First Day of School for Maddy 2012

So this year at Overlake Elementary, Madeline has Mrs. Orr and she is not excited about it.  She calls Mrs. Orr the mean teacher.  So in order to help her get excited for the new school year I had a special breakfast.  We had chocolate chip pancakes, scrambled eggs, breakfast sausage, oranges and orange juice.

As you can see from her natural smile, she loved breakfast and I think it really helped her be excited about going to school this morning.

 

Isaac really enjoyed his breakfast too although he was disappointed when I reminded him that school for him doesn't start until next Tuesday.  Overlake has what they call Kindergarten Tea on the day before the official start day so that the kids have a chance to meet their new teacher and be introduced to their new classmates.  Its a super cute idea and I think it helps the kids adjust to not being with mom all day.  Now if they would just implement all-day kindergarten . . .

The one thing that did put a smile on Isaac's face was that we are going back to the school for some testing to see where his skills are so they can assign him a teacher.  Ms. Canaday, who was Madeline's 1st grade teacher, has been moved to Kindergarten, so its entirely possible that she will have my kids two years in a row.  Poor girl.

The headband you see above, I made.  Thank you.  Its was crocheted and then I sewed on some elastic so that it would be a bit stretchy.  Its hard to tell from the cruddy light but it matched her shirt perfectly.

This is Mrs. Orr, Maddy's 2nd grade teacher.  We got there a bit early this morning because I wanted to make sure that we beat most of the rush of the first day.  Apparently, there were lots of other moms with the same idea so there was quite the crowd waiting outside.  Mrs. Orr was standing at her room door so we took the opportunity to snap this pic and she welcomed all her new kids to class.  Maddy found her desk pretty quickly.

Looks like from the stack of books on her desk that she is going to be doing a lot of learning this year!

Look what an expert job Isaac did of taking our picture!  I gave her a hug and kiss and wished her a good day.  Then Isaac had his turn.  I hope she does really well this year, and I'm sure given the chance, she'll come to see that Mrs. Orr isn't mean.

Happy Halloween 2011

This year was a lot of fun.  Seth is almost 6 months old so he's not trying to walk yet and was content to stay in the stroller and Maddy and Isaac are old enough to get Halloween and why its so fun.



This year Maddy was a rock and roll witch.  Isaac was Luigi from Mario Brothers (I made the hat and overalls for less than $4 - take that cheap crap Walmart $20 costume!).  Seth was a bumblebee.  I was, well, I'm not sure what I was.  A barmaid from ancient days?  A swedish milk maid?  Take your pick. 

Let us give a moment of silence for the bumblebee costume.  Seth is my last child and so this is the last year the costume will be worn by one of my children.  All of them have had their turn.

 

Sherri came with us this year with her kids.  I think that made it fun for me to have her there but definitely fun for the kids to have kids their own age to run to people's houses with.  Except their exuberance bubbled forth a bit too much.  I'm not sure how many times Sherri and I got after them - "You only ring the doorbell once!"  "Not all of you need a turn knocking on the door."  "If they haven't answered the door after a minute, they're probably not home.  You don't need to alternately ring the doorbell and knock on the door to make sure!"

Then we all went back to my house and had a small party.  I made some kicking beef stew.  I had also attempted a punch - pineapple juice, frozen limeade, ginger ale, sugar and a packet of lemon lime koolaid.  It was good but tart.  And then there was Jack who got really excited about the dry ice.  He kept dumping it in until our punch was essential a slush.  It was kinda cool how that worked though.  I made the kids mummy dogs - hot dogs wrapped in strips of canned creasant rolls.  What a success!  Even my picky eater (Isaac) ate the whole thing!  Sherri made this awesome homemade bean dip with black beans, with home made guacamole on top with lines of sour cream.  I have to say - a complete triumph!

Everyone went home stuffed and sticky and it was a good year.

Maddy's Jammies

I love Pinterest.  I found this tutorial for turning an adult sized sweater into a dress for a baby girl.  But the concept of the dress is pretty simple.  So on Monday, Maddy comes home from school to announce that her class has won a pajama day at school.  Its going to be on Wednesday.  Well, slight problem.  She doesn't really have any jammies that appropriately fit her and we have no money.  But I do have tons of fabric, and some flannel that I kept telling myself I was going to do something with.  Well, with no time, and no pattern that could easily be done in a day and a half, I thought about that tutorial.  Seemed simple enough - cut a-line body, do a peasant style sleeve and neckline, sew a bias tube around the neck-line and use elastic to tighten up the neckline until it fits just right.  Here's what I made:

 

The neckline was probably done up a little too tightly but it still fit perfectly!  And can you believe it, it only took about 2 hours to do the whole thing, including ironing up my own bias tape at the neckline!

And then there was Seth . . .

Because I'm so behind, I'm not going to do a retrospective on Seth since he was born.  We'll just move on from here.  Plus, I'm going to be using this mostly as a forum for Mom and Dad to see pictures of the kids more often since Mom has an easier time using her email than her Facebook.

I took a few pics today because I wanted Mom to see some stuff!  Original, I know.  But here goes.

She never got to see what Seth's blanket and sheet set that she made looked like in his crib.  Unfortunately, the length of elastic in the crib sheet she made to go with the blanket was not long enough to allow me to put it on his mattress, so I may have to correct that some time myself.  But I did have another clean crib sheet in white that works just as well.  Here is Seth laying on top of this super-duper cute blanket!


 

And without binkie and mysteriously disappearing arms:

   

I love him.

Santa Babies

Yes Isaac's eyes are closed. We would have had the lady take another picture but he was already not excited to be as close to Santa as he was, even with the rocking horse incentive, so we called it good. At least this Santa didn't looked a like a Lester Molester like last year's.

For Aunt Peggy

Unprompted, Maddy drew this this morning:


The dress she made me draw for her but everything else is all Madeline!

I Made That!

This is not only a really cute layout I made with Photoshop, but it also show the new outfits I made for the kids for our upcoming trip to Grandma's and Grandpa's. I did not make the shirts but I did applique them and I made the shorts to match. I do have to warn you that this layout was totally scraplifted from a layout I saw in Creating Keepsakes so I can't take very much credit for the design.

Oh and wonder of wonders! Isaac is now finally loving the camera. It was nearly impossible to get him to smile at the camera because I think he was too fascinated with it to smile, but now he runs around going "CHEESE!" So cute!

First Digital Scrapbook Page Attempt

Done today with Photoshop Elements 7. I'm slowly falling in love!!