afternoon art

Hope you had a wonderful weekend! We are gearing up for our first day of school tomorrow. I will try and remember to take pictures and post about our first day- praying that all will go smoothly!

still

She's been sitting here quietly coloring for at least an hour, the other kids dancing around in a flurry of activity, she is content with her crayons and Hello Kitty coloring book- in her own world. There isn't much "still" in our house- sometimes you have to make you own in the midst of the chaos.

first time

Tallulah had her first dentist appointment today! She did so well, I could hardly believe it! What a big girl she is :) The hygienist snapped this photo with her Polaroid and the kids loved watching the image appear like magic! When Regan handed it to me I was taken aback for a minute- it was like looking at a picture of myself from 30 years ago! Something about seeing her on that familiar Polaroid film seemed to make our similarities so much more evident. Wondering if my family will say the same thing :)

before and after

Today we did a 15 minute, $20 window makeover in the girls room. As you can see, the old window treatment just was not working out too well for us.

take a closer look at those lovely blinds- something had to be done!

Instead of just buying more ugly blinds we decided to run to Walmart and see what they had there first... and look what we found!

I just happened to have a double curtain rod laying around and the curtains were a perfect match for my flower valance. The colors are also the same colors that are in the curtain covering their closet!
They still need to be ironed and hemmed, but the girls are loving the new look, and I am too!

early birthday

My parents came down to visit for a couple days and hook up our new dishwasher for us (thanks, Dad!) and while they were here, we decided to celebrate Max and Regan's birthday's a bit early. Regan wanted a Tinkerbell cake and we searched everywhere for something Peter Pan so that it was not totally girly but could not find a thing! So, my mom, being the expert cake decorator, decided to draw Peter Pan on the cake instead.

It turned out great and the kids loved it!

Make a wish!

Grammy and Poppy got all three of the big kids new backpacks from LL Bean. No more $7 Walmart book bags with broken zippers and ripped lining!

Everyone was happy with their packs and we can't wait to break them in!

catching up

We spent the day trying to recover from a weekend of visitors followed by a morning of babysitting- who knew 6 kids could make that. much. mess! It is now almost 6 and I am glad to say that the house is clean; the laundry washed, folded, ironed and put away; my sewing projects I started last week are completed and dinner is ready to eat! I am looking forward to snuggling up with my last book of the summer tonight without any undone chores hanging over my head!

Here are a few, poorly lit, photos of the blanket and sketch book I finished this week- I am off to eat some dinner and relax!

fun in the sun?

Well, even though our day at the beached ended up being a rainy one, a good time was still had by all. Here are a few highlights from the day....

The rain paused just as we got to beach, long enough for us to spend a couple hours splashing in the waves before heading off to lunch at our new favorite Pizza joint, Dough Boy's California Pizza (if your local, you've gotta check it out next time your at the beach! It's on Atlantic between 24th and 25th, I think.)
They are getting pretty daring out their!
Even Lulu got in on the wave action this time!
My surfer boy
Okay, so ever since the first time I saw these "bikes" 4 years ago, I have been wanting to rent one. After totally pigging out on Pizza we decided we could use a bit of exercise before heading home for the day, so we rented two and took a ride down the boardwalk. It is quite a work out pedaling a family of 6 on one of these, but definitely lots of fun!
In case you ever decide to rent one of these yourselves, I do not recommend wearing an above the knee skirt! I am not sure how many people I flashed when ever their was a wind gust!
We lucked out with the sleeping car on the way home. We had not even gotten back to the highway before all 3 kids in our car were asleep! It's been raining all week here and somehow we managed to time it perfectly so that we hit downtown Norfolk and the tunnels at the peak of rush hour traffic and in the midst of flash flood warnings :( It took us 2.5 hrs to make the trip that usually takes 35 minutes! Fortunately the kids slept for 2 of those 2.5hrs, Phil's sister and B-I-L were not so lucky in their vehicle.
The day ended with cake, ice cream and a visit from Spider-man! There he is on our roof!
We were sad to see the cousins leave today, but so glad they made the trek down to visit us!

birthday sewing

So, Phil's sister and family are coming to visit tomorrow and one of their boys will be turning 4 this weekend so, we will get to have a small family birthday party for him. Spider-man is the theme and Regan really wanted to make a gift for him, so we decided on a mask- of course I made it so complicated that she really could not do much of it, but she help me with the design and sewed when she could. I am happy with how it turned out but I told my boys "Don't even ask me to make one for you, cause I'm not doing this again!" :)

We could not find any Spider-man fabric, so the boys picked out this fabric for a sketch book cover.

here is the inside.

