June in a Nutshell

The school awards ceremony was actually the very last day of May, but we'll throw it in here anyway.  

Certificates were awarded.  

Applause happened.  

Summer camp at Wolf Mountain.

It's nice to be hitting some of the same places they went last year, because I'm starting to get familiar with the route.  (Matilda still goes straight to the car wash after leaving the gravel roads.)

We started the process for a new leg.  We've actually got the leg now, we just need to go back soon for a different foot that's on order.

My dad & step mom were here for a visit, and we took the kids to the new Museum of Science and Curiousity.

It was a fun place to spend a few hours.  Lots of hands on exhibits.  

It's the kind of place I'd want a membership to if my kids were little.  

It was a nice visit, and I'm glad my girls got to spend a little time with grandparents.  I feel bad for them because the older kids got a lot more grandparent time, when we all lived closer together.  

My dad with Jack and Josiah.

And Bri made a quick trip to our area for a bridal shower weekend.  It was wonderful to see her, and she and I took the girls to a local rock shop.  Bri knows so much about rocks and minerals, and she just lit up explaining things to the girls while we were there.  

I fired up Crikey to make a journal for our trip.  (And then I was terrible about writing in it while we were on vacation.)  

Some bibs I made for the grandbabies.  There's an avocado one that's not finished, but I have to take my serger in for a spa day before I can complete it.  The farmer's market, watermelon, and banana prints came from the March quilt show.  The striped yellow coordinate was in a batch of stuff someone from church gave me.  The green, I picked up at JoAnn's.  The argyle and dots were leftovers from reversible toddler pants I made years ago.  

February Happenings

The days are getting away from me again.  It feels like not much is happening, but I do have a bunch of photos to share.  

One of the pastors sent me this picture of Jack, lounging in the library during youth.  I love that he's snuggling a Bible.  (The fact that his shoes are on the ottoman cover I made, not so much.)  

The quest to find a good book to read for St. Patrick's Day has been frustrating.  I'm half tempted to write my own and call it St. Patrick Without All The Blarney.  I've found a "close enough" book, though.  

Oh Grumman.  A cat rescue I follow recently posted, "Describe your cat in one word."  I replied, "Entitled."  He's such a character.

As is little Fiona, of course.  

I pulled out my leftover ducks from last school year, and my 6th graders are tripping over themselves to do book talks to earn ducks.  

Bri sent the girls t-shirts.  (Hannah's other shirt has a red panda enjoying boba.)

Katie's other shirt has a dragon.

She's a little harder to photograph.

Barely controlled chaos abounds.

Parents of adult children:  If you send your child a package via Amazon, you can get a picture of their far away doorstep.  :sigh:  I've done this a few times now, and it's a small comfort to me to get a glimpse of where they live.  

Purple makes me happy, so I bought some purple carnations at the grocery store.  Only Grumman went nuts over the greenery packed with them, so I had to keep them where he couldn't get to them.  Which ended up being in my shower.  :sigh:  

More books

A couple of valentines from my kindergarteners.

Josiah had a birthday.  

There's a saying among Air Force mamas:  Find a dime, your airman's fine.  Silly, but some consolation when they're so far away.  I changed from my "day after Thanksgiving to day after Valentine's" purse to my purple "rest of the year" purse, and I found a dime.  

We recently read the Aboriginal myth, Why Koala Has a Stumpy Tail so I had a little Australia display set up.  I also changed out the biographies on display for Black History Month.  

Speaking of displays, I love the $5 stuffed animal book characters at Kohl's.  They make the picture book section more inviting, I think.  

Last time I shared the "in progress" picture.  This is the completed February bulletin board.  The 3rd graders made the koalas.  Kindergarten did my December gingerbread men, 1st-2nd did my January snowmen, 3rd did the koalas, I'm thinking maybe 4th-5th can do butterflies for my spring bulletin board next time.  

The girls were off for President's Day and I took them with me to Target.  Katie:  "I feel so weird, touching a mannikin!"  

"You are so weird, touching a mannikin."  

Hannah's a little on the odd side, too, as she discovered that the sign swung back & forth, and couldn't leave it alone long enough to check sizes with me.  

We stopped at a garden store to check for snapdragons, and I think I must have been getting hungry, because I felt a kinship with this $200 purple dragon.  Maybe I'm a little strange, myself.  

Josiah hard boiled some eggs recently.

And Hannah made a very tasty tortilla soup.

My bunting is a bit wonky, but I wanted to throw up some FACTS about St. Patrick to counteract the leprechaun/pot o'gold fluff around the holiday.  (Did you know he was never formally canonized by the Catholic church?)

One of the teachers asked for photos of students with pets for the yearbook, so Hannah nabbed Grumman for a picture.  

We had a tiny bit of SNOW one day.  It doesn't snow here.  I totally would have missed it if I hadn't been at school pickup.  

One of my friends from homeschool co op days long ago bought this book for our library.  Great book!  I'm excited to share it with my students.  

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!