Less than a week to go!

We've got less than a week to vacation!  I've been spending time doing this.....

back and forth I go, backing to the left, backing to the right, over and over again.  Good thing we have lots of laundry baskets, they're very forgiving.

We also had our very own Princess and the Pea, Miriam, make sure the air mattresses were ready to go with no leaks.  She slept on this pile and reports it felt like sleeping on jello.

It was also time for dentist checkups.  Happily, I could get five of the kids seen at one time.

The final report was not great.  Four of them need to go back for fillings.

Jacob had his appointment the next day at the adult dentist. 

We went to Chuck E Cheese afterwards.  We nearly had the place to ourselves.  Just two other small families.  The noise level was much better than usual, the pizza, the same terrible quality as usual! 

Dode was so jealous!  (NOT!)

Jacob went to two proms last weekend.  Isn't he handsome!

The girls made money at a friend's garage sale selling popcorn and lemonade, $17 each. 

They're saving it for the trip.

Elizabeth and Dad day 2010

Saturday was Elizabeth's special day with her dad.  They started off by going to the Bluebird Cafe in town where Elizabeth had chicken nuggets and fries for breakfast.  Dode stuck with the more traditional french toast plate. 

Then, they went fishing.  The fishing genes may run strong in Dode's family but they definately skipped him.  He hasn't owned a license as long as we've been married.   (And he doesn't feel like he's missing out on anything!)  But, Elizabeth has the love of fishing in her blood.  Her fishing adventures are limited to her time at Palmer Lake and in Winthrop where we camp each September.  Dode bought a license just so he could accompany his little girl.  When she realized where they were going, she looked over at her dad with a smile on her face and said, "I love you too dad."  They spent 4 hours on the lake and Elizabeth got two tugs on her line (the bottom of the lake and the propeller).  She was pretty disapointed but just being out there in the boat with her dad was a thrill. 

They ate a picnic lunch in Mount Vernon at the top of Little Mountain.  You can drive right to the top and there is a great view over the Skagit Valley and out to the Puget Sound.  She is a girl who loves beauty so this was right up her alley.

While at Little Mountain, they took a nature hike so she could take some photos.

Then, in the true spirit of what gives our sweet daughter happiness, they went to the store where she could pick out a card for her grandpa to leave at his school in Mount Vernon.  She spent a long time finding just the right card and was so excited to leave it for him.

Their last stop was a trip to the garden store to purchase a plant to remember her trip by.  Of all the pretty flowers and bushes, she chose a blueberry bush and can't wait to pick the tasty berries off it.  I wish there was a way I could speed up time for her.

Getting it all done

"I don't know how you do it..." 

I hear that a lot and I'll share the secret of how I get it done.  But first, some background.  Three of my children are homeschooled and we're lucky to live in a school district that offers a homeschool resource school.  According to the district, my children are public school students attending an alternative school.  They get funding from the state for my children, which allows them to offer the school and pass some money along to me to buy curriculum and music lessons.  For the three children, I receive $1400.  The school is K-12 and children attend part time while also receiving instruction at home.  Parents select which classes they want their children to attend.  Things like: foreign language, lab science, lego robotics, math, PE.  By participating in the school, I am obligated to file monthly progress reports of what we've worked on at home and the biggest cost to me is, while my children are attending classes, I have to be on site at the school since I am their official teacher.  Jacob is able to attend without me being there because he is in high school and is on a "independent contract".  But, for Isaac and Elizabeth to take classes, I have to be at school with them.  The school provides a family room with tables to sit at and a small play area for the little ones and I spend six hours a week there. 

arriving at school, heavily laden

On Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30-1:30, I am at school in the family room "getting stuff done".  I don't have to feel guilty that I'm taking time away from my children because they're busy in classes while I: read great books, plan and organize day camp, research family vacation ideas, pay bills, buy gifts, prepare my Relief Society lessons, sew, craft, read the news, etc.  Six hours a week are mine to use at my disgression.  There are definetly times when it feels like a burden to be sitting there when I could be doing something else, but if I treat it like a blessing and plan for how I'll use the time, it allows me to get a lot done.

our home away from home

a table in the family room with...

computer, sewing machine, mini DVD player, lunches

Another thing that I think really helps me find the time to take care of the many responsibilities in my life is the lack of tv reception in our home.  The only tv I watch is the 45 minutes it takes an hour long episode to stream on hulu.com which I watch each morning at 6:15 while I exercise.  Not having tv frees up my evenings for playing with the kids and getting stuff done.  I'm also a really fast reader.  I can chew through a novel in just a few hours.  Sometimes I feel a little guilty considering how quickly I can consume something somone took years to create.

