Wrapping up our Christmas break

I scheduled the whole week following New Year's as a week off from school, with designs on getting the house scrubbed, my desk sorted and reorganized, and several other organization projects accomplished...but we spent it sick instead!  Oh well, at least we had the week off and could curl up under blankets with our books, without the stress of getting behind in school!  Here are a few "odds and ends" pictures...

The kids and I squeezed in time before Christmas for a refreshing visit with Karen and Noah.  She surprised them with supplies to make gingerbread Christmas trees and they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

 While my parents were here, my mom and I made new flannel pajamas for me.  Well, we started making them together...and as the day progressed, I came down with THE VIRUS and ended up napping while my mom finished the pjs...moms are wonderful!  I was so happy to have comfy new pajamas to wear while I was sick. :)  

 A little backstory on these...they are now affectionately known as my "Big Browns".  The original pair of pajamas from this same pattern was a pair my mom made for me when I was a teenager, and when I wore them, my brothers called me Big Green.  The name stuck and eventually we referred to the pajamas as their own personage -- Big Greens.  That pair wore out eventually and the replacement was another pair in the same exact fabric.  Those wore out a couple of years ago and I just finally got around to replacing them with this pair...and so the joy lives on!  I've missed them!

When we weren't on the couch reading and watching movies, we did some puzzles...

 ...and took our medicine. :)  This is David doing his nebulizer for the pneumonia/asthma he is currently battling.

 Pictures are -- quite understandably, I should think -- lacking from this last week.  We weren't pretty sights!  Here is a cute picture I stole from my mom's blog, though, of Abigail and Samantha in the matching nightgowns my mom made for them.  Abigail is still not over the excitement of matching her doll at bedtime every night!

 (My mom has a great recap of our Christmas together here.)

We're still nowhere near 100%, but we are back to school today, albeit it at a slower pace than normal.

Despite the change in plans, we still enjoyed our time off...after all, "home" and "together" makes any time off a good thing!

Lavender sachet project

This past weekend I made a lavender sachet for a friend for whom I needed a small gift. I used some linen recycled from a pair of capris that I had made for myself but intensely disliked, embroidered the small flower on the front, filled it with dried lavender, sewed it shut, and frayed the edges. I like this result much better than the original result from this fabric!!!

My surgery and recuperation-weekend

Well, we had Wednesday to enjoy with my parents before my surgery on Thursday. My mom and I used the time to take apart my Viking sewing machine and tweak a part that wasn't working right. My mother is very brave...I wouldn't have attempted this on my own...but once we got started, it was fascinating and fun to see the "guts"! ...and the machine is fixed, now, too, which is a nice bonus. :)My mother also encouraged me to use the nervous energy I had to accomplish something useful...so I finished a quilt top (all but the borders). (Sorry for the dumb picture, but it's not ready for its unveiling yet...this is just proof that I did something!)The surgery went well. They didn't find the endometriosis we were expecting, which is both good and bad news. More on that after my post-op appt in a couple of weeks, when we have a game plan again. My recovery was certainly helped by my parents being here to help run the show (...thanks, Dad and Mom!), and Bruce has taken over nicely today. It was also nice to have snuggles from my kiddos...well, the gentle snuggles were nice, at least. :) Below is a picture of one of those nice snuggles on Thursday night -- sorry I look so ridiculous in it, but I'd just had surgery a few hours before and I was drugged up and worn out! David fell asleep hugging me like this. I was also entertained by the animals. My cat goes into hiding when my mom brings her cats, but my mom's kitten Nyki discovered the joy of a heating pad and so she sat with me a few times. When Nyki wasn't sleeping, trying valiantly to figure out how to taste the goldfish, or otherwise entertaining us, she was busy bullying our wussy-dog. All she had to do was look at him and do this funny machine-gun-spit noise and the dog cowered. When Nyki really needed some fun, she'd meander near the dog's bed while he tried to shrink and disappear. It was great entertainment for the rest of us! And I've actually accomplished something while I've been recovering...in the crafting world, this is referred to as a "UFO" -- an UnFinished Object. I sewed and quilted it this past autumn but never got the binding sewn on, so it had been unceremoniously stuffed in the UFO pile. I'm not usually very good at going back and finishing UFOs, but this was a perfect opportunity and I took advantage of it. Now this table runner is finished and will be tucked away, ready to be a new and exciting decoration this fall! I'm feeling okay now, although still very sore -- rather like a big, strong man punched me in the stomach -- but I'm hoping to wake up in the morning feeling almost normal...after all, it's the beginning of a new week and I have the world to conquer! :)

Abigail's birthday daytime

We had lots of fun together on Abigail's birthday. We played games, read lots of books while sitting outside on the swing enjoying the beautiful weather, made jewelry (see her bracelets?)......I walked and the kids rode bikes -- doesn't she look like such a big girl on her new bike? She especially loves the water bottle. :)

Our first gingerbread house

For art class on Friday (which was our last day of school before Christmas vacation!), we made a gingerbread house. We all had lots of fun, ate too much frosting, and ended up with a lovely little house.

