good news, bad news

Okay, it's been a little crazy around here. I haven't had an uninterrupted minute to sit and write on this blog. So here I am, and I've been interrupted twice already, but I'm going to go for it anyway.
Let's start with the good news....
good: My beautiful little pink Singer sewing machine is working! I took it to the sewing machine fixer-upper guy but he charges more to fix it than my machine is actually worth so I couldn't do it. He did take a look at it and tell me what he thought needed cleaning...I cleaned it and it works :o) Thanks Mr. Sewing Machine Fixer-Upper Man.
Go ahead, call me crazy...I know I had a perfectly logical reason to get a new machine, with an agreeable husband to boot, but if I could fix it and not spend any money, then I was all over it!
good: My mom took off from school and came to play with us. What fun!..









She made the girls some super-cute dresses for the beach...oh, so cute. She also took us to Walmart and bought some irresistible fabric so I could make the girls some quick and easy sun dresses (now that my machine is working). She also bought me a cute shirt. Thanks, Mama.
good: I got the girls new matching bathing suits.

I know, I always match them if at all possible, but I actually chose similar but not matching suits and they wanted their suits to be exactly the same. If they had it my size I'd be all over it because they are so cute. The girls really enjoyed the dressing room experience at Target...and hopefully all the other customers within a 50 yard radius enjoyed it too. At least it wasn't me trying on clothes this time, because if the girls are with me in a dressing room they make the most embarrassing comments as loud as possible...it's never a good feeling to hear people in other dressing rooms giggle while your trying on dresses/bathing suits/pants...you get the idea.
good: We only have three more days til we go to the beach...woo hoo! Move over people, I've got a shovel and a pail and I know how to use them!
good: My wonderful, mostly patient, perfectionist of a husband painted the bathroom over the weekend. Oh man, it is so pretty. He let me choose the color...periwinkle. I absolutely love it. I have to paint the trim, but that will happen after our vacation and I promise to try to be a perfectionist just like him. Now I just need to come up with a fabulous word to put on the wall. You know, like those cute wall art things like "family" or "love", but I need a great word for my bathroom.
Okay, now here's the bad news.
bad: We had a frost warning last night. Seriously people, May starts tomorrow, why is it so cold? I'm so glad I haven't planted my tomatoes yet. I hope our sunflowers survived the night...I'll check on them when we leave to go to the library.
bad: Our Walmart is eliminating the fabric department :o( It just doesn't make sense to me. We have no Piece Goods anymore, we have no Rainbow Bay Crafts and Fabrics anymore, we've never had a Hancock Fabrics. Now all we have left is Joann Fabrics (which is fabulous, but not always affordable) and two specialty quilting fabric stores (also fabulous in selection, but not price, not at all price). I guess I'll have to use up the material that I already have before I can justify purchasing any more.

Well, I am glad to say that the good certainly outweighs the bad.
The sun is shining so it should warm up, and at this very moment my girls are playing nicely together. Miss E is making Miss O into a pizza. What? Ever read the book Pete's a Pizza? It's really cute and that would explain the rolling of the dough and the game pieces as pepperonis. How fun!

perfectly pretty pictographs

Thanks again to everyone who told us your favorite fruit, whether through email or comments on the blog. Miss O was excited to see each and every response. Before we made our pictograph about favorite fruits we made one about families. (Thanks Heather for that idea!) Miss O chose the families and told me how many children were in each one. I wrote the names and amounts so she could use that info to create the graph. I found a cute baby graphic to represent each child in each family. Doing this really helped her grasp the concept...and it was fun!











Putting it together...the finished product!





Okay....here's what you've been waiting for.

The Favorite Fruits Pictograph

Step One: gather all data and materials needed

Step Two: use data to create perfectly pretty pictograph


Step Three: admire beautiful creation...using stickers makes it even more fun!

