spring break escape

We left the hubby home this week to paint floors (bellow) and await the delivery of my new fridge (yay!) while we headed north to MD.

We started the week with a family birthday party (for 5 of the 7 birthdays this month) at my sister's new house. 

It was so great to see (almost) the whole family and there was definitely way too much dessert eaten :)

After that, vacation got put on hold when two of the kids got hit with the stomach bug I though we had left behind in VA :(

Anywho, All were feeling better today and the sun was shining, so after a run to the fabric store and lunch at the mall we headed to the nature preserve around the corner from my parents.

Along with this barred owl, they had a couple vultures and a bald eagle.  We talked to the naturalist who cares for the birds and even got to see the eagle eat a pile of mice.

The kids had a blast climbing through the man-made caves inside the center.

And playing in the little house on the prairie-style house.

Regan put these shoes on Emmy, she loved them...

but someone else did not like her wearing them. "Take them off her!"

All six kids in one photo and no one crying?  A miracle!

Micah was pretending to be a sheep and Regan was brushing his wool :)

Hoping for another fun adventure tomorrow.  More pictures to come...I am sure you can't wait ;)

happy easter!

yesterday

The day started early and ended late-every moment full.  It was a day of lasts... Our last day of CC for the year, Regan's last proof for Memory Master (she did it!) and the Last Supper.  The morning and afternoon were a flurry of activity, to and from CC and all the celebrations of another year completed in between.  Then we rushed through dinner and off to church to celebrate the Last Supper.

Adelaide cried when I left her for the 3rd time yesterday.  The first and second "leavings" were expected, but the 3rd was just too much for her.  Later when I asked her why she cried she replied, "because you goed."  There will be no going without Addie today and I expect there will be lots of snuggling.

As the pain of a long day crept into my back last night I sat on the couch with my heating pad and blanket and began to wind.  As my fingers quickly twisted my thread, my thoughts slowly unwound.

I could finally put some order to my day (and to my thread box) and start to remember why and what it is we celebrate this Easter Season.  Hoping these next three days will be filled with remembering, celebrating, and giving thanks for the greatest gift ever given.

I finished the embroidery at the top earlier this week.  I bough the pattern here.

would you put the camera down and get me clean already, mom!

I am not sure if I've every talked about how Addie does not like to be dirty.  It's pretty extreme, her dislike for anything messy...I mean to the point of eating donuts (and most other foods the rest of the world eats with their hands) with a fork.  Well, last Friday, just when she was starting to feel better, she asked to go play outside.  Max and Tallulah were in the back yard, so I sent her out to play with them.  What I did not know, was that they had filled a large hole they had been digging with water.  At some point Max decided it would be fun to throw a cinder block into the mud pit... while Addie was standing right in front of the hole.  I was sure someone was seriously injured when I heard the screams from the back yard... but instead this is what I found when I stepped onto the deck.

almost there

Regan passed her tutor proof for Memory Master today!  For those of you who are unfamiliar with CC, a Memory Master is a student who has mastered all the information we have learned over the course of the cycle (24 weeks) and can repeat, from memory, those facts.  This is a list of what those facts included this cycle:

-161 events and people in a chronological timeline
-44 U.S. presidents
-24 history sentences to add depth to our timeline
-120 locations and geographic features in Africa, Eurpe, and the Old World
-24 science facts (including clasifications of living things and each continent's highest mountain
-5 Latin noun endings and their singular and plural declentions
-English grammar facts (including 53 prepositions, 23 helping verbs, and 12 linking verbs)
-Multiplication tables up to 15x15, common squares and cubes, as well as basic geometry formulas    and unit conversions

There are 4 levels to proofing, two at home with family members, one with their tutor (this one is the hardest and most important) and a spot check with the director.  Regan has made it through the first 3 and just has her director proof left.  She has worked so hard for this and we are so proud of her!

After her Tutor proof this morning we met up with the hubby for a celebratory lunch at Chick-fil-A.

Congratulations Regan!

(I wrote about Micah's Memory Master Experience here last year)

craft night

I had great intentions about taking lots of pictures and blogging about all the fun we had a craft night... and then at 11pm I realized I had taken not one picture!  Oops!  Half of the girls had gone home already, but I did manage to snap 4 pictures before everyone else left!  It was a great evening full of pizza, desserts, laughter and sewing.  I can't wait to do it again! (And I promise to do a better job of documenting it next time!)

And this is what stopped me from blogging those 4 pictures last week... a sick Addie :(  Poor girl was a mess all week!  This was the second day in a row she fell asleep on a chair in the kitchen.

This past weekend I sewed up 8 more baskets (these are seriously addictive) for the tutors at CC.

shop update and craft night

I am sure you are tired of seeing these aprons by now, but I finally got 1/2 of them in the shop (along with a couple other baby items) and am labeling the others to drop off at Kitsch

In other news, after talking about it for over a year, I finally planned my first Craft Night.  It will be here, at my house, on Saturday night.  We will be using Ayumi's free tutorial to make these scrappy fabric baskets (these are ones I made years ago for Tallulah's preschool teacher and director).  It should be a fun evening full of food, fabric and fellowship- really, does it get any better than that?

I am hoping to make this a regular thing with all kinds of crafts, not just sewing. I'll post pictures on Monday!