Sew Cute!

Kyrie has gotten interested in sewing lately. Her interest began with the lacing cards we sometimes use during our homeschool lessons. Lately, she has gotten really good with the lacing and has had her eye on a bear kit that she got as a gift. I did not think that she was quite ready for the bear kit, so I found an easier sewing project that I had tucked away. (I have a couple drawerfuls of crafting projects that I have collected for the kids through the years.) She got a new set of lacing cards for her birthday, so I told her that if she completed all of them correctly then she could do the sewing project I had for her. Of course, she did all the lacing cards and excitedly started working on her sewing project (with Degen excitedly calling out "where's my project?"). It took her about a half hour to stitch all the way around the bunny and then she stuffed it, helped cut out the accent pieces and glued them on. It turned out very nicely, and she was proud of her work. Now, I will have to keep my eye out for more simple sewing kits like this...and some projects for Degen, too!

Super Times at Super Games

Kyrie has wanted to go back to Super Games, a large inflatables play room, almost as soon as we left from our last visit. Unfortunately, they have a limited open play schedule. Luckily, on a very busy day we had a few hours that we needed something to do nearby and they had an open play time that fit perfectly with our schedule. So between our morning nature program and Kyrie's afternoon Girl Scout meeting, we headed to jump, jump, jump!

The kids were very excited and had a ton of fun! The inflatables were the most fun, but Kyrie also climbed the cargo net and Degen fell in love with the air hockey table. The big excitement of the day occured while I was with Degen playing air hockey and Kyrie was off jumping. A woman came around inquiring who was the mother of the little girl with glasses because she was "having some trouble." I went to the inflatable where a small crowd had gathered and saw that both of Kyrie's legs were stuck in a hole (some mischievous boys had removed a play element from the inflatable and Kyrie jumped right into the hole which closed tight around her legs trapping her). The muscled man attending the play area was trying his best to pull her from the hole. My brave girl didn't tear up once until she was placed in my arms. The attendant said that he couldn't believe she hadn't cried. She kept telling him, "just pull me out." He said that he had never seen a kid get stuck like that before.

Well, after our big excitement, we went right on back to playing. It was fun to watch the kids climb and jump and play. They are a great team and made their way through several obstacle course inflatables, cheering each other on along the way! I am glad I had the camera and could catch a few pictures of all our fun!

Mother's Day Card 2012

Here is our Mother's Day project this year! The kids enjoyed making this card- I am not sure why it is always such a kick to have your hand traced, but they love it. I went digging through all my old scrapbook supplies to find pretty paper and forgotten stickers. I found the idea for this on Pinterest (like you had to ask), and it does not need much explanation. I traced both kids hands and then put them together so that the fingertips made a heart (or as good a heart as we could get). We added the letters and the kids used stickers to decorate the outside. It was a simple and fun project, and we hope that it brought a smile to the special women in our lives whom we love very much!

Spend Awhile On the Nile

Kyrie's spring show with the children's choir at Linworth Baptist Church was "Spend Awhile On the Nile." Rehearsals started in January, and, as always, the choir director and kids spent a lot of time (Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings & 2 Saturday afternoons) rehearsing this show.

I like this picture, especially because of the kid playing Joseph!

The show is about the stories of Joseph and Moses. Kyrie listened to her show CD every night in preparation, heard the Bible stories, learned Bible verses related to the stories and still wanted more. I ended up purchasing the movies "Prince of Egypty" and "Joseph, King of Dreams" for her, too. She watched these movies all the time, especially right after we got them. Rehearsals for this show occurred during Passover, so it was nice that she could make the connection to that holiday when we covered it during our Spring Celebrations unit.

This song, "Poor, Poor Pharoah," was a crowd pleaser and the kids loved it, too. Kyrie looks cute in her sunglasses (and that oh-so serious expression).

Kyrie really took this show very seriously. It was hard for me to get pictures of her smiling because when she wasn't singing, she was intently looking at the choir director. This year, they put on two shows (Saturday & Sunday evening). Darren was out of the country on business, so he could not attend, but Degen & I were there for both performances. You could tell there were still a few kinks to work out in the Saturday show, but by Sunday evening those kids had it done and put on a really good show!

A shot of the entire cast and their cool set!

Kyrie post-show, obviously distracted!

As always, we are so proud of Kyrie and the effort she puts forth into learning the music and the choreography for these shows. She told me that she was trying more than she ever had before to watch the choir director and do everything right. And she really did do a great job!

