Jaelyn's Quilt

Jaelyn saw me looking at cat quilts the other day. At the library yesterday, she found an entire book with nothing but cat quilts. And this afternoon, she started working. By bedtime, she had 3 cat blocks. The first two, she made 100% on her own. I helped her with cutting on the third one (pink and green). Her plan was to make 9. At bedtime, she changed it to 12. Then I'll help her piece them into a lap quilt. I just pinned black construction paper on to show her what big whiskers would look like. Now to just keep her motivated. I put her picture on a quilting Facebook page I'm a member of and so far, she has 700 likes and about 75 encouraging comments. I'll let her keep reading those :).

In other exciting news, tomorrow is my big day! My Block RockIt quilting machine will be out for delivery! I am beyond excited :)!!!!

I Am Done

Wahoo! Jaelyn completed her last quiz in her math book today. Quite the accomplishment...for both of us. We are getting to the end of all her subjects. We will start A Wrinkle in Time tomorrow, our last chapter book. She's halfway through her second history book. We have 4 chapters to go in her science book. 37 days to go!!!!

Boo Blogger - "I've come a long way" text

My new quilting machine finally shipped. It'll be here on Thursday!!! Guess what Jaelyn will be learning about in school on Friday? Simple machines...screwdrivers, wrenches, and anything else it requires to assemble it :)

In preparation, I asked my mom to send me the very first quilt I made. I was 23 and didn't have a clue what I was doing. Dan was off at EOD school and I lived alone in a tiny apartment on Davis Hwy. I had a subbing job in the day and sewed the first pinwheel quilt at night. I was very loosely hand quilted. I think it's atrocious, but my mom loves it and calls it a treasure. She's loco en la cabasa! Anyway, she took it apart for me and I'm going to quilt it as my first real quilt (after my practice quilt). I finished 3 other quilts this weekend. I LOVE the second picture. It's called disappearing pinwheels. I love the colors. The third picture is Allie's birthday present. I saw a similar quilt in a quilt shop ad had to make it. The last picture is a baby quilt I made today. I still have to find coordinating backing material. The plan is to put it on etsy to see if I can sell it :). So there you have it. I've come a long way since my first hideous creation :).

Sent from my iPhone

I've come a long way

Puppy Love

How can you not love waking up to this sweet puppy? She sleeps on a bed in our room now, but as soon as she knows we are awake, up she comes.

Mt. Vernon

There's so much to do and see in DC.  We've done a lot, but there is still so much to see and time is running short.  I've been wanting to visit Mt. Vernon and decided Spring Break would be the perfect time.  I took the kids last Friday.  Jaelyn and I have read a lot about George Washington lately.  It was really neat to go to his home, to stand on his back porch, to jump off the ha ha wall, to hold onto the stair railing that he would have touched.  Wow, so much history...I wasn't a history buff in school, but I am enjoying learning it now.  Jaelyn is so bored with her history book, but it has great stories about famous people that aren't in traditional history books.  I think it's wonderful.

To get the kids involved a little more, I bought us tickets to the "National Treasure II Tour."  Those two movies are Caden's favorites.  We learned all about the filming, what was accurate and what was changed in Hollywood, and got a special tour through Washington's basement.  There was a lot of extra history tidbits thrown in.  It was great.

Coming Right Along

I love it! I actually have 14 blocks made now. 6 to go and then a border and then I have to make I don't know how many 5" pinwheels for another border. I can tell a huge different from my first shoofly to my last. My perfectionism is kicking in and I'm getting better. I love the colors. Jaelyn did a good job of helping to pick them out.

Pinterest Fail and Semi-Success

I love Pinterest.  I can waste hours reading recipes and looking at crafts and sewing projects.  I love all the pictures of twine easter eggs with candy inside.  It looks so easy.  Surely, the kids and I could make them.

It started out well.  We had very little trouble stuffing 6 hershey kisses in balloons and then wrapping them in Eastery colored, glue soaked twine (forgot the glue the first time so it's not in the picture).  Then we waited for the glue to dry.  In the meantime, I commented on Facebook about them and a friend asked if I'd used Vaseline on the balloons.  Vaseline???  The blog post said nothing about vaseline.  You know where this is going, right?  The twine dried beautifully...to the balloons.  When we popped the balloons, the twine easter eggs collapsed with them.  FAIL!

