School happenings

I love hearing bits and pieces of conversations from the children when I drop the boys off. Mostly I hear them at Jamison’s because I walk in with him.

Picture day came to preschool and we spent the night before deciding which colorful t-shirt we are going to wear. We decided on the green one with a dragon after much debate.

When we walked in on picture day we see all the little girls wearing their prettiest dresses. Then our friend Andre comes in behind us and he is wearing dress pants and an argyle sweater vest. Another little boy is wearing dress pants, button down shirt and a tie. He looks at Jamison and says “Jamison it is picture day what are you doing.” Jamison says “I’m going with this look.”

Today we walk in and hear “All I heard yesterday was Jamison, Jamison, Jamison.” I can’t see who is talking or who they are talking to. I look at Jamison and say “That better be a good thing or there had better be another little person named Jamison.” (Sunday School has a little girl named Jameson.) Linda the teacher says “It’s a good thing.” The mom turns and said “Yes my girls really like Jamison and they want him to come have a play date.” Jamison said “I could come over after school today. How about that?”

I have to watch him all the time with those little girls.

My Personal Best

I finished a ½ marathon on Saturday. I averaged 16 min per mile and finished in 3 hours and 34 minutes. This is a personal best. Of course, this was my first ½ marathon so any time would be my personal best. Now I know some are looking and saying that’s not very fast but I was walking not running and I think darn good. So keep any negative comments to your self unless you have completed one and you did better than I did. No even if you did complete one, be quite and let me ride on my personal high! Next year I will do better than 30th place. I have a goal for next year of finishing in the TOP half not the bottom. Do you want to join me?

Conversation with Jamison

I came home from Girl’s Night and asked Jamison how school was here is what he said.

“Mama, I have the girl I am going to marry and it isn’t Ella.”

Me “She’s from Preschool?”

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know her name.”

“You don’t know her name? Then why are you going to marry her?”

“She asked me to and I like her so I said yes.”

Don’t we wish life could be this simple?

Great Accomplishment

This weekend our family became part of the Guinness Book of World Records! It was a long hard road to get there but we did it. I am so proud of our never give up attitude.


Here is how we did it. We drove to the ice rink on Saturday at 10 a.m., where we sat visiting and checking out a couple snakes for an hour. During this time, about 650 more people joined us. Then at 11, we sat through the best part of Chemistry class. You know that part, where you mix things and they bubble out of the test tubes. Or, they explode we even saw fire balls in the air thanks to Hydrogen and Carbon dioxide mixed with a little heat. For the finale, they combined Nitrogen, a giant garbage can and 2,880 ping pong balls to give us a bang followed by an shower of ping pong balls.

Since there was, only around 650 people we thought our chances of winning one of the 5 Ipad 2s that they were giving away were pretty good. At last, we are still without the elusive Ipad not that they didn’t get extremely close to our numbers they were only 11 away from my number and 3 from Jamison’s. If they would have just been dyslexic and called 2087 instead of 2078 we would have one. Make sure you buy the book so you can see us in there under the Largest Chemistry lesson given. Thanks, Grout for an entertaining morning.

I Promise

Campbell I promise to have your quilt done by my birthday! I have been working on this quilt for over a year. Not daily! Off and on with a lot of OFF. My loving brother met Mary at a gas station in Des Moines on Friday to get it for me. Thank you Dirk! Now I have to do the binding and then it is complete. So my promise and I want all of you to hold me to it is that I will have this quilt done on or before May 3rd. I really wanted to do quilts for my nephews for their graduations but I realize that I might keel over with the time frame I would be under. They might have got them for their collage graduation. Maybe if I start now on Abby's I could get it done. I always get nervous on each step. The cutting especially and then the backing was horrible on Campbell's. Not that it is ugly and I did a bad job. Just me sitting down to actually do it. I had the backing since September. I could have done it a long time ago. But one of these days I might actually use my craft room for projects such as these. Remember May 3rd quilt will be done!

My Crafty World

I went on my 3rd annual quilt retreat with my friend Natalie at the beginning of the month. Can I tell you how much I love these ladies, besides them giving you valuable tips there are a couple of sets that give me a glimpse of what I am going to be like when I am older. (Some of you should be scared.) Natalie will be taking care of me like Rose takes care of Phyllis. I still haven’t figured out which one is Natalie and which one I am but Cindy and Mickey sure do remind me of us too. Cindy was missing this year so we only had one part of the comedy team.

I brought 7 projects to work on at the retreat. One I had started at the retreat last year so it is high time I got that quilt done. Campbell will be excited when it comes back and he can put it on his bed because as we speak it is being quilted. I had another quilt to work on too but I decided to try to complete the other projects before working on that. I had the apron cut out except for the ties. I cut them out and sewed the apron together and that was my first PROJECT DONE.

Campbell’s quilt back was my 2nd PROJECT DONE.

I had a Christmas purse that I had to complete the handles and put grommets in so it looks more like a sack purse. It was voted that the grommets made the purse in the picture look cheap so I should leave them off. Handles were put on and PROJECT DONE.

Mom wanted a little purse for golfing. I had a pattern that used a fat quarter. PROJECT DONE.

