Happy January!

Every year, after Christmas is over, I take a breath and think, "Okay, what comes next?"  Usually, it dawns on me that Chinese New Year, or Lunar New Year is the next thing coming.  Unfortunately, after Christmas is too late to order silks from China and have them arrive here in time.  

So instead of lovely silks, we're making do this year with... 

 

A Year of the Bunny t-shirt I made with my Cricut.  I've got a couple blank tees for Valentine's Day, too, I just haven't decided what I want on them yet.  

We've been to the library several times over the longer than expected break.  

The next book I'm thinking of reading to my 3rd grade class is set in Hawaii, so I tested out a simple lei craft.  Just colorful straws and flowers strung on yarn.  It will give the kids another opportunity to use the yarn needles.  I think I'm also going to do some lacing cards soon, as I was really surprised at how poorly our last "sewing" craft went.  It inspired me to want to work on manual dexterity a little bit.  

So we've had some storms here.  And the town where our school is has been evacuated a couple of times.  And the roads flooded, and the power went out, and trees fell over, and the internet is still down there.  This resulted in us having an extra week and a half off from school after our expected Christmas break.  We just never went back.  

But since we're in the next town over, we've been okay, for the most part.  Just off school/work because we literally could not get there, or it was dark/cold, etc.  So we've been reading.  A lot.  I'm 11 books into 2023 so far.  

I feel like we spent a lot of our 3+ week long break at the library.  

Not a bad thing; just... an unplanned one.  Later on, when the weather is nice and we have to make up all those lost days, I'm afraid spring fever will hit hard.  

Because storms are not my idea of go outside and play weather.  

I more than hit my reading goal of 80 books in 2022.  

Hullo!  Why is that tree napping in our yard?  

Dear me, that's not good.

That just snapped right off, didn't it?  

Paul set to work with the chain saw, and I came along behind him, pulling branches out of the way and tossing them into a pile.  

We made quick work of turning a big tree into small pieces.  

And a rather impressive pile of branches.  

I know what's going to be in our yard waste trash can for the next 6 months.  

This is Josiah's "Darn you!" face when he came in from finding the potato in a Santa hat by the spudometer in his car.  

Fiona has a new terrible habit.  She's been chasing her tail--while standing on the small, narrow banister.  Here, she seems to be surrendering to the space heater.  

Hannah continues to try out new recipes for dinner.  She made an Asian egg drop soup that was quite tasty.  

Oh look.  More books.  

Looking forward to finally heading back to school tomorrow and taking down my Christmas bulletin board!  

Our After Summer Camp Before School Starts Week

Whew!  After our Michigan trip, the girls had one more adventure.  Camp Winning Hands, a camp for kids with upper limb difference.

I forgot to take a picture before I dropped Hannah off on Monday, so I took this on the way out.  

Katie and I waiting for her rapid covid test results at her Tuesday drop off.  

The library is a summertime disaster, but I added 3 new (to us) bookcases, which is a Very Good Thing.  I spent the summer processing books, and ran out of shelf space.  

One of the bookcases has 2 more shelves, but I need to find some shelf pins for it.

Hoping to get those totes of books processed before school starts, as I had to move them to put in a bookcase, and I'm out of corners to hide piles.  

This is going to continue to change, as I just heard I'm loosing two tables and gaining a conference room table instead.  

A small new to us bookcase.

Another small new to us bookcase.

Guess what my theme this year is?  I'll give you a hint...

Dinosaurs!  

Lego flowers that Brianna sent to Hannah.

I placed a Kohl's order when an underwire stabbed me in the armpit.  I like to pick up a few of the Kohl's Cares books & plush whenever I order, so when my order split, I ended up with one box that was bras with a side of angry dinosaur.  That about sums it up, doesn't it?  

The other box was much cuter.  

The napkins I sewed recently seem to have reawakened the sewing urge within me.  I made this autumn leaves peasant top for Hannah.  

A library run

Fiona claimed a Goodwill box

This was supposed to be the "before" shot.  Only, the "after" failed.  I made a cover for this icky ottoman, but it was too small.  I have since unsewn it (one of my least favorite activities) and resewn it, and will try to fit it again.  If this one does not fit, there may be tears or stomping.  

I shared a small bit of this passage from Sherlock Holmes with my kids at dinner and introduced them to the "science" of phrenology.  

Look!  There's been progress on the dining room ceiling!  (The hole opened up shortly before Thanksgiving, for anyone who's curious on the timeline.)  

Katie helped me with an experiment.  I'm trying to figure out how to "fossilize" some dino skeletons for my students to "excavate" with orange manicure sticks and craft brushes.  

Our current recipe is 2 splorts of glue, hot water, and sand.  We're waiting for it to dry well.  

Grumman, of course, had to check and see what we were up to.  

This should look vaguely familiar to some.  I made a taggie similar to this for Kasen months ago.  I even mailed it.  Only, it never got there.  :sadface:  Since I didn't make it to Texas for a visit this summer like I had hoped, I decided to mail Zach's family their souvenirs from my Europe trip, as well as a replacement taggie for Kasen.  

The Great Room Shuffle

I feel like we do this every few years.  

Step one:  move Jack into his new room.

Which used to be Eli's room, and then the guest room, which was used by Bri for 6 months in 2020 and then by Sam for 6 months in 2021.  

Step two:  clean out Jack's old room.  Which included a treasure trove of clothes that don't fit anyone any more.  And, on the chair, an old pair of Eli socks.  :sigh:  

Then we moved Katie into Jack's old room.

I'm feeling like it needs a colorful bedspread.  There's a lot of blue there.  

I had each of the girls pick out their top 10 favorite stuffed animals.  Then I picked out a few that were favorites of the older kids.  The rest are going bye bye.  

Take note of the bed in the above photo.  

With the disappearance of Katie's furniture and the lego buckets, we got to vacuum a nice large portion of the room before

PRESTO CHANGO!

We flipped the Ikea bed and added a desk.  

Lots of excitement with all the changes.