Archive - 2008

Enjoying the Season

Sorry I’ve been absent again, but I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the season.  Our house is decorated and the last of the presents are on their way.  Pumpkin Girl finished up her first piano book and I’ve been relearning all the Christmas carols I used to know.  Did I ever mention that I was once hired to play Christmas carols at a party?  Best paying job I ever had!  These days though, I play to a smaller, more adoring audience who accompany me with various and sundry percussion instruments.

Yesterday we went on behind the scenes tour of the BX (yes, after 3 years of living on an air force base I’m finally calling it the BX).  The best part?  The gift bags and pizza and drinks they gave us at the end!  Then later we went to church for the feast of the Immaculate Conception.  As on all Marian feasts, we sang “Hail Mary, Gentle Woman” which is Bip’s favorite.  He knows more of the words than he knew in August and he sang out loud and in clear in his sweet toddler voice.  It made up for him being quite the turkey during the readings earlier.

Speaking of Mary, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is on Friday.  In honor of the occassion, our homeschool group made God’s Eye ornaments.  I put a tutorial for these really easy ornaments on the Homeschool Classroom today: Quick Christmas Ornament.

So I promise not to stay away so long.  I’ve got pictures of my holiday decorating to share!

But I Don’t Know Any Kennedy’s

Isn’t it odd when those online quizzes get you almost exactly right?

Female Icon Quiz …

You Are a Marilyn!

mm.marilyn_.jpg

You are a Marilyn — “I am affectionate and skeptical.” Marilyns are responsible, trustworthy, and value loyalty to family, friends, groups, and causes. Their personalities range broadly from reserved and timid to outspoken and confrontative.

How to Get Along with Me

  • * Be direct and clear
  • * Listen to me carefully
  • * Don’t judge me for my anxiety
  • * Work things through with me
  • * Reassure me that everything is OK between us
  • * Laugh and make jokes with me
  • * Gently push me toward new experiences
  • * Try not to overreact to my overreacting.

What I Like About Being a Marilyn

  • * being committed and faithful to family and friends
  • * being responsible and hardworking
  • * being compassionate toward others
  • * having intellect and wit
  • * being a nonconformist
  • * confronting danger bravely
  • * being direct and assertive

What’s Hard About Being a Marilyn

  • * the constant push and pull involved in trying to make up my mind
  • * procrastinating because of fear of failure; having little confidence in myself
  • * fearing being abandoned or taken advantage of
  • * exhausting myself by worrying and scanning for danger
  • * wishing I had a rule book at work so I could do everything right
  • * being too critical of myself when I haven’t lived up to my expectations

Marilyns as Children Often

  • * are friendly, likable, and dependable, and/or sarcastic, bossy, and stubborn
  • * are anxious and hypervigilant; anticipate danger
  • * form a team of “us against them” with a best friend or parent
  • * look to groups or authorities to protect them and/or question authority and rebel
  • * are neglected or abused, come from unpredictable or alcoholic families, and/or take on the fearfulness of an overly anxious parent

Marilyns as Parents

  • * are often loving, nurturing, and have a strong sense of duty
  • * are sometimes reluctant to give their children independence
  • * worry more than most that their children will get hurt
  • * sometimes have trouble saying no and setting boundaries
H/T to Michelle
Who are you?  Female Icon Quiz

Perspective

I had a frustrating morning.  Pumpkin Girl said “Mama?” about 27 times in 15 minutes, each time followed by some rambling story, none of which I can remember.

Boo is hitting new lows in being a 10 year old boy.

Both of them kept up a steady stream of “ma-a-ma”s during their school work, to which I replied each time, “I’ll be RIGHT. THERE.  Move on to something else.”  And I really was busy, trying to wind yarn for a homeschool group craft project and order supplies for scouts.

Then school was over and I sat down for a little recreational computer time, and I glanced at the calendar only to realize that it is that time again.

Time to remember all the children that have died.  Suddenly, the “mama”s are not interruptions into my day, but a reminder of all the blessings that have been given…and taken away.

December 14th is the Worldwide Candle Lighting to honor and remember children who have died.  Candles will be lit at 7 PM local time, creating a 24 hour wave of light across the world.

Please write this event down on your calendar so that you can participate.  Light a candle for our children who have died and say a prayer for the families they have left behind.

Hollywood Studios

Oh yeah.  Blogging.  I forgot all about it and left you all in breathless anticipation of my account of how I had a way better time than you did last week. (neener neener)

Actually, I came down with a pretty bad cold (is there such a thing as a good cold?) and I got all stuffy and headachy and sore throaty and wasn’t so much feeling the blog love. (so neener neener back at me!)

Now here I am, generally no worse for the wear.

At Hollywood Studios (previously known as Disney MGM Studios) we ran into the green army men while walking around.  Boo thought they were funny, so we stayed to watch.  Next thing he knew, Boo’d been recruited!  Please note that he’s the only child correctly “at ease”.


Here they are, striking typical bucket o’ soldier poses.

While wandering around the backlots, we found this snowman:

Remember our Star Wars themed Halloween?  Well, Luke and Leia found some sort of Star Wars vehicle to drive.  (please note that I am not geeky enough to know the name of the vehicle)

I kept asking Boo if he wanted to attend the Jedi training that was going on at various times.  He kept saying no until I asked him why.  He told me he didn’t need to attend Jedi training because he was already trained.  How could I forget – he’s known as Master Boo around the neighborhood.

