Steve is s0 c00l!

New ni ni!

Playing w0nder penguin w gibs0ns class!

Rooster boy

That is what my friend Ali calls him. But I LOVE this school picture! so Cute!!! Obviously taken before the HAIR cutting shenanigans, posted previously....

TEA-cher gift!

I have been making these things for years, so if you have seen them before I am sorry, but I thought I would share in case someone needs that last minute creative-looking gift. I totally cheated last minute with this one, but I usually double mat, stamp the messages and decorate with stamps and layers of paper and what have you. these were for Gibson's Primary teachers at church, so I wanted it more personal and had him put the pictures in!I KNOW you can figure it out- each takes 1/3 piece of card stock (cut on the long side- approx. 2 3/4 in), and a sheet of typing paper for the inner wallet. Half the typing paper (longways- 5 1/2 inches each), then lightly crease these in half again. Bring both edges to the crease and tape. slide in your four tea bags. I sometimes use a gift card for on of the pockets. fold them together so you know where to trim- when the tea bags are in, they are really puffy.

Make your front "plaque" and glue it over ribbon that goes all the way around and has room for a tie. pierce the inner wallets and cover so that you can string a small cord on the "binding" to hold the wallet together. Tie honey sticks in the ribbon for the "sweet" part. I have collected several "Tea" variations and have used these from Bridal showers on down! Good Luck! If you have questions, ask, or call!

Giving Thanks.

We were invited to my Sister in Law's family for Thanksgiving. There home was lovely and the food and company could NOT be beat! It was so fun to see the cousins playing together, and there was even a kid's table! Gibson did much eye-rolling and monitoring (read- tattling) to make sure we knew he was the big, responsible one of the group!! He got to beat uncle John later at Wii Boxing (go figure), and one of the highlights was the elevator at their house!!! I loved that we got a family shot, but getting kids to all look cute in the same direction is always impossible!!!!

In another sweet moment, while we were at my Mother-in-law's that weekend, we were getting some stuff out of her attic and Gibson found this model that was Derick's first one, that he had saved up for an entire summer to buy and then built. It was falling apart, covered with dust and was originally put together with Elmer's glue (not model quality at ALL!) but Gibson loved it and Derick was so touched to see him going gaa-gaa over it. Gibson got to play with it while we were there, and then we took a few pictures, and then Gibson could pull off the parts he wanted to keep, and then the old ship was relegated to Davy Jones' locker, via the garbage.....

Fishy.

Ever since I made the sweater for Delaney, Gibson has been begging me for a sweater with a fish on it. I have TRIED to find something that will work, but I don't think this is it! I am disappointed too, because it is an angelfish which has special significance to me and Gibson! I whipped this dishrag out in about an hour and a half, and gave it to a lady I visit teach. I was hoping that maybe with a darker color of yarn the contrast would show up more?? but I am afraid to invest in a WHOLE sweater and it not work out! Any ideas or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

The Write stuff!

In November, Gibson's class had a publishing party where the kids got to read to us the stories that they have been writing and illustrating! Gibson is just exploding with writing and reading these last two months!! It is so exciting to see! Gibson's stories included ones of us decorating for Halloween, playing inthe crawl space, and one about finding a bat in the attic- which is fiction- for now!

The Master at work

More photos of my Famb-ily and more money gone, but well spent. Michelle Wasden is a gifted and talented pho-tog, even though my children are SOO beautiful it CAN'T be that hard to get a good picture (LOL!)-personal brag moment- I knitted the purple sweater Delaney has on!!!!

The week before the family photoshoot (we usually do two- one of just the kids, and one of the whole family) was me and Derick's ELEVENTH anniversary, and we just couldn't help doing some goofy shots to capture that.

Six year old stunts

Everyone says-all kids cut their hair. But in November, Gibson was on a cutting kick, not to mention some deranged hate, lashing out, destructo rampage. I think the worst is over, but here is the funny part of the damage inflicted by the scissor-weilding psycho:

His own style....The resulting haircut to clean up his own style....

and for the not so fun moment- the hole gauged in the wall in a fit of who knows what with the same scissors- that really, he has LIMITED access to! Really, I swear!

I'm Leaf-ing!

So for the first day of winter, I thought I might get around to posting about our fall. We always have a TON of leaves, and our next door neighbor always has a Spotless yard, riding his lawnmower to get the pesky suckers at least every other day. We have no riding lawnmower and Derick could careless about the leaves on our or our neighbor's yard- regardless if it kills our grass, because Derick really doesn't care much about that either... so you can guess how mortified I was and how mortified our neighbor's wife was when she called to ask us when we were gonna rake our leaves because her husband was upset because they were blowing onto his lawn.