I had a two hour Tulip Purse pattern that I want to use for my camera bag. But I wanted to actually make the purse before I decided. I bought Easter fabric for my test project. This was perfect since the purse looks like an Easter basket. After a few set backs PROJECT DONE. Now a few tweaks to the pattern and I should have a nice camera bag.

I have this really cool quilt tote that is all cut out but boy do I have problems with the instructions so this project was out and then put away 3 times.

When I came home and showed the boys what was made Jamison wanted an apron too. So that Monday night him and I whipped one up. Okay he watched for a while asking what he could do to help. I supervised him ironing and then he pressed the foot pedel for a little bit before he was bored. I love his almost as much as I do mine. But they both need to be longer ones. I think I can make those too. We will see one of these days.

Old Age Has Struck

Brian that is, not me. Last Wednesday, I get home and the garage door is wide open. This only happens in the winter time when Brian knows that I am coming home in about 5 minutes. I walk in and Brian is starting dinner. In our “how was your day conversation?” he tells me that he just picked up Jamison. It is six and daycare closes at 5:30. He was talking to a friend and thought it looked like it was 5 out when it was really 5:30 so he had to call daycare and tell her that he would be late. Jamison took it in stride.

Fast forward to yesterday. I get a call from Jamison’s preschool teacher at 3:45 that Jamison is still there. I fly over to pick him up and when I talk to Brian he said his dad was picking him up. Must have thought he was picking him up at daycare. Jamison told Brian “Thursday you need to pick me up early so I am at school the same amount of time.” This child is smarter than he lets me think! I really hope he doesn’t start getting a complex. He seems to be the one we forget. He hasn’t ever been left somewhere where the police get involved but as it gets more frequent I begin to wonder. This child is a talker so how do we keep doing this? And yes, these two times are not the first. I will swear up and down that the 1st time was Brian’s fault too!

Inanimate objects do not move

I know this seems obvious to all of us but Jamison is having a problem with this lately. You will remember a few posts ago how the swing won. Well, last week he ran in to the banister for our stairs. The banister has been there since before he was. Then Monday morning we found out that he was 42 inches tall. This was not met with excitement it was found out by crying and tears and sobbing breaths. Jamison came running out to eat his breakfast and smacked into the edge of the bar countertop. Just last week he was tall enough to still stand up under it and barely brush the top of his hair on it. Not on Monday. He was tall enough to put a scratch on his head and need ice while he ate breakfast. Not even Mom kisses could handle this one. It was ice and dad tsking that did it. Plus the mention of "If you did that you must be tall enough to ride the roller coaster at Adventureland!" "Yeah dad I must be let's go this weekend! I'll scream like a girl." Crisis over.

Obsession

I do not think Brian realizes how obsessed I am with getting my craft room done. I would let my family go on vacation with out me for a week. I would even let them go to Disneyland without me if I could work on it without interruption, not Disney World but Disneyland. However, I can’t do that yet because my husband won’t go pick up my countertop. Darn winter blizzards and snowmobile trips.
At any given moment, my brain is laying out ways that I can organize this room. How should I store this? How about that? These questions are going through my head continuously. I can’t get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night because my brain will wake up and start plotting. I think I will be obsessed with this room until it is done now that it is so close to being completed. If I had more time built up in my time off pool, I would take a day to get it straightened out and then I would create and create.

ORGANIZATION

I said this on Facebook and want to repeat it. ORGANIZATION is my word of the year. I am going to flush this out a little more here. Sorry this might be of no interest to you but I have found that if I write things out I tend to get them done in a little more detail. Every 2 months I am going to focus on one room and organize that to the best of my abilities and get everything in its place. If there is something that does not belong in that room that I can’t part with I will move it to a box in my spare room for 6 months and if I haven’t found a home for it by then it will be removed from the house. I will be ruthless in throwing/giving things away that we don’t use anymore or have never used. I will not buy unnecessary things just because I might use in the future. I will spend 10 minutes every night picking up things out of place.

Of course the room I am starting with is my craft room since I will have the cupboard for that by Saturday. Hopefully, I will get my counter top on Friday too. It’s been ordered and hopefully it comes in this week. Then Brian has to get to work on Sunday. I want it done by Monday night so I can start filling the cupboards and maybe find the bed in my spare room (just in case it is needed).
So help me out if you go shopping with me make sure I put nothing in my cart that is unnecessary or just make sure I put nothing in my cart. I’ll keep you posted on this.

I Have a Confession

Here it goes. . . I like some country music. There I said it. It is now out in the open. Although I would still prefer to say I like Southern Rock. (I’m still in denial) Those of you that have known me for a while will remember me saying “Country is so twangy, it hurts my ears.” And I still don’t like the twangy Country. The kind I like are the ones that boarder on Rock/Rap and Country. Artists like Big & Rich, The Zac Brown Band, Gretchen Wilson, Carrie Underwood and Christian Kane. I REALLY like Christian Kane! The Zac Brown Band song “Toes” has me thinking of Cancun and big margaritas. Check them out and I think you might add at least one song to your iPod too. But make sure you can download the cover too so you can stare at Christian Kane while he sings to you. Just remember me if you ever have a chance to go see him.