The new favorite app game

This is the new favorite game for everyone in the house. It passes a lot of time waiting in the car and everyone seems to love it.

A typical evening

To say that the time period from 4:00 - 8:30 everyday was busy would be a tragic understatement. It is CRAZY busy. Today we had activity days, swim team, and mutual on the schedule. Once we hit about 8 o'clock though everyone knows just what needs to be done. Every night ends pretty much just like this.

The boys hit the tub. They will still bathe together thank goodness. They always bring an assortment of toys with them. They are always cute.









Catherine is almost always in the upstairs game room working on her homework. She likes to go there because it is quiet and I am not always right there so she can sneak a little tv while she does homework if she is stealthy enough. She thinks I don't know her tricks, but I do. I am just glad she is quietly doing her homework and not bothering anyone.





Madelyn always announces that she is going to bed and will be reading. But when you check on her, as I always do, I usually find her playing games on her iphone. Once I take the iphone away, if I check on her I find her doing a craft. Once I make her put the craft away THEN I will find her reading and quickly falling asleep.







Julianne manages to find a place to do her homework so that she can kind of annoy as many people as possible. The middle of the staircase is a favorite place of hers. Today it was the middle of the hallway.





As everyone slowly settles into the night time routine, she revs up and as I affectionately refer to it -- she stirs all the pots. She'll walk in the boys bathroom and take out a toy from the tub -- just to bug them. She will also check on Madelyn and loudly report her iphone use. She'll then head over to Catherine and take her pencil or something. She has ALWAYS been this way and I don't see it changing anytime soon. Today was a rare surprise though. She did not stir ANY body's pot. She worked efficiently and quietly on her homework and for the second time today I wondered if she was not feeling well (the first time was when she got home from school and promptly put away her school bags -- something that typically takes 4 hours and 200 requests). But . . . I soon discovered the reason for this radical shift in behavior. As soon as she had her homework done and put away she came downstairs and politely asked if she could watch TV -- "the new season of Psych is starting right now, please Mom???"

"Fine, but only if your room is cleaned up too." She raced upstairs, cleaned up and is watching psych right now. I'm definitely of the opinion that TV can be a good thing. If only a new season of Psych started EVERY night.

Making Jam --

Honestly, of all the things I do-- making homemade jam makes me miss my mom more than anything. I have so many memories of buying berries, removing the stems from strawberries, farmer's markets, 18 wheeler berry deliveries, and more. I made some today and cried a little too.

Owen is cute . . . so he often gets what he wants

and this is what he wanted . . .



And in case you needed a translation? "chick-fil-a" "ice cream" "chick-fil-a" "good bye"

Sunday Reminiscing

Here are some old photos of me and my Mom. She was so beautiful. She was so fun.

In this photo I am 5 months old.



And in this one I am 2 years old and exactly the same age as Owen is right now and my face in this picture reminds me so much of his face.

The start of T-ball, the hawk, and the talent show

Saturday's are always busy and today was not exception. We still had the 3 extra girls here in the morning (friend's who spent the night). We had a nice breakfast of German pancakes. Then it was off to Adam's t-ball practice. It was quite cold and very windy. I managed to snag one photo of him.



Then on our way home sitting right on the fence by our house was this giant red-tailed hawk. He didn't fly away even as the van got closer and closer so I could take this picture.



That evening the Catherine, Madelyn, Adam, and I sang a song with some of our primary in the Southlake town variety show.

The end of busy season

Trent made it through his first busy season in 4 years. AT&T filed their 10K today. Yeah us!!!!

Today I went and paid court fees and took a 6 hour online defensive driving class so that the ticket won't go on my permanent driving record. It was no fun at all.

The girl's had friends over to spend the night and they enjoyed the hot tub even though it was cold out. I didn't get any pictures taken so here are some from Valentine's day morning.

Trip to Ikea

Today we drove to Ikea. It is not too far away (about 35 minutes). Naturally I found some fun things I didn't know I needed. Owen had fun trying out all the play stuff. And on the way home I got a speeding ticket in a school zone 35 in a 20. So that kind of put a damper on the whole day. Luckily I have this cute photo of Owen from Ikea to make me smile.

Mother / Daughter date with Julianne

Tonight for Julianne's young women's activity at church they hosted a Mother/Daughter dinner and evening together at a local neighborhood club house. It was a fun evening and nice to spend some time just with Julianne. She is growing much too quickly. I am continually asked if she is 18?? or 16??? and when I tell them she is 12 they are shocked. She is a beautiful girl and I want time to slow down (most of the time!)