And, of course, Degen has to do everything that big sister does! It won't be too much longer before he can join the shows!

Kitchen Remodel II

I was really pleased with how quickly demo seemed to be going last week, so, of course, it makes sense that it would come to a screeching halt by the end of the week. Our contractor kept getting shocked when he was trying to deal with the ceiling joists. Unfortunately, we could not get the electricians out to the house until this Friday so there was no work done all week. This was disappointing, but in a way it was kind of nice to have the house to ourselves and no increase in the dust the demo work causes. The electricians made it out Friday and got the electrical pulled so that work will resume on Monday. They will return at the end of next week to get the electrical roughed in. We will also have the plumber out next week to rough in that plumbing, including what I hope will be an easy addition of pipes for the new sink we plan to add to the kitchenette. The contractor said that after the electrical and plumbing are roughed in they will be ready to dry wall and things will move quickly after that. Fingers crossed!

Kitchen Remodel I

Okay, so we have been busy preparing the kitchen & dining room for destruction this past few weeks. I have to say that packing it all up was not nearly as bad as I would have expected. We sealed up about 10 boxes of non-essential items (including dishes) and moved the rest of it down to the makeshift kitchen we created in the basement. You can see in the photo above that we have pretty much everything we would need for most cooking. We keep a jug of water downstairs, use disposable dishes and I wash any other dishes in the bathroom sink. So far, the meals we have eaten have been pretty normal (thank you, Crock-Pot and toaster oven).

These photos are the last looks of the kitchen & dining room. I hope you enjoy them, folks, because these rooms as they appear in these photos are long gone!

This was demo, day 1. The dining room was the first room to go. This space used to be a breezeway/porch between the garage (you can see its outer wall on the left) and the house. We are having the ceiling raised to the height of the rest of the house and the "kitchenette" space will become an integrated part of the final kitchen design. Of course, right off the bat we found out that there will be a 2 foot section of the ceiling (in the kitchenette) that will have to remain as a soffitt because it is supporting the roof. Otherwise, most of the demo seemed to go well. The photo below shows the exposed ceiling beams and attic space above.

This was demo, day 2, in which they removed all the cabinets. Behind one set of cabinets, they found an outlet and a vent. I think I am a little surprised that they did not find worse. Looking at the photo above, you can imagine the upper wall is gone and cabinets on the bottom. As I type this (demo, day 3) they are tearing down the kitchen soffits and plaster ceiling. We will have a consult with an electrician at the end of the this week. I am trying not to get freaked out by the banging, crashing and debris that is on the other side of the plastic door...I am trying to focus on the beautiful new cabinets waiting at the warehouse for us and the other decisions & purchases we still need to make.

Urban Oasis

The Orchard. We lost a few trees over the winter that Darren replaced this spring.

Here are the photos of the yard, as promised. Darren has just done a phenomenal amount of  work to turn this greenspace into our space! He spends hours & hours every weekend working on the yard, whether it is weekly maintenance or working on projects. This man has made our yard as much of our home as any room in the house. I am really proud of him!

Here is the "completed" garden. There's still a lot to be done before we achieve our final vision, but the beds are (mostly) built and filled and planting has begun. Darren spent part of last weekend building tomato cages and he plans to sink poles and create a climbing fence for cucumbers and squash along the back beds. In the photo below, you can see the berry bushes that he has planted around the beds. He has planted blueberry, blackberry, raspberry and currant bushes around several of the beds. He will enclose these bush beds with rounded boards.

Several months ago, Darren built a compost pile behind the shed. I LOVE composting! I am a big believer in conservation, and though we were already recycling more waste than we tossed, we are now throwing away even less because we are adding (appropriate) food waste to the compost pile instead of throwing it in the trash can. We are now only producing about one (30 gal.) garbage can of trash every 3-4 weeks with all the rest of our waste being recycled or composted. We will also get the benefit of producing nutrient-rich compost for our garden beds!

This is the area between the fruit trees and the fire pit. We only recently cleared it of a large pile of wood chips & soil. I would love for Darren to create a natural play area for the kids using part of this space. We have a large pile of logs, some of which are quite large, that I think we could use to make a nice climbing area. I would also like to add a pebble pit, and we have already been looking at that big, horizontal branch to build a lookout platform. Another thing that we need to do is get our well up & running so that we can run a line back to the garden for the summer months. There is always something to do!