Men's Shirt to sundress

I picked up an XL men's shirt at a garage sale.  I liked the yellow stripe and knew it had potential.  I didn't even cut the sides, I just used the width that came.  I also left the hem on the bottom.  So basically, all I had to do was cut off the sleeves and collar, use elastic thread to gather up the bodice, transfer a few buttons to the bottom, sew the sides of the bodice, and add some straps.  Easy peasy!  I had it done in under an hour.  With a dress this inexpensive and easy, I don't care where and when she wears it!  Jacob says it's his favorite so far.

I've learned some things as I've made these.  One:  if you look on the internet, people will tell you to hand wind the elastic thread onto the bobbin.  I don't.  I pull a bunch of slack off the spool of elastic thread and making sure there is no tension on the thread as it goes in to the bobbin, I let my machine do the work of winding. 

Two:  I didn't like the look at the very top of the dress.  For some reason, the elastic thread doesn't gather in tight when it's going through two thicknesses of material.  That makes the top loose and it folds down to show my stitching.

There is always two thicknesses on the top due to folding it over for a finished edge. For this dress, I fed a thin piece of elastic through the casing left by turning over the top. I measured around Miriam and put 1/2 her chest measurement in the front and half in the back. I sewed the edges of the casing making sure to keep the elastic stretched to the correct size, before sewing up the bodice edges and eliminated the gaping  top. Woo-hoo!

I picked up some more shirts today to turn in to dresses that I'm really excited about.  I love shirts that have some sort of embellishment on them.  They make the dresses really cute.  I'm also thinking of trying to turn a man's shirt into a skirt for the bigger girls, with lines of elastic thread to make shirring at the top.  I'm also beginning to totally drool over smocking but don't have the tools to do it.

And, today I went through my t-shirts and tried each one on inside out.  The ones that were baggy got pinned up the sides and I gave them a quick seam up each side to make them more flattering.  This opens up a whole new area of the 2nd hand store for me because as long as it's too big and not too small, I can make any top there fit me.  I can get a few to take on our trip and if they get stained while camping, who cares when  they're $1 each.

Dode celebrates his birthday, in May

Friday Dode surprised me by staying home from work. Because he started with the Tulalip Tribes in August, he doesn't get any vacation time until August.  The only day he gets off is his birthday.  He's allowed to take it whenever he wants once his birthday has come.  His birthday was in January.  We kept talking about what to use that one day on but it's hard to come up with something special enough for our most valuable one day of vacation.  He'd talked about driving out with me on my big trip on the 1st day and taking a bus, train, or plane back.  Then, we found out his huge CFED test was the day after I leave.  So, Friday was the day to celebrate his birthday.    We started off with a stop at Krispy Kreme for donuts. 

Six kids=2 donuts each.  (Whoever ate 4 donuts isn't fessing up but there were two unhappy children.)

Then, it was off to Washington Park in Anacortes.  It's one of our favorite family places to go.  There was a minus low tide so we spent time at the tide pools.  This tide pool (the size of a medium mud puddle) was absolutely crawling with hermit crabs.  We also saw: anenomes, kelp crabs, rock crabs, star fish, sea stars (yes there is a difference). 

After Washington Park, we did a quick geocache over by the ferries.  The best part for the kids was a storm drain that went under a new paved trail.  There was a manhole that they could poke things up through while standing on the drain, and drop things down on their siblings through while standing on the trail.  The ones on the top got a lot more enjoyment out of that than the ones in the drain!  Next, it was off to Whistle Lake to visit our family tree. 

We planted this tree two years ago, the day our adoption was final.

May 2008

May 2010

 

Miriam was absolutely disgusted with how little it is and almost refused to be photographed with it.  It's there at our feet if you look closely, in front of Elizabeth.  (Jacob was sleeping in the van.)

