. This morning, help completely refused. She was covered in it.

"Did you get all dirty so you can take a bath?"

She looked me square in the eye and smiled, nodded and said "yeah"

Ohhhh what am I gonna do with this girl???

New Easter Project

IT's only a few days before Easter and I'm terribly unprepared. I don't have baskets purchased or made. I'm not even sure I want to have another round of plastic baskets taking up space only to get trashed. It seems terribly wasteful.

I do, however, have two yards of bunny fabric. I'm considering making reusable easter bags. The bigger question is with everything else I have to do this week, is this another project I really need to be taking on?

Or even better, do I need to do this project and make basically reusable easter eggs for treats? As cute as they are, where am I going to put them when we're not using them? Are plastic eggs one more year going to kill me (the kids hate throwing them away for some reason)? Which will be cheaper,... which is my bigger concern!

I am trying really hard not to spend even more money on sewing projects. I am actually finishing my projects...but the sheer volume of fabric I have is a bit scary!

Sibling Rivalry at it's finest

We were playing school this afternoon. Kari was writing her name and doing her "math" and Lizzy was being a bit too curious for Kari's liking. Kari got mad, so I decided to redirect by proclaiming it was story time.

Kari brought me a book and so did Lizzy. We read and off they went to get other books.

Kari ran back out in to the living room and I expected Lizzy to be toddling along after her any minute. Instead, Kari says "I don't want to play with Lizzy so I shut her in the bedroom."

I sigh and roll my eyes and go off to rescue my little one. I quickly noted that the only doors shut were the bathroom and my room. "Kari, what room did you put Lizzy in?"

"I locked her in your room!"

At no point did I actually think she actually locked her in the room...until I turned the handle.

I immediately turned to my trusty coat hanger that has opened many bathroom doors. It failed me. I tried a knife. Nope. I worked on it a good TEN MINUTES before I finally called my husband.

"This better be an emergency" he said, since he was still teacher.

Yes this qualified as an emergency. He gave me some tips on how to pop the lock...none of them worked.

The doorbell rang. It was my visiting teachers! They were late, but that's ok. It was now just about time to get the older kids from school!

Off went one of the ladies and a few minutes later, D arrived home to save the day.

He used a stinking credit card to pop the lock! He could have at least suggested that to me :P

Lizzy was probably trapped alone in my bedroom for 30 minutes. She didn't really panic or cry. She did dump out all the bags of things I'd set aside for the goodwill. I'm sure she had a grand old time trying on all the clothes and throwing things out of the trash in my room.

Kari is not sorry. She only appologized because she thought she'd be able to get dessert back. And for Kari, losing dessert is like the end of the world.

I'm sure I'll be laughing at this later and it will a hilarious story to share with the girls when they are older!

Sewing again

D is on a cleaning and organizing kick for some reason. We have several bags of things to take to the goodwill. For my part, I'm going to tackle my stash of fabric...so I'm going to be sewing like crazy. I really need to get clothes for the girls done.

I'm going to sew up another of the recycled dresses from Ottobre. I have a bunch of scrap fabrics that it will look cute with. Next, I'm going to make a pair of knickers for Leelee. There was a cute pair in the last Ottobre that would be perfect for school. I have some khaki homespun I'm going to use to practice on. It's going to heat up enough around here the homespun might actually be the right weight for school!

It's supposed to be around 80 for the next two days then drops again on Wednesday. Hopefully no one gets sick with all the roller coaster temps.

D also starts physical therapy for his ankle this week, so it will definitely be busy!

Oh and our things breaking streak continued...the microwave went out. I am hoping to pick one up on freecycle. If we end up moving, a microwave is one thing that we can get new when we get wherever we go.