after years of wanting one

I finally got a blender. I really don't know what took me so long to get one but I decided that it was time.
so this morning I made breakfast in it.

YUMMY

strawberry and banana smoothies. they were so good. I wish we could drink them all day long. but, although healthy, that would be highly expensive so we will have to have them for breakfast and maybe a happy treat.

a new-ish experience (revised)

Tonight we have parent teacher conferences with Timothy and Emma's teachers.
because Tim has been switched to day shift he will actually get to attend with me! I think in some way we are all kind of excited about it. Tim has always wanted to go but has not been able to because of work. this is the first time in almost 7 years that he will get to go to a report card conference.
Hooray!


revision: school has closed early. so we must wait until March 9th before we meet with teachers.

I did it

I'm not exactly sure if I'm ashamed.... I joined facebook.

Last night Tim saw that I did and lightly mocked me but I'm only testing it out.
I'm thinking about letting Erica sign up since she had wanted to a couple of years ago and was a couple of months too young at the time. and then I never looked into it more. I guess I was just really uncomfortable with her being asked what school she goes to. that just gets kind of scary when you are talking about the internet!
but I will keep a very close eye on it and have some very specific rules attached.

sharing the love

over the last three or four weeks nearly everyone in the house has been sick.

it started with Tim getting a terrible migraine for a week and it was half way through the week before I knew that his being sick was because of his headache and not some contagion.
the next week Connor and Ronan and I were not feeling well and he had a slight fever for a day and ended up missing church.
but in the last 72 hours we have had four people with a fever - three of them with a fever longer than two days - and 6 out of the 7 of us have had headaches and general blahs.

I suppose if we didn't like each other so much we wouldn't be close enough to be getting each other sick.


despite the part about not feeling so good, the three youngest still run around here like some kind of hooligans and jokers, usually while I'm making supper.

chopsticks

Usually I don't buy toys that make a lot of noise. my sanity just can't handle that much racket anymore. But today I made an exception and I'm already thinking that piano lessons will be happening in the next couple of years. We got Ronan a little xylophone "piano". he has been having so much fun with it and he gets angry if someone else tries to play his piano.

"Old fashioned" toys are often the best.

what to do, what to do

lately I've been suffering from a nearly terrible case of boredom. I think it's really more of a case of cabin fever ~ we all have it around here. It doesn't help that we were fooled into thinking that spring was coming early and then over night it dropped 40 degrees. No fair!

my mind was spinning with plans of different projects and a weight loss plan all day today. I may just make some of it a contest and have my blog involved in some of it ~ such as having weekly suggestions from you (my reader/readers) on a theme for photography and then I will have to plan a picture around the theme... that kind of thing. and as far as the weight loss goes, when I am resolved to start that in a few weeks when spring really truly is here I will come here and report my progress (being optimistic)

today picked up my crocheting project I started in early December. After I finished the blanket I made for Connor, I decided that I was determined to learn how to make granny squares. I went to youtube.com and found a tutorial. They are so very simple that I am ashamed that I couldn't figure them out by reading instructions.

I have yet to figure out how I'm going to finish the edge, but I can wait on that for a bit while I work on the design and piece it together. I have started attaching the pieces that I have made so that I can take a look at it spread out and get a final count on how many more squares I am going to need.
I have more squares finished than are in the picture, but it's just a sample of what I'm working on. I think that it will be a blanket for Tim, or maybe it will just live on the couch in the during the winter.


Here I go to clean my living room and then continue the blanket.

a winner in my book

I wish that I could say that this is the winner already, but it is in my book. and it is now in my book.
Emma is entering a design for a book mark contest. because we don't get to have the picture back I took a picture this morning after I woke her up for school ~ that explains the messy hair and puffy look on her face.


Since Emma has been learning how to read she has been wanting to have a 'real' bookmark for herself. I ran her design through photo shop and cropped out the bookmark and printed a couple of copies of it so that she can have her own design be her bookmark.


and on a side note... this is a special day. this post is number 100 and today the kindergarten is celebrating the 100th day of school.

how interesting

she had a great time

Tim picked up Erica from her dance last night. It was only two hours long but she says they all wished that it had been longer.
she danced with her friends and they took pictures. she even danced with a boy. even though it was supposed to be a slow dance they danced fast and silly to the song. apparently they got bored dancing slow. :)
I'm so glad that she had a good time.
Next week she has a church dance in the cities. I hope that one goes as well.

they grow up so fast

right now Erica is at her very first dance ever. She is up at the high school where they are having a 7th and 8th grade dance.
I gave her the standard list of when to call mom and dad in case someone tries to pressure her into something she shouldn't do. I trust her. I'm sure that she would have called anyway.
She and her friends are planning on being silly. they'll dance and laugh and run around the school like they are so confident when really they aren't at all.
she was kind of excited but kind of nervous at the same time. I sure she is more excited.
I on the other hand am feeling something but I'm just not sure what. I think it's more like when you send your child off to kindergarten. it's that sudden rush of emotions that kind of swirl around together making it impossible to know exactly what you are feeling.

It is so hard letting them grow up

a mistake?

Ronan's hair was getting really long but I had put off a hair cut mainly because of the huge circus event it turns into when I cut his hair. it got to a point where I couldn't put it off any more, his hair was messy all the time, no matter how much you wet it and comb it down. He'd wake up and look like Grandpa Munster. actually, he was looking a lot like Andy Warhol.

for a while yesterday I thought about which would be the best way to cut his hair and I figured that if I use the adjustable electric shaver it should go faster and I should be able to get an even cut instead of having a patchy, funny looking haircut.

Every so often is strikes Tim's fancy to shave his head and so I shave his head for him with the very same shaver and I thought that I had a pretty good idea about how long it would be on different settings. I was fairly confident that I knew what I was doing. I set it for a longer cut and started at the top of his head.

I think I may have made a terrible mistake. I really didn't expect it to be so short.

one step closer

we are one step closer to financial freedom~ only a couple more steps to go since the only big debt we have left are the house and car.

we received our tax return last week. I paid off my student loan right away.

getting rid of debt is so freeing. If you've never done it, you really should. it's just amazing how you feel after throwing the debt monkey off your back.

Huzzah!

pretty princess

Today is Hat Day in Kindergarten. Emma is supposed to bring a hat and we don't have anything but knitted winter hats and she wanted something more fun. I asked her if we needed to take her to buy a hat and yesterday she came home from school and she said that their teacher told them that they could just make one.

Hooray! We can make a better paper hat than anything we could buy around here. and since there was no specific instructions about what kind of hat we decided that a princess hat would be more fun and wonderful.

after we got started on our project the thought crossed my mind that someone might get jealous of her hat and might ruin it or be sad because her hat was more creative or turned out better. I really don't want that to happen. Her hat did turn out really well.

I hope she will have a wonderful hat day.

the best picture of today

today we had a couple of people not feeling too great and I was hoping to have a quiet day. Emma was so excited to get started on her Valentine's box we decided that there was no time like the present. we haven't made any valentines boxes around here in years and I used to have fun doing them when I was a little kid. I helped her cover a shoe box and cut out some hearts and she glued and colored and planned. She really went to town. she worked on it for about two hours and then she wanted to write out the valentines. I told her that if she got it all done now she wouldn't have anything else to work on but she was determined. However, she still hasn't finished working on the box so she will have a couple more days to cut and glue and sticker. I'm going to have to try to stretch it out through the week.

I took a few pictures of her working on her box. I will take some more when she is finally finished. when I put the pictures on the computer and looked through them, this one made me laugh harder than I have in a while.