We have a matching tree in our yard, just as little but I guess she thought the one in the forest would be huge.  We planted one out here so the kids can access it no matter who lives in the house we are now in.  Whistle Lake has over 50  miles of trails around it and most allow motorbikes so we brought the Trail 90. 

 Isaac got in a bit of riding before the worn out old tire in the front let a branch in to pop the inner tube.  We hit another geocache on the way out at the Grand View Cemetery in Anacortes and brought some very tired children home.

Dode reports that he enjoyed his summer birthday.  So did the rest of us!

80's skirt to Miriam's sundress

The prairie skirt was an 80's classic.  Long and full with buttons down the front, everyone had one.  I found this one at a garage sale for pennies and knew I could transform it into a cute  sundress for Miriam.  I picked it up on a Saturday morning and she badgered me for the next six days to turn it into a dress for her.

In order to get the length and fullness I wanted, I lay another dress that fit her well on top of the skirt and cut a rough outline up the sides, keeping the bodice part wider than I wanted.  I tried to make the bodice twice as large as the width of the bodice of the dress I was copying. 

Then, I used elastic thread in my bobbin with navy regular weight thread in the needle with an extra long stitch length to sew horizontal lines in the bodice.  I sewed as many lines as I had navy blue thread for.  (The nearest fabric store is a 20 minute drive so when I saw I was running really low on navy blue, I used brown where ever I knew it wouldn't show.  The last seam I stitched was using thread that was no longer even on the spool!  How's that for cutting it close?)  I spaced my lines apart using the edge of the pressure foot.  Once they were all sewn, I sprayed it with water and watched it magically gather itself up.  Then, it was a simple process to sew the sides together, thus securing the elastic thread.  I'd kept the original hem of the skirt so I didn't have to do any work there.  I had to move some buttons down from parts of the skirt I was discarding since the skirt originally had no buttons on the bottom 8 inches and that would have been up to about her panties.  I didn't bother making new button holes, I just sewed the buttons right through all the layers of material.

The one problem I encountered was, she wasn't home when I made it.  I'd guessed at the length and spacing of the straps and when she tried it on, I found that they were too short and located too far out on her shoulders.  After digging through yesterday's trash where I'd thrown the rest of the skirt material away, I made new longer straps and put them closer to the middle.  I made these straps longer than I needed with the thought that the dress is long enough, in time I can make the straps longer and give the dress more life.  It took be about an hour to make it.

Our week of parties

On Tuesday, the Young Women had a mother/daughter dinner.

I thought it'd work out great because Jacob didn't have a scout activity so he could deliver the papers with Dode that I generally do on Tuesdays.  Unfortunately, the papers weren't ready until Wednesday at 3:30 am so I ended up getting up at 4:00 in the morning to go get the papers so we could stuff like crazy before seminary.  My delivering was all broken up by state testing that Isaac and Elizabeth were involved with at school.  I'd do some delivering, drive to the school to drop them off, deliver some more, pick them up, deliver some more, bring them back to school, deliver some more, then try to clean the house before a party that evening.

On Wednesday we celebrated Cinco de Mayo with over 70 of our closest friends.  I'd decided we needed to have a party since the kids at church keep accosting me in the hall wanting to know when they can come over and Cinco de Mayo seemed like a good excuse for a get together.  I didn't know how many people would come since it was a school night but we had quite a turn out.  Miriam spent the party crying because of several skinned knees and toes and with hurt feelings because her friends didn't want to do what she wanted to do.  It was a very easy party to prepare for and an absolute joy to have so many people over enjoying our fun home. 

We had a Mexican potluck.  My contribution was "Mexican Potatoes" (smashed boiled reds with garlic, topped with refried beans, topped with salsa, topped with monterey jack cheese, sprinkled with tomatoes and cilantro and baked until bubbly).  It was a good way to get rid of a bag of potatoes I'd gotten from the co-op since we aren't big potato eaters.  I also did ice cream cones (you can see Janice, in pink,  in the back scooping them up) and a caramel fountain with fresh fruits. 

kids waiting to do the "big kid" zip line

kids at the "little kid" zip line and "maypole spinner"

our very full driveway

Isaac and Dode got the Trail 90 running on Thursday while I was at a day camp meeting.  Isaac is absolutely thrilled and I'm sure he will soon wear a trail around the property. I'd thought it was going to be a months long project where he'd have quality time with dad.  Instead, it took two evenings.