And here is a sneak peak at my next sketch book cover- those monkeys were just too cute to pass up! I think they would make fabulous pants for a baby boy, but I am grounded from starting any new projects or buying any new supplies until I complete all the ones I've already started and or bought the supplies to make (right now the list is up to about 15 projects!).

progress and an unexpected pause

I have been making good progress on my latest crochet project, just hooking right along when ever a I have few minutes to spare. I am enjoying the process of designing as I go and am excited to see the final product. There is only one problem...

I ran out of yarn just 6 inches from the end of my last row (before switching colors) of hot pink!
I've got all the other colors, except more hot pink, so now I am stuck waiting for my yarn order to come! The good news is, I made a list last night and came up with nearly 15 projects that are currently sitting unfinished, so there is no lack of crafting to do around here! Made a new commitment: no new project until I finish the ones I've already started/bought materials for! I think I've made this promise before, unsuccessfully, let's hope this time will be different!

keeping a promise

Regan brought this doll home from her friends house yesterday promising that she would make a dress for the doll. You see, this poor girl had absolutely nothing to wear and Regan felt sorry for her, so naturally, being the giving person that she is, she volunteered to help! Of course we all know that really meant she volunteered me to make some clothes for this poor naked doll! So, this morning we set out together (I let Regan do as much as she could/wanted herself) to make an outfit for the doll. Regan picked the fabric and told me what style she wanted and this is what we came up with- now hopefully this exhibitionist won't lose these clothes too!

school daze

I have finally started doing some prep work for our school year (starting in just 4 weeks). I had great intentions of keeping up with math and a few other things over the summer, but with the first trimester woes I lost motivation for doing much other than laying on the couch. So, instead of feeling guilty about all we did not do this summer I decided to enjoy the time off and do some things (like sewing and reading) that I won't have much time for once we start school. But now it is time to start thinking about the school year, and what I need to do now to insure a successful year, and here is where I started...

Yesterday I loaded Rosetta Stone (French) onto the computer and tried out a few lessons, pretty fun, I am looking forward to learning along with the kids.

I made a schedule, now I just need to pray that I can stick with it (I am not really much of a schedule girl)!

And I ran over to Office Max to take advantage of their back to school penny sale. I got everything in this picture for a whopping total of $.76! Yes, that's 6 folders, 3 packs of lined paper, 36 pencils, 3 rulers and 3 Sharpies for all for $.76 (tax included).
All in all, a pretty productive day, hopefully there will be many more of those in the next few weeks!

highlights from the weekend

Here are just a few highlights from the weekend celebration. We had beautiful weather and a wonderful time celebrating my parents 50th year of marriage. I think we figured out between us all we had something like 120 years of marriage!

For the first time ever we had a professional photographer come out and take family pictures of us all- I snuck a few pictures while they were setting up of my parents with all their grand kids (minus the one in my belly, of course)- pretty impressive bunch, huh?

Out of 16 grand kids there are only 3 girls! Anyway, you can imagine how much fun we have dressing them up and how much fun they have whenever they get together!

My brother giving the toast- Thanks so much Mom and Dad for setting such a great example for us all! (BTW, that is apple juice in the kids glasses.)

My dad was a bit nicer this time around with the cake :)

and finally, how I spent 10 of my 12 hours in the car this weekend!

placenta brain

So, yesterday, when I should have been preparing for our trip to Maryland- packing, laundry, cleaning, finishing up scrap book pages for the book we are all putting together for my parents... you get the point, I seemed to be distracted by every other thing possible and doing everything in my power to avoid that which I really aught to be doing. So, in true Amy fashion, I decided that what we really needed to do was return something to the library (even though I know it was closed), and go to Michael's for yarn, of course! So, off we go, "let's go kids, do you have your shoes on, have you gone potty, yes you can bring your money..." So, there we were, on our little errand run when I decided I needed to make a phone call, so I reach into my handy little pleated pocket on the side of my new purse (fabulous idea, BTW, totally love my pockets, I never loose my keys in the bottom of my purse anymore!) anyway, back to my story- and I pull out this:
Wait, let's take a closer look...
Yup, I brought the house phone with me! And in case you were wondering, no, it did not work, but lucky for me I was happy to discover my cell phone in the other pocket :) I promise I am not usually this absent minded, it's gotta be the placenta brain! So, do you have any funny pregnancy stories? Please share!