Step Four: application skills - use graph information to answer questions

We're now ready to enjoy the weekend and we hope you do, too. Please leave a comment so we can see how many people checked out our perfectly pretty pictographs. I'm sure we'll be making more soon because it was *so* fun!

say hello to my little friends

What a wonderful, warm day we had yesterday. It was laundry day, and as you know by now, when it's warm and sunny I really enjoy laundry day. It's the whole clothesline thing...go ahead call me crazy. Anyway, since we were outside for most of the day we found our first caterpillars!Yippee! Aren't they cute? Miss O named hers Princess, Miss E named hers Fluffy. They had such fun with the caterpillars. Thankfully we have a bug jar to keep them in and as the day progressed they found more...so I think we have 7 or 8 now. Miss O thought they might want to have fun instead of just sitting in the bug jar, so she made a caterpillar playground out of sticks for them. They seemed to enjoy it :o)

There will be more to come. We'll be working on our pictographs today. Thanks to all who told us your favorite fruits. We have lots of data to work with. So now I'm off to have more fun with graphing! It's not just the math teacher in me that thinks graphing is fun. Really! You should try it again...I mean really, when was the last time you made a graph? Go ahead, choose a topic, collect some data, then create your graph. It'll be fun!

thankful thursday

But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. - 2 Corinthians 2:14




one - sandbox weather! it's good practice for the beach...only 9 days to go!




two - blooming azaleas, my favorite part of spring










three - cute little socks...and the little pink piggies that fill them

library fun

Well, we went to the library today for storytime. It is something that we look forward to each week. As I mentioned before, we really do have the best children's librarians in the world. Right before we walked out the door though, my dear friend Theresa called and asked us to meet her and her four little ones at the neighborhood park after storytime. Oh, what a great time we had. FYI:Play dates are just as important and fun for the mom as they are for the kids. We haven't been able to play with these friends since before Christmas. I know, it's so crazy! If my kids were sick, hers were healthy, and if mine were healthy, hers were sick. And so it went week after week. Finally, a nice warm day and six healthy kids between us...I just wish I had taken my camera. I need to just keep it with me all the time. I'll need a bigger cute purse...oohhh, shopping time---or maybe a smaller camera....hmmmm. Decisions Decisions.



Anyway, back to the library stuff. Sometimes I do things that are a little crazy, I know it's hard to imagine, but it's in the genes. I usually have a pretty good *and* logical reason for my craziness, so it's okay. Let me explain...every time we go to the library and get a whole new mountain of books I always lay them out and spray them, front and back, with Lysol. Yes, to kill the germs. I love our library, but they can't control how many snot-faced, germ-spewing kids come in and touch, cough on, and sneeze on the books. So before the girls can curl up with a pile of new books I spray them. Here's what it looks like.
Go ahead, call me crazy. No really, go ahead, I don't mind, I can't hear you through the blog page. Okay so my logic is...kill the germs now and avoid the next cold, virus, flu, etc. I think it works pretty good...and besides it can't hurt, right?

we've been busy

We had a play date yesterday. What fun! Since it was raining *again* we stayed inside to play. We did a spring flower craft so we would remember to be thankful for the rain, ya know...April showers bring May flowers. Okay, so I was the one that needed to remember to be thankful for the rain. Rainy days make for long days sometimes, but we had lots of fun.
Between the days of rain we had some really nice warm days to play outside. Bubbles are so fun. If you haven't purchased any bubbles in a while, you should, it really is fun. Thanks Aunt Mel :o) It's just the beginning of bubble fun for us this season, but Miss O is mastering her skills in bubble blowing.



Miss O: Hey mom, I've been practicing. Now I'm a Bubble Master!


me: Great! but, what's a Bubble Master?


Miss O: It's like being a Jedi Master, but with bubbles. I'm like Yoda, but instead of having a light sabre I have a bubble wand.

Welcome to my world! May the force be with you!




Oh, and speaking of Star Wars, if you get a letter from me with a big Yoda stamp on it...let me explain. I took the girls with me to the post office to buy more stamps and, low and behold, there are Star Wars stamps! Who knew? My girls were so excited to see Yoda stamps that I had to get them, but I don't think the post office lady had ever seen such excitement over stamps before. Hopefully, we brightened her day. Who doesn't love Yoda, right? Or as Yoda would say "Who loves Yoda not? Yes, hmmm.

Alright, I confess, I am not the coolest person in the world. Surprised? Not really, huh? I do enjoy some good ol' Yoda and the girls (and I) enjoy trying to figure out how Yoda would say things since he seems to say everything rearranged. Well, I just found a website to make my life easier when it comes to translating things into Yoda language. It's called YodaSpeak. You should go there and try it...it's fun! Really it is...go ahead, I won't tell anyone.