He wears a helmet when he rides, I promise!

We have two Trail 90's in the garage so their next project is to get the 2nd one running.  It will take a lot more work, (I hope) because it used to be someone's parts bike.  Isaac loves working on things as much as his dad so it will be a labor of love.

Miriam enjoying her Friday in a tree

Friday was teacher in service and since my kids are public school students according to the state of Washington (although we consider them home schoolers) , we take the same holidays as the rest of the district.  It was a beautiful day so when I got back from my free friday morning Zumba class at the church, the children had friends come over to play.  Anastaya and Elizabeth each had a friend over and Isaac ended up going to a friend's so we had Seth come over to play too.  A great time was had by all.

Pink lemonade in the treehouse gazebo

For the 2nd week in a row, the co-op wasn't as smooth as it could be.  The truck didn't get here until 9:30 so we weren't done distributing before people started arriving.  The driveway became a real life example of one of those games where you have to move one square to move another.  We got:  bananas, apples, oranges, pears, cantaloupe, lettuce, potatoes, brocoflower, corn, chard, celery.

Miriam went to my mom's for the weekend so we were down one child.  Once we were done with the co-op craziness, Dode, Elizabeth, Anastaya, and I rode our bikes into town to run some errands while William was napping and Jacob was holding down the fort.  With only two children along, it was rather relaxing! 

Sunday we had 21 for dinner.  My mom, her husband Greg, my brother Matthew, Dode's grandparents, his Aunt Viv and Uncle Dave, his sister Sheri and her husband Joel along with their 4 kids.  We had a nice dinner of lasagna, pork tenderloin, chinese chicken salad, rolls, brocoflower, and two desserts.  Poor Dode had agreed to make me dessert for mother's day.  He wanted to really spoil me so he made homemade chocolate ice cream too.  He spent hours Saturday making the two items, with lots of requests for help with techniques and where to find ingredients.  Last night, after waiting all day, we tasted his ice cream.  It was a recipe I'd made several times, made using the same ingredients I use but the results were just not the same.  It tasted very strange, but after all that work, I ate it.  The texture was wonderful, very smooth and creamy, but the flavor was off.  I felt bad that after all his hard work his ice cream was "not worth the calories" and as I lay in bed, I tried to brainstorm what had gone wrong.  Dode figured it out this morning when he went to make french toast for the kids.  As he poured in the vanilla for the french toast, he noticed that it didn't smell like vanilla.  He was using maple extract.  He realized he'd used the same bottle for the desserts he'd made on Saturday.  Maybe a little maple with chocolate would be ok, but the amount he used didn't taste like maple at all, it just tasted wrong!  Both desserts he'd spent the day making ended up in the trash.  I felt so badly for him. 

 I was also pretty dissapointed.  Dode says there was steam coming out of my ears when I learned the dessert was terrible.  When he'd started making ice cream on Saturday, I'd made sure he knew that what I really wanted was triple layer chocolate mousse cake.  He assured me that he was going to make it as well as the ice cream, and he did make one, it just didn't quite turn out.  There was just enough time before church for me to whip up another one and as I hurried through the steps, I suppose I wasn't the sweetest most patient person in  the room as family members kept asking me questions and making demands on my time for things they could very much do on their own.   I also whipped up a cheesecake I decided we needed since we found out Saturday night that we were having Dode's family over for dinner too.  I was literally pulling the cheesecake out of the oven as I went out the door for church.   Dode says I was so mad at him I wouldn't sit by him at church.  The whole story was that the bishop's wife was out of town and his four kids were on the bench behind us doing what siblings will do when no parent is around, pinching, pushing, fighting so I sent Dode back to sit with them.  We had quite a treat in Relief Society as the 16-17 year old boys (mine included) came in to sing to us.  I sure feel sorry for those other mothers who have sons without smiles as wonderful as my son's smile.

same size bottle,

same color liquid,

very different flavors!