Here is a photo from that night.



And here is a photo of the 2 of us I had to submit before the evening.

A kind of crazy day

First, today was the follow visit on my mysterious oven light bulbs who sometimes are on and sometimes are off. The diagnosis was that we needed new bulbs and new sockets. Those sockets and bulbs are tricky little suckers to replace. Here is the technician in the middle of the swap . . . yes, he had to completely remove the double ovens and disassemble them.



Then as I headed to the store I was shocked to find the park next to us completely flooded. There was a Southlake truck there and the driver explained that they were draining the water from the closest water tower. It was a lot of water.



And then the kids all had diving. They are LOVING their diving class. I love watching them.

Both boys get haircuts

Happy Birthday to Trent!

I am the luckiest girl in the world.  Trent is wonderful!  He celebrated his 39th birthday today.  He is at the tail end of busy season for work and even had to go in to a work meeting today, but we still had a nice dinner and had friend's over for mint frosted, chocolate pudding filled chocolate cupcakes with Mint cookies and cream blue bell icecream.

Friends, fun, silly games and the twisted root

Trent had to work today but we still planned a fun evening. We had friends over and fed the kids a simple dinner and played minute to win it games while waiting for Trent to get there. He got home just in time to play a few games and then we went to dinner to a place in downtown Roanoke called the twisted root. It is a burger place that brews its own root beer. The 2 varieties of root beer were really good!

Here's Ken and Camille with 3 golf balls stacked on top of each other -- no simple feat!





Here I am balancing blocks on my head on a paper plate.



And lastly, here are the 2 dad's trying to blow off all but one card from the deck off the top of the root beer bottle.

The backyard!

I LOVE the changes to the backyard. The new bushes and mostly the stepping stones. I am now even more anxious to get some of the next phases done.

Catch me if you can

Today was a fun filled Valentine's day. The kids had a good day at school. Adam had his first baseball practice. And then Catherine and I raced downtown to meet up with Trent to see the musical "Catch me if you can." It was a coincidence that our regularly scheduled broadway series tickets were on Valentine's day. We bought 3 season tickets and are taking each of the three older girls to a different show (Madelyn is sister act and Julianne's is flash dance). We are taking ALL of the kids to Lion King and Mary Poppins and we are taking all of the girls to Wicked. We had a great time at the show. It was clever and well done!

Getting ready for Valentine's

Two exciting things happened today. First, we got the drawings for our next phase of landscaping and got it scheduled for tomorrow!!!! Here is the drawing. (I just love these kind of drawings!)



Then it was fun to get ready for Valentine's for the kids. We really don't do much. I got each of the kid's 1 small thing. The three girl's got a swim suit coverup and Owen got a car's coloring book. At about 10 I realized that while I had planned to get a LEGO thing for Adam I had forgotten. So I called Trent (who was on his way home from work at 10 pm -- it's busy season now) and he stopped by Walmart for the LEGO's. When he came home he had also grabbed 2 dozen roses. I think I might forget a kid's gift every year and send him to the store!!!

I have a cheap set of glass dishes that have proved to be my favorite. I love to slide 12 x 12 scrapbook paper under them as a placemat. It feels so festive and is really nothing that special! The kids still got up and had cereal for breakfast, but the place setting looked nice!

A Brave new world

I am always amazed at how new technology gets adapted to so many more uses than it was initially intended. Facetime is the one where I have come up with so many uses for it. For example in designing our pool there were a few changes I wanted made to the design that were significant but not too big and I didn't have the time to drive to the design center to meet with the designer so I suggested we do it via facetime. We would call eachother and then she would position her phone so that I was viewing her computer screen and then we would talk through the changes. She would extend an area and I would say, "Yes, just a little bit wider" or "No, the other direction." In just a few minutes we would make changes that without facetime would have required her editing, saving it, exporting it, emailing it to me, opening it and then replying whether or not she got it right. Small changes could have taken hours.

So it shouldn't have surprised me to come downstairs and find Catherine on a facetime call doing homework with a friend holding her camera so that her friend could see her work. I watched for a little while from a distance, and they really weren't cheating. They were truly helping eachother through a difficult math problem and looking at each other's work to see where the mistake had been made.