Going to the library, today we are. Yessssss.

apronista...you know you want one

The Apronista: Flirty Apron Giveaway!
I came across another apron giveaway at a blog call Apronista. This apron is more for the kitchen than for crafting/sewing. Here's the one I liked the most...Classy Pink. So cute. Go ahead and enter the contest, you know you want to!

craft apron

I found another blog called Itching 2 B Stitching. She is overflowing with crafty sewing talent. She just got her first dress form, and as tradition goes, she needs to give her a name. So, she is having a contest called "Give the Girl a Name." Go ahead over there and check it out, enter a name. It couldn't hurt, right? And she will make the winner a super cute craft apron of their very own. What fun! Her apron is really cute. I know you would love a cute little craft/seamstress apron...go ahead, give the girl a name!

fun with bar graphs, you heard me...fun!

I found a great book at the library on the "new books" shelf. I love that shelf because everything is shiny, crispy, and new. (Go ahead, roll your eyes, I know I'm a little nutty when it comes to books) Anyway, the book is called Bar Graphs by Vijaya Khisty Bodach. It is part of an early elementary math series. I *love* it and will be searching for the other books in the series on our next trip to the library. It has great explanations and pictures. Graphing is always a little fun, but seeing pictures of graphs that other kids made is "kinda cool", according to Miss O. Needless to say, we *had* to make a graph. Well, it was so warm yesterday that we decided to make a bar graph outside.

one - choosing our topic

two - gathering the data
three - graphing the data
four - the finished bar graph

See, making graphs *is* fun! Pictographs are next!

We are going to make a pictograph about "favorite fruits" so please leave a comment to tell us what your favorite fruit is out of the following choices...bananas, oranges, blueberries, strawberries, apples, or grapes.

thankful thursday

Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. - Psalm 95:2

one - the best librarians in the whole world...really, we have the best ones. The girls love their storytime group every week. One of the librarians just had surgery and will be out for a few weeks, we will miss her. Please keep her in your prayers.
two - our beautiful flowers...the tulips are nice, too!
three - centrifical force...it's what keeps the girls safe during their weekly ritual with Grandma and Pop. I'll try to find and include the song that is sung during this ritual so you can get the full effect.

some girls *want* big lips

As you all know, Miss E is allergic to peanuts. No, she hasn't actually been tested at the doctor's office, but one trip to the ER is enough for me to know. Since last summer's scary allergic reaction there hasn't been one peanut-y substance within a hundred feet of my house. All has been going well. No more hives, no more swelled, red lips, no more scares. I am so thankful for her continued good health. It is not always pleasant to be the "crazy lady" reading every single ingredient on the label of almost every single item placed in the grocery basket, but it is a small price to pay for the health and safety of my girls.
All of that to say, I had a great coupon for a new marinade that is Mexican chili & lime (which is one of my favorite flavors on tortilla chips thanks to Archer Farms at Target). Oh, so yummy. Anyway, I got the super yummy marinade to make a new chicken dish. Everyone liked it, yes, even Miss O. Half way through the meal though Miss E's lips started to get red and swell. Just the sight of her big lips makes my stomach hurt. I immediately read and reread the label. Nothing questionable; I gave her some Benadryl anyway, just in case. She's fine. No more big lips. Benadryl-don't be home or leave home without it. I am guessing that the chili powder in the marinade may have caused it since she is a lip-licker while she's eating.
Just a day in our life!

"footprints at the beach" and "flowery meadow"

frost & freeze warning, really???

Okay, people...I am *so* ready for warm weather. Why is it cold again? It's the middle of April already, what's the hold-up? My poor little clothesline is lonely and unadorned right now because I am using the dryer. Yes, you heard me, the dryer. Believe me, it's not by choice.
I did remember, however, to bring in our sprouting sunflowers last night so they are soaking in the sun through the kitchen window. I hope this is the last cold weather because the girls are ready to plant the sunflowers outside. We can't wait to see how big they get. Miss E got to choose the seeds and she chose Mammoth Russian Sunflowers. I'm not trying to be funny, they are called Mammoth...they should reach 8 - 12 feet when fully grown. She's got a *big* personality, so these are just the right flowers for her. Believe me, we will have fun measuring their growth as the spring and summer weeks go by. We've also started some seeds that we had leftover from last summer called Evening Sun Sunflowers. They are so pretty on the seed packet, so I sure hope they survive this year. They should only reach a measly 6 feet when fully grown.
Would you like to see the beginnings of our sunflowers? Maybe it will help you to think warm thoughts.

Don't put that warm blanket away yet, it's supposed to be in the 20's tonight...brrrr
Just so you know, I am thankful that the sun is shining. We were getting tired of the dark,rainy days. At least when the sun is shining we can *pretend* that it's warm outside. *think warm*think warm*think warm*

happy birthday sam!