Our next Pinterest project was shirts.  We tried the sharpie and alcohol shirts a few weeks ago.  Jae's turned out great....the others, not so great.  I decided to buy shirts again since they were still 4 for $10 at Joann's and make them like last year with gel glue.  Everyone did so good on their designs.

We printed clipart and the kids drew over them with glue.

As soon as I tie dyed them I knew something wasn't right.  I didn't prewash them and I forgot to spray them with water before we put on the glue so it didn't absorb into the shirts totally.

Last year's shirts were white where the glue was and dyed every where else.  The dye seeped under or into the glue; although once I soaked out the glue and washed them in the washer to get out the excess dye, they looked much better.

Jae and I both put cats on our shirts.  We loved this guy hanging onto our backs!

This is the front of mine.

I think Caden's turned out pretty cool.  Boba Fett looks battle scarred just like he's supposed to.

I like Allie's too.  Barbie would probably look better all white, but she doesn't look bad with a little "color on her cheeks."  :)

I need to go hunting for a craft for tomorrow.  We are going to hang around the house again and then tour Mt. Vernon on Friday.  Hopefully, it'll be warmer.  The freeze last night (Dan swears he saw snowflakes again in the rain when he came home) was crazy.

Up a Tree

Spring is here, finally.  The kids had me pull out all of their shorts.  Of course, since Easter is still a week away, it's not going to last.  Grandma Molly always said there will be one last cold snap before Easter and it's coming with a freeze warning later this week.

Jaelyn has taken advantage of the pretty weather by taking her books outside.  She's been rotating between the back porch, the hammock, and the tree.

Quilting News

I haven't really had a project since I finished my last so I've been playing around with my bag of scraps. I dumped them out on my cutting table to sort them by color. Jaelyn helped me piece 7" squares. It'll take more quilts to have enough scraps to make another blanket, but we are well on our way. I'm calling them scrappy happy blocks.

While out running errands today, we stopped at Joann's and I spent my gift certificate. I'm excited about this quilt. The block is called Shoofly.

And pretty soon, I'll get to start quilting all the tops I've pieced in the last few months. My machine should ship the end of this week!!!!

Spying and the Cherry Blossoms

Caden wanted one thing for his birthday...a trip to the spy museum with his Missouri friend, Sebastian.  Dan was able to take this Saturday off so his birthday finally happened (3 months late - I'm a horrible mom).  Turns out the Cherry Blossoms are in bloom; so we went in early to see them for the Cherry Blossom Festival.  The history behind them is pretty did.  Did you know they almost caused an international incident?  The first gift of tree from Japan where infested with some sort of insect so the whole lot had to be burned.  Thankfully, Japan didn't get their feelings hurt too badly and sent us more.  Many years later, the Japanese trees were hit with some sort of blight and we were able to send them babies trees that are descendants of the originals.  Neat story!

Did I mention how perfect the weather?  Clear, gorgeous skies, not too hot, not too cold.  Perfect.

The scaffolding is off the Washington Memorial.  It opens May 12th.  I can't wait to get tickets to go up it.  I've wanted to since my first trip to DC when I was 13.

We wandered into the Freer Art Gallery to use the restrooms and stuck around to look at ancient Chinese Jades and a Whistler collection.

I can't believe we've never gone in the National Archive.  Jaelyn is learning about early American history.  We are up to 1774; so I thought it would be the perfect time to go and see the Declaration of Independence in person.  No photography is allowed in the building so you'll have to enjoy the kids being silly waiting in line outside.  Did you know there's a typo in the Constitution...Alexander Hamilton spelled Pennsylvania wrong.  A neat little bit of trivia for you :).

And finally, it was time to meet our friends at the spy museum.  For the cost, it was pricey, but since everything else in DC is free, we didn't mind paying for one museum.  It was pretty cool.

After the museum, we had dinner at the Shake Shack (yummy if you ever get to DC).  We topped it off with an Oh My, Cherry Pie shake...which was really a piece of cherry pie blended into vanilla custard.  Oh my Word!  

We crossed the Mall on the way to the Botanical Gardens and stopped to fool around for the little bit. This is my absolute favorite picture of the day.  My crazy clowns!

We played and posed for pictures a little too long because the gardens closed at 5 as we got there.  Oh well, we still have one more trip into the city before we move.