We kinda hemmed and hawed a bit, but we got to it one Saturday, and guess what? it was the most blustery, windy, close to tornado weather ever. we would rake , pile and shove, and it would blow right back. AND THEN another gust would come up and blow it directly into our neighbor's yard. This went on for HOURS. I was singing "Don Quixote" for about two of those hours because everything we did just seemed so pointless. In these pictures you can actually see the line of demarcation of where our leaves- I mean lawn- stops and theirs starts.

oh, btw- our leaf blower wouldn't EVEN start for us- not like that day it woulda helped anyway against the gale-force winds, and our children were good for about 2 swipes with the special kid rakes I bought them (they were BEGGING to rake with us, pleading, taking the rakes our of our very hands!!!) and were back in the house yelling for drinks, movies and what have you every 10 minutes!!!

Delaney states what she wants for breakfast and Christmas

Delaney is a slave to her brother. Just today he was really pushing her around (physically AND mentally) and he apologized after literally biting a hole in her finger and we had yelled at him, and she throws her arms around him and gives him a huge squeeze- complete with little grunting squeeze sound. So when she strikes out on her own, especially when he is around, it is usually very funny.

The first example comes from a hot-mess breakfast where between Brooke, Delaney and Gibson there were over 7 bowls of cereal in different ranges of eaten-ness because if one kid had a cereal, the other HAD to have it even if they hate it and so on. This also included Brooke insisting on Chocolate milk because it is all Delaney drinks, and Brooke literally doing this little gag every time she forced herself to take a sip, and included all drinks being in baby bottles, because Delaney saw that Brooke used a bottle at night! SO you see how the Monkey-see, Monkey-do thing was in FULL effect! I just couldn't take it anymore- we were wasting food and messing up dishes left and right, not to mention the nourishment the girls were NO getting, so I gave a lecture/speech/impassioned plea for everyone to just choose what they wanted to eat based upon what THEY liked and not what ANYONE else had, and that it is OK to eat what you WANT and not what anyone else wants and could you please tell us what you want to eat so we can move on to the rest of our day?????

Laney boldly and loudly states "I want a cupcake. Mommy, I wanna eat a cupcake. Mommy, I want a cupcake for breakfast."

So yes, she listened and she responded, and she totally got us.

The second was really cute. Our family is happily (HA!) driving to church on a Sunday afternoon. Gibson is on a gimme kick like crazy for Christmas, and I am trying to emphasize GIVING as he told me yet a MILLIONTH thing to add to his Christmas list, so I asked him if he had thought about what to get Delaney for Christmas. He repeats the question, and starts to think (complete with hum-ming and and um-ing) and from the back seat we hear a perfect stage whisper of "Diamond Castle, Gibson" "Barbie Diamond castle" "Gibson- Barbie Diamond Castle"

We CRACKED up. She not only can grasp what we are talking about, she knows when to assert just what SHE wants!!! How helpful!

The above picture of Brooke and Delaney also has a cute story- They took Gibson to the school bus stop and Brooke was SOOOO excited to know someone who was actually going to go ON a school bus. So they were excited to see him getting out of the car to get on the school bus and then get on the school bus. BUT! the doors shut and the bus drove away. AND Gibson was still on it!

Brooke began to panic and sob-"MY GIBSON! NO my GIBSON! Go get him mommy! Go get him back!" and proceeded to be sad for about 10 minutes that he was gone. Guess you gotta be careful what you wish for!!

Aunt Alices c0ncert- sim Shalom w cant0r wh0 is the s0n 0f Hal0caust surviv0rs. Beautiful!

This was really funny whn he rand0mly said it! Ths was a reenactment.

@ nutcracker! S0 cute!

Stuff on my mind.

I have been considering all my stuff. CLUTTER. I am the queen of it. but it is really funny since I proclaim to be such a 2nd hand person, and tree hugger. I don't use plastic bags anymore, have streamlined GIbson's lunches in to all reusable stuff, yet IT still piles up in my house and my life, and My mind. My girlfriend gave me a book about clutter and their answer is throw it out, but I just feel terrible about that and usually send stuff to thrift stores or freecycle or stuff, and then I got a link to this project (click the banner above). It is a 20 minute movie, but can be easily watched a segment at a time and is simple enough for anyone to understand, and it is really cool. so check it out, and see if you start looking at your stuff differently!