Christmas cheer inside and out

Yesterday's prep work... Today's accomplishments... A felt Nativity for the kids to play with and tell the story of Christ's birth. My mom made one of these when my brothers and I were young, and I always loved to play with it. She bequeathed the pattern to me and I started this set three or so years ago...but here it is, finished, and while my kids are still young enough to enjoy it! Well, almost finished...it needs some ground for everyone to stand on, but I don't have enough of the brown that I want, so that'll be added next time I go to the store. (It also needs a better hanging system, but packing tape worked for the picture!) I finally put up the outside Christmas lights today. The first year we were here in Georgia, I was putting up the lights wearing only jeans and a sweatshirt -- with the sleeves pushed up -- and I was reflecting on the year that I put up lights on our house in Chicago when it was bitterly cold and sleeting and my hands were frozen stiff. Upon that reflection, I told myself that I would never complain about "cold" again. But...it's been cold down here this year, so I've been putting off this up-on-a-ladder-in-the-wind job! Nonetheless, it's done now. Phew. (...and there was no sleet to contend with, thankfully.) Bruce has been working on making his annual batch of Banket, an absolutely delectable Dutch pastry filled with almond paste. He makes it from scratch, and although it's rather labor-intensive, I deem all of his hard work well worth it. It's good stuff!

Catching up!

Yes, I am fully aware of how behind I am on posting. This past week was so crazy...I am trying to figure out how to balance doing school all morning and then get everything else done in the afternoon. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for all of the afternoon appointments we've had! Unfortunately, the blog is rather far down on the priority list when life is this busy. Oh well...I'll figure it out eventually (I hope!), and in the meantime, here is a "potluck post" to catch you up on some of our doings this week...

Here is Abigail wearing one of the hairthings I made for her. (This picture was at a playground that we stopped at for a few minutes between appointments.)

Remember the post we did of David getting new ear molds made? Well, this is Abigail getting hers made. She has made up her mind that it is an awful thing and therefore carries on dramatically while they're being done. Poor RaDora has to be the bad guy...she tries to make it less stressful for Abigail by doing things like letting Abigail help make ear molds for her baby doll first...but Abigail will have none of it. Hopefully she'll grow out of the phobia completely very soon (at least we have improved from two sets ago, when I had to literally hold her whole body in a wrestling-grip to hold her still while she screamed hysterically...). As you can see from two of the pictures, once she gets distracted, she has fun and forgets that she's trying to be a drama queen...

Here is a picture of the kids hard at work on their schoolwork...

Here is a picture of my dining room taken over by sewing paraphernalia, at least for a few hours. My mom (in Florida), grandma and great-aunt (in NY), my friend Jessica (FL), and I (in GA) are all sewing blocks for a quilt to be assembled and sent to a sick, wounded, or rehabbing soldier in a military hospital in Washington state. My mom designed the quilt, then selected, bought, and sent the specific fabrics to each of us to use (we wanted there to be harmony despite the many sewing hands!), so all we have to do is sew the blocks according to our instructions and then send them back to my mom, who will assemble them and quilt it. I have half of my blocks done so far (you can see the quilt design on the paper on the lower right hand side of the picture)...

My in-laws came to spend the weekend with us before they head back home to N.C. (they have been at my brother-in-law's house holding down the fort for the past seventeen weeks while my sister-in-law was on bedrest/in the hospital). It has been really nice to spend time with them...I am very blessed to have in-laws who are truly like a second set of parents to me and so it is always a joy to have a visit from them! And of course, the kids always love to have grandparents here...yesterday we went to the pool for a while, where Grandma hung out with Abigail and Grandpa taught David to play Marco Polo.

Last days of summer fun part 2

...yesterday the kids and I spent the morning playing together (below is when I was the doctor and they were the [very dramatic] patients)......and then when the kids started to ignore me, I got to try out an idea that has been brewing for a month or so. It's nice when something turns out the way it looks in my mind! These are some hair things for Abigail; I used some tools I borrowed from my mom (I can't remember what they're called!) and some ribbon...In the meantime, I let the kids have the somewhat-rare pleasure of tearing all of the cushions and pillows off of the couches and turning them into adventures -- today it was many things: a mountain, a fort, a boat, a horse-drawn wagon, a jail, etc...


















I also did more organizing of our school area (at the kitchen table -- there's no picture to share yet because some of my stuff is still spread out on the table for further review!) and did a quick kitchen cleanup. By the time I finished that, the kids were ready for lunch and pool, so we changed out of our pajamas (sorry, Jessica, but it's a treat for us!), packed a picnic lunch, and headed down to the pool, where we stayed until almost five o'clock.

We ended the evening with pizza, Daddy-time, and watching Tom & Jerry...
and the last weekday of our summer vacation drew to a close...

Valentine wreath

Here is a craft I did last month...although I'm just getting around to posting it! A few years ago, Bruce gave me a tin of Mrs. Field's chocolates for Valentine's Day (they were very good, especially the chocolate chip cookie dough one!).




Sometimes something just inspires me, and this tin was one of those things. I immediately envisioned it filled it with silk roses and hanging on my front door, so after I ate the chocolates, I set aside the tin...and finally got around to embellishing it this year!