They actually look like they like each other, don't they!  I should frame it because they don't look like this often!

Happy 11th Birthday, Allie!

Allie turned 11 a week ago.  Where is the time going?  I'm going to blink and she'll be off to college.  We had a very quiet birthday.  She wants to go to Busch Gardens and ride roller coasters so party with friends.  We did enjoy some fresh Krispy Kreme donuts and presents after her favorite dinner of steak, candy carrots, and sweet potatoes.

Allie is definitely a lego master builder.  She will build a set, tear it down, and happily build it three more times.  She got 4 huge sets for her birthday.  They are still keeping her busy.

Her favorite present was the hat I bought her.  She's worn it everyday.  This girl loves her hats.

Writing Samples

Caden and Allie have both written some fun stories lately.  Here are two they worked especially hard on.

Welcome to Candy Village by Caden

One day, I was walking through the woods when I saw a sign that said candy village up a head.  I walked up a little and found some gummy bears eating a marshmallow bush.  All of a sudden things turned into candy!  Even me!  I turned into a sour patch kid!  The tree turned into a giant lollipop, the mountain turned into ice-cream, the rocks turned into pop rocks, the clouds turned into cotton candy clouds!  I kept on walking until I fell right in a fun dig stream.  "Cool," I said.  I ate some, it was delicious!  I stayed in the stream until I saw a waterfall.  I was heading straight for it.  I tried to swim away by the current was too strong.  Then, I gave up.  I stopped swimming and let myself fall.  I didn't die.  I was hang in ton to the secret candy rock mine.  I climbed in.  What I saw was amazing!  There was rock candy everywhere.  There was a sign that said, "Chocolate Dirt."  "Yum", I said.  I started to eat the dirt.  It was delicious!  Then the ground shook  I looked up and there was the chocolate monster!  Next thing I knew I was jumping into the fun dip lake. "That was close," I said.  Once I came out of the water, I went home!

(I tried to type it exactly as he did.  His typing skills are impressive too.  I only see a few things he missed.)

Dare by Allie

This is the time I had the most boring weekend, which turned into a exciting, difficult, dangerous, biggest, dare test ever weekend on the most tallest, scariest, fasted, roller coaster ever, "The Dar."

It all started on an early morning Saturday.  It was the most boring Saturday of my life!  But then suddenly, their was a knock on the door.  I opened it and saw a letter on the door step.  When I opened the letter, I flew up the stairs like a rockets and called a family meeting.  When everyone heard the news...BAM!  Everyone was ready clean in 30 minutes, including me.  Then we headed for, "Silver Dare," were "The Dare" is.

When we arrived at "Silver Dare," we headed strait for "The Dare," the most dangerous, rule breaking big, fastest, scariest, tallest roller coaster in Missouri.  No one has ever gone on this roller coaster ever since it was previewed and named.  But all of that was about to change.

At first, my whole family was about to turn back because they were scared except me.  So I gave them all a good luck bracelet I had in my pocket and said, "Never ever be afraid when you where this bracelet, ok?"  every on said OK so that we could all go on the roller coaster.  We got first and second row seats on the roller coaster, "The Dare."  I got first row seats with my sister and brother.  My parents go the second row seats.  At first it was a total freakout as we went up.  But after the drop, it was like a merical, everyone was having fun!  We saw the whole entire park from the roller coaster path.  I guess the luck charms worked!  "I had so much fun!" I said "me to, me three" said my sister and brother.

So, I guess that the biggest, dangerous, difficult, dare test ever, was just a piece of the best cake in the world.  See you next time, bye!

(I tried to type hers as she wrote it as well.  It sounds like she's been reading Judy Moody books.)

Sunshine

Finally, a day warm enough to sit on the deck and soak up some sunshine is upon us. I am so thankful for the sun. It's been a long winter, and even though allergy and pollen season is upon us, I'll take it because it means summer is just a few months away. I came outside to sit with Gracie. The next thing I knew, Jaelyn brought her work out and asked if she could do it outside. As long as she does it, I don't care where she studies. She's currently swinging in the hammock taking a social studies quiz. We've had several really hard homeschooling weeks. I needed a good day. Now if I can finally get over a cold/allergies that I've been dealing with for a week and no one else gets the stomach virus we've had, I'll be a happy camper!