Doing the Valentine's

It's that time of year for elementary school aged children like Adam and Madelyn. They absolutely love getting ready. Madelyn covered her shoe box in floral duct tape and with a lot of washi tape accents. Madelyn could probably build a house out of duct tape and then decorate the whole thing with washi tape. I didn't even know they had patterened duct tape until a few months ago and I have only recently been turned on to the washi tape fad. (although I really do like washi tape and now can think of lots of ways to use it!).

We melted down old crayons into heart crayon molds, we added a little candy, and cut out some cool heart stickers for the kids to sign their name. It was a fun evening!

My Dad is getting married

I am so happy for my dad and his fiancee, Sally. They are so great together.

Our fancy feet

I now have all the stuff to do these ourself at home. My girls love having glitter toes!!!!

Julianne's UIL flute solo competition

Today Julianne had her first solo UIL flute contest. She was worried and nervous and scared and didn't want to do it. I told her she did not have to do it, but that she did have to prepare for it like she was doing it. When she realized that she had to have an accompanist perform with her and she had to pay her teacher ahead of time to prepare the music she told the teacher that her mother would accompany her (that way her teacher would continue to help her prepare thinking she would participate in the competition) and yet in Julianne's mind it meant that she could still prepare for it and then NOT do the competition. She (reluctantly) brought home the music. She (reluctantly) practiced it with me 2 or 3 times. She (very reluctantly) played it for Baba via a facetime call. And each little step ensure that she really was prepared for it. They announced the competition times and she came home to have me call the band teacher to remove her from the list and that is when I started negotiating.

"Sweetie, you really can do this."

"You've played it already in front of your family -- the worst possible critics in the world!"

"What would sweeten the deal for you so that you would want to do it?"

Finally we decided that a $15 itunes gift card would be a great reward. And so she and I played together and she did wonderful. I am so glad I got to accompany her (because then I could be in the private judging room with her). It was awesome to see her perform. It was worth the gift card (and it still was a lot cheaper than paying an accompanist). And . . . she said going forward she'd do them all if I did them with her.

My New Canaan Youth Soccer T-shirt quilt

I have held onto these shirts with the desire to eventually turn them into an awesome quilt to sit on at all my kid's soccer games. About a year ago I started to cut them to a rectangular size and quilt the front and back of the shirt together in even rows about an inch apart.



I was excited at first, but by about the sixth shirt I had already spent hours quilting and had gotten nowhere. I put them in a drawer and forgot about them. Then we moved. Then I found them again and try as I may I could not get excited about my original plan. Frankly it would be a lot of time and work for a t-shirt quilt that will REALLY get used at soccer and softball games. It will REALLY get muddy. It will REALLY get washed a lot. And so I decided yesterday to boldly go where no REAL quilter would ever go. So . . . please keep reading only if

1. You don't care about real squares.

2. You don't care about unfinished edges

3. You don't care about mismatched seams

Because while this quilt will not win any awards, I GUARANTEE it will get used. I GUARANTEE it will be noticed. I GUARANTEE it will get talked about. And honestly . . . I love it already!





This may be the quilt for you if you have a lot of t-shirts, you want a quilt, and you want to be done in 1 day. This sloppy method takes into account shirts of different sizes. Here's what I did. I took two shirts and laid them together with the front designs touching each other (right sides together). I tried hard to line up the center of the shirt neckline and the design and then I pinned them together. With a ruler I drew a side seam that was 1/4 inch from whichever sleeve I hit first. Then I sewed the straight line and trimmed off the sleeves. I did this until 6 shirts were connected together. Then I laid them out on the floor and using a cutting mat, rotary cutter, and ruler I trimmed the bottoms of the shirts to be a straight line (which meant I trimmed it to the smallest sized shirt). Then I made a second row. I pinned the first and second rows together and lined up only the middle seam. I repeated for the third and fourth row. When it was all sewn together I decided that I loved the top border to be the actual shirt necklines and I loved the bottom border to be the actual shirt. (translation -- I didn't not like them enough to do anything about it). For the sides I drew a straight line (following the crazy contour of the shirts as they turned out, stitched a long the line and trimmed).

The back is just the raw edges and that is the beauty of t-shirt material is that it won't fray. The kids love it already.

Urban air

The sock bun and before the hair cut!

Madelyn had no sooner fixed her hair into this cute little sock-bun when she then decided she wanted to cut off the length and have a cute bob. I still haven't taken the after photos. But here are the before ones!

My batters!