tie some on!

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Dish towel aprons–I just couldn’t resist. My kids needed some art aprons, I needed something to keep dinner off my pants (even though my shirt is usually covered in baby snot), and Martha dish towels were on super clearance at K-mart, so the price was right. Aprons for all! (Well, 3 aprons and a bib.)

Amy has a monthly party at her blog dedicated to aprons

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and this month’s assignment was so easy I had to join.

It has been a busy week. Well, it has seemed busy, I guess, but come to think of it, there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary to do. I just felt busy. I think because I was sick. I had a fever on Wednesday, felt yucky all day yesterday and had to go grocery shopping anyway, didn’t sleep a wink until about 4:00 this morning, and I’m trying to wean Logan–once a day would be good. That’s why I didn’t sleep last night. My teeth hurt, my nose was stuffy (so I had to breath with my mouth open which made the metal/ rubberband contraptions in my mouth that much more uncomfortable), my throat hurt, my ears ached, I had horrible menstrual cramps, AND I hadn’t nursed a baby since nap time early that afternoon and consequently couldn’t lay on either side or move my arms. Blissful? 800 mg of ibuprofen helped once I reached the point of desperation.

Funny things:

We had a “Girl’s Night Out” craft night at church last night–just bring something to do and sit and gab. I got home a little after ten and as I was heaping my load onto the counter I looked in Ellie’s food bowl right there under the counter. It was FULL of rabbit food. Was there a reason for this? I went and nudge Barry to ask about it and he just grunted. I was grinning so hard that I just broke out laughing. Silly, silly.

Barry did the obstacle course with his group yesterday for PT–you know, climbing walls, jumping logs, balance beams and ropes. Well, he was very proud of his monkey bar performance. I guess he was the only one to make it all the way across–and he even did a “skin the cat” to get off at the end. Now, you know who’s been practicing at the playground!

Oh, the wonders of Kool-Aid

I’ve been working on my Back Tack II project. My buddy has expressed some interest in rug hooking, so I’m making her a bag of rug hooking goodies. I went to buy some wool fabric so that I could hook a little rug-patch to decorate the outside of her bag, but fabric is just way too expensive! I decided I’d buy some unwashed, undyed wool and give kool-aid dying it a try. After all, it works great on my handspun yarn and handmade felt.

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And it worked great here too! I wanted a good pink to match some of the flowers on the lining of the bag (to be unveiled as soon as my little rug decoration is done), so a mix of strawberry, orange, and a little graped did the job beautifully! I also overdyed some green wool to give it a little more depth and it turned out great too.

Kool-aid is great for penny pinchers like me!

who knew?

I learned something at the library today (amid the wielding of too many very heavy books and trying to heave them into the book drop before Logan did too much damage to the public copy machine–after which I strapped him into the stroller so that his path of distruction was only as far as his arms could reach, which is surprisingly far, but I digress).

September is:

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which is nearly over, but hey, sewing is good– and it has a month. Who knew?

For more info check out www.sewing.org

our homeschool

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We started school almost 3 weeks ago now. I subscribe to the “kids should not be taught like little adults” philosophy, but am trying to find a happy medium between total unschooling and playing sergeant mom. We start the morning with a song and a prayer, say the pledge of alegiance (mostly because Jonah thinks it is way cool), then check the calendar and the weather. I try to work in some phonics for Jonah and started 1st grade Saxon math with Brenna. Both of them love the math–we stack and count legos and color pictures and count on a 1-100 counting chart. Then Brenna reads and reads. She’s also been listening to books on CD. I had to take The Land of Oz back before it was due because we all had it memorized. She was listening 24/7. I’ve been trying to read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (book 5 in the Chronicles of Narnia) with her, but she gets impatient with my limited amount of reading time and reads ahead. Oh well. I’m certainly not going to complain about my 5 year old reading novels, but it is kind of sad that she doesn’t need me anymore. I’m not the only one with magic reading powers.

We’re also dabbling with history, hence the family tree. This has taken 3 weeks for her to make. I’m glad it’s done so we can be archeologists and dig in the sand box!

Here’s a close up:

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