Sooo Funny

My little sister Amanda just bought her first house and she spent today tearing all the lovely wood paneling and faux bricks off one of the walls. So she filled the back of the truck with all the junk and went to the dump. Meanwhile, at our house, Jeff has been begging all day to go to Oliver's new house and help but he had to do his chores first so by the time he finished Amanda had left for the dump already and he was mad that he couldn't go over but I explained that he can't go over because Amanda and Oliver went to the dump. Anyways, (Ryan is totally going to say this is way too long) Amanda and Oliver just came back and Jeff immediately asked. "Did you guys get some furniture for your new house?" To which Amanda said, "No." And then Jeffey said, "You mean you didn't find ANYTHING at the dump?"

He is for sure our child, we don't ever pay retail.

Rant

Ryan and I had a discussion on the phone earlier today and it kind of irked me. He, with the best of intentions and with love behind it, sort of implied that I'm a lazy bum because my exercise regime has taken a serious nose dive in the past couple of weeks. While I did "exercise" today it was short and, I'll admit, I wasn't completely "into" it, but, hey, I did it.

Well, I thought a lot about it since then while I've been cleaning and I ranted a lot to myself and here is one of the reasons I've fallen behind:

That's right folks, it is a shoebox full of junk. Why did I so carefully put all this junk in this shoebox? Because I am going to teach my kids a lesson today (not like the lessons in Arrested Development though, although if anyone knows a one armed man let me know, I may have a job for him.) I am going to show them this shoebox full of junk and tell them that this is why their mother is easily winded and can't do pushups and if they want me to live a long and healthy life they will quit shoving candy wrappers and trash into the couch because it makes me have to spend a half hour mucking all the garbage out from under and around the couch and it makes me bitter. My children (actually, just Leah) think they are sneaky thieves when actually they are just plain old thieves. I know what they are up to! Argh.

Back to the point, if I have one. I truly love having the opportunity to stay at home and be a homemaker for our family. I enjoy making sure everyone has clean clothes to wear and good food to eat and a tidy home to live in. But a line is going to be drawn. I'm going to explain about what is reasonable and what is currently going on around here and how those two things need to become friends with each other.

Wish me luck.

Mermaid

I've got one mermaid costume mostly done, the other two need more work. But here is Alana the mermaid, there will be more stuff added but this is the basic dealy. Whew.

Progress Report

I'm sure you all were dying to know how my projects are going but whether you were or not I'm going to tell you. Here's a picture of the tails! Aren't they pretty? I had to take them all apart and put them back together since the last time you saw them but in everything I do I like to take 6 or 7 steps back and one tiny step forward. But today I got to take a bigger step forward by quilting them. I quilted. I'm a quilter. With much help, hand holding and needle breaking my dear mother-in-law, Arnon, helped me to quilt these bad boys. They turned out really pretty and now I'm going to take a closer look at the quilts she made for each of our children and appreciate them even more because I'm here to say, that stuff is tricky! Thank you so much Arnon, you are a lifesaver!

Where would we be without our dear mothers? Nowhere! These darling tops were sewn by my mom, Valerie, and I am ever so grateful that I didn't have to get involved because she pretty much made up the pattern and they turned out so cute. The girls love them and I think they are adorable too. You rock Mom!

So now I just have to do the tail skirt things and maybe someday we'll see a finished product. Whew!

Here's my beautiful washcloth that I finished at knitting class last night. It is a stunningly ugly bit of knitting, but I will treasure it. Next week I'm attempting yet another wash cloth. Wish me luck! Knitting class is fun.

And, here are our chickens. The brown ones are the ones that we hatched from eggs, there are five of them and they are pretty cute and nice. They should start laying in a couple of months, we can't tell yet if any of them are roosters, none of them seem particularly noisy so maybe we lucked out and only have hens. . . But then, do I really need NINE chickens?

Torturing Myself

So I decided to make Halloween costumes for a select number of my children (I'll let the boys wear sheets and be ghosts or something). Amanda, my loving sister who sews fantastical costumes every year for her darling Oliver, convinced me I could handle it. Then she trots merrily off to work every day and leaves me holding the needle. Nice. So I'm making mermaid costumes for my daughters. Leah is green, Tessa is pink, Alana is purple. Here's a picture of their fins. There will be more stuff added to them in the near future.

Those loopy things with the colors on them are handles for them to hold their little fins which will be attached to their skirts that will look like mermaid tails (fingers crossed). My Mom who loves me is making the girls tops since the pattern had them wearing halter-tops. Mom is adding sleeves. She's a genius. So it's not like I have that hard a job, just make the tails but I've already messed up and had to go back and fix it. The thing is, apparently you're supposed to read the directions and follow them step by step. Who knew?

If they turn out cute I'll take pictures and you all can see them. The girls are excited about them, hopefully that will last until at least after the Halloween parties and trick-or-treating.

And then, I took up knitting this week. I'm a first timer. Our Relief Society had a knitting class on Tuesday and I'm making a wash cloth. It is very ugly. Who knows why I chose green multi colored yarn to make a wash cloth. Everyone knows that moldy looking wash cloths are just the thing! So if you get a mossy looking bit of knitting from me for Christmas, it was knitted with love, and frustration.

Ctrl

I found this show called Ctrl on the Hulu and Ryan and I really liked it. You should watch it too. It's 10, 5 minute episodes so it won't take long to watch but it is dang funny. Hulu only has the most recent 3 episodes but NBC has all of them on it's website.

(Yes, it's Buster from Arrested Development, he has both his hands now)

Crazy Hair Day

If you look closely you can see Jeffy's ponytails. He has four down the middle like a mowhawk. As I was putting them in he was reminiscing about the last time he wore a ponytail when it was for medicinal purposes. He is funny.

Jeff called Leah "Little Orphan Annie" but Leah said her hair should be red. We'll work on that for next year. My dear Mother helped me tie all the girls hair up in rags last night before bed. Thank you Mom! It would have taken me ages!

Tessa was much more pleased than she seems in this picture with the effect. Oliver didn't want to let me do anything to his hair, but he let Jeffey do some stuff to him. It's down on half and up on the other half. Pretty wacky, eh?

Alana was happy with her do until I started to pull the curls apart for a fluffier look, but you'll see what happened after that in a second. . .

Here's the back of their little melons.

Alana was a bit distressed about her hairstyle until I put a headband on her head and reminded her that it was Crazy Hair Day after all!

Good times.