And now…Epcot

We took a week off of school before leaving for vacation because I just had so much to do.  Now everybody is having a really hard time settling back into our normal school routine.  Boo and Pumpkin Girl would so much rather goof off than work on handwriting.  I’m not helping matters when I walk into the kitchen and sing out, “Hi Hooooh!”, causing them to sing “hi ho!” back at me.  To which I replied, “Ha!  I knew you were dwarves!”

And now I sit here, avoiding school, editing my pictures to put on my blog and wondering if it’ll get warm enough today for me to go outside and pull out the flowers killed by last night’s hard freeze.

It was in the mid 70’s the day we went to Epcot.

Before I get to the pictures, I have to tell you that Boo loves Donald Duck as if he’s his long-lost brother.  I don’t know what it is, perhaps because the two of them have anger issues?

So on our very first day, Boo found himself a Donald Duck hat, which you can see in yesterday’s pictures.  We stood in line to meet a bunch of characters, including Donald.  Boo was pretty giddy as our turn with Donald approached, especially because we’d been advised to ask Donald’s handler for a permanent marker and that Donald would sign Boo’s hat.  And so we did and he did.

There wasn’t a lot for Bip to do in Epcot at first, except wait for everyone to go on Soarin’ and Test Track.  So we made a point of going to Turtle Talk with Crush (dude!) and riding Finding Nemo.

Here’s Bip, pretending to throw crabs at the seagulls who periodically said, “mine! mine!”


Here we are in Norway.  I visited this church in Oslo once upon a time.


And now we’re in China.


Look!  I finally made it to Germany!

Did I ever mention that we’re a little tiny bit French?

Boys – here they are after riding Maelstrom in Norway.  They went straight to the weapons and armed themselves.  All three of them, all at the same time.

Not Exactly a Feast Day

But today is Mickey Mouse’s birthday!  Happy Birthday, Mickey!  To celebrate, here are the highlights of our time at the Magic Kingdom.  Did I mention that this was our first trip to Disney World?


Bip and Pumpkin Girl met the Little Mermaid


She kissed Bip!


Boo got to drive the Jungle Cruise boat!  He even got a license for it!


During lunch, the boys waved to the people on It’s a Small World.


Some of the people waved back.


Nobody got to be King of England.


Or Queen.


But we all got Mickey Bars!


Bip was tall enough to ride his first roller coaster!


He got a little congratulations card from a cast member, too!


I topped 380,000 points and Pumpkin topped 200,000 on the Buzz Lightyear ride.


At the end of the day, we spotted an ice castle.

Unforgettable

Veni Vedi Mickey

We came, we saw, we enjoyed Mickey Mouse.  We had an amazing trip with my cousin and his family, we had great weather and not so great weather, we saw the space shuttle launch, we took lots of pictures and bought too many souvenirs.  Nothing overly dramatic happened either during the trip or back at home, though about an hour after we got home I got a call informing me that one of my good friends had gone into labor earlier in the day.

I’m really tired, but it’s all good.  But now I’ve got to go upload the bazillion pictures I took.  I’ll share them later…

Boys’ Fort

We have a lot of empty houses here on base, which isn’t as bad as you might think.  More empty houses means more room for the rest of us.  Boo and his buddies have been rather resourceful in commandeering the backyard of one of those houses as their HQ.  They were actually quite fond of attacking their sisters at their club – it created quite fuss.  I suggested that the boys move to a different house, perhaps to one on the high ground, thus appealing to their inner soldier.  These are the sons of military officers, after all.

They chose an empty house behind ours.  The advantage is that I can an eye on them right from my computer.  I can blog, I can supervise.  The girls are left alone, the boys have the high ground.  It’s all good.

Over the summer the boys scrounged up various and sundry items left on the curb as people moved out.  They’ve got a couple of wood pallets providing cover from incoming fire (mine?), a table and a couple of topiaries.  Last week I noticed they had even gotten themselves a Weber kettle grill.  WHAT is it about men and fire?

Seeing the grill made me giggle.  It’s like they are all set to bivouac up there.  All they need is a water buffalo and they’re all set.


This is the view of the HQ from my house.


Inside the HQ, looking down at my backyard.  Note the clever use of discarded mop poles to prop up their barricade. Shades of Les Miz?


Here’s their main Area of Operations.  Boo informs me that the smoke controller thing on the grill is used to activate the force field.  Right.

Boys.  Gotta love ’em!

Veteran’s Day

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that victory.
- George S. Patton

Have you hugged a veteran today?

Wool+Hot Water=

FELT!

Remember this bag I started on?

Well it only took me a few days of knitting it during snatches of free time.  I embroidered a trailing vine and some berries so then it looked like this:

Just a bag, really.  But then my friend Sheril, who had been crocheting a wool bag of her own, came over and we felted!  Stuck the bags in pillow cases, put them in the washing machine with HOT water and an extra long cycle, then sat back an knit other projects.  Every 10 minutes or so we checked on them until the bags had felted.

Behold

How cute is that?

I love how the embroidery gets totally incorporated into the bag.

The pattern can only be found in the Fall issue of Interweave Knits magazine.  Or you can buy a kit from the designer on Etsy: SheKnits for Knitters.

She sells complete kits to make the original Dumpling Bag and the Double Dumpling bag, which is what I made.  I’m all about letting other people do the shopping and letting all the supplies I need arrive at my front door.

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