Now you're 10...have a great day!

cutie pies

I am loving these pictures so I had to share them.

Aahhh! The weather is so nice right now. We are really enjoying it before the next (and hopefully last) wave of cold temperatures roll through the area. We met some friends at the neighborhood playground this morning and had a lot of fun.

Only 22 days til we go to the beach...WOO HOO!!! Oh, the things to get done before then...

1. get the girls new bathing suits....they already grew out of last years suits

2. get myself a new bathing suit, oh wait, that would involve trying on bathing suits...eewwww:o{

3. lose 20 pounds ... Okay, I know that's not going to happen, but a girl can dream, right?

Let's see, number one is a piece of cake, consider it done. Oohhh cake, mmmmm! *resist the cake*resist the cake* See, that wasn't so difficult, easy as a pie really. Mmmmm pie! STOP! No more sweet talk, I only have 22 days.

Here's a cute picture of the girls from last year's trip to the beach.

thankful thursday

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name; make known His deeds among the peoples. - I Chronicles 16:8

one - the sun is shining again...and it's warm :o)

two - playdates (they're fun for the moms, too)

three - the sunflower seeds we planted have finally sprouted...yippee!

Shout to the Lord

Last night as I watched American Idol I was shocked yet wonderfully surprised to hear the final song of the night. They actually sang "Shout to the Lord!" Of course they had to take out the name of Jesus and put in Shepherd, but still...live TV, one of the most watched shows out there, and they sang about our glorious God for the world to hear. "Shout to the Lord" was the first hula I learned on Moloka'i so I have always loved this song. Here it is if you missed it...enjoy

new (to me) music..and a little math

We rented the movie "Dan in Real Life". Loved it! Also loved the music in it. I had to find out who it was. Well, here is a song from the movie by Sondre Lerche, from Norway. I found this mixtape site being used on another blog that I love - Pink Paper Peppermints - so I had to try it.

I love the cassette tape. How cool is that? Takes me back to middle school (okay, maybe high school), how about you?

~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~

I made some math manipulatives for the girls. Little Miss O is practicing her addition facts and flash cards aren't really her thing. I thought I'd try something new and if it works (so far so good) I'll continue on with this set, adding more as we progress. Here's a picture of her practicing her addition facts for 5, 6, and 7. What a smart little whipper-snapper! She's got Daddy's brain!


Little Miss E had to have her own schoolwork, too. She is working on counting objects from 1-10 and recognizing the numerals and number words. She'll be 3 at the end of May so she's doing pretty well. When Miss O is the teacher's helper Miss E does all 10 numbers, but when working alone she works on 1-5. I made counters with some of my cute buttons (sewn onto pieces of felt) because the girls love digging in my button box. They turned out cute, although it was difficult to use so many of my buttons. I made a few other types of counters so she can have a variety, but the buttons remain the favorite:o)


Here is a picture of the button-y goodness!

sew sad

Okay, I have had this pattern for a really cute skirt cut out and ready to go since last summer. Pathetic, I know. Well, I finally decided to sew it so I can have a new skirt to wear when it gets warm enough. Here comes the sad part :o( I assembled the main pieces then my machine, my good old wonderful Singer, given to me by my grandma after I got married, started doing crazy things. The tension (of the thread, not my personal tension)is all out of whack. I did all the tricks that I know and it worked for a few minutes (yippee) then it got all loopy again. I think I'll have to take her in for a check-up, a lube job, a tune-up, whatever you want to call it. Anyway, I am hoping that a good cleansing will do her some good and she'll keep on working. Meanwhile, I'll be Singer-less. I don't really like the sound of that, but I'll try to be strong. Maybe I'll break out the Hawaiian hand-quilting bag for a while. I still have one of those in the works. I'll have to post a picture of the Hawaiian quilts later. But here is my cute little pink Singer..isn't she cute?! And that's my Grandma (who gave me my Singer) and Pop pop. They're cute, too!

oh man, this was good!

Okay, so I am not the best cook in the world. I am trying though and last night's dinner proves it. My husband really loves Chinese food so I found a fabulous gluten-free recipe for Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry on RecipeZaar.com. I know, it doesn't sound that complicated, but I wanted it to be as close to the real deal as possible. It actually tasted pretty good....even Little Miss O and Little Miss E liked it....of course using chopsticks made it a little more fun!









Can you smell that? Yummy!



Meanwhile, while I was cooking these little monkeys were hangin' around!!!