Animals gone wild

"Left paw blue..."



Oh hurry up already!!! I'm tired of spinning!

Bad spinner, bad spinner.

Dumb cats. I think I'm just going to sit here in mom's pile of freshly washed, warm, new polar fleece. She won't mind a little more fuzz on her fabric...

I kid you not. This was the scene I walked in on a couple of days ago. It started to scare me! It was like I walked in on the toys and they forgot to play dead like they do in Toy Story. Who knew cats liked to play Twister? And Sophie hates the cats so what was she doing watching??? They are all a bunch of posers! What would my blog be if I don't show some animal picture at least once a week? I think they consume way too much of my life. It's a sickness.

Christmas festivities

Hey! I actually remembered to snap a couple of pictures at my Christmas party. Of course, it's of the kids. They don't have issues with pictures being taken of them like adults do...well like I do. My mom helped the kids make Christmas blocks. I didn't realize that I don't have a picture of them all aglow and now they are packed up for next year! Oops! The kids loved having them in their rooms. They are glass blocks that are use in bathrooms and as dividers that my dad drilled a hole in. Then you shove a strand of lights through the hole and decorate the outside of the block. Viola! A cute little Christmas decoration!

We had a cookie decorating area in the garage for the kids. They went nuts putting toppings on and ate up a sugary storm! Then the dog went around and cleaned up every sprinkle and candy piece within her reach.

Sadly, there is no evidence of any adults here, but there were quite a few of them here...they were in the house eating sushi with Chris. He busted out the sushi gear and made up some appetizers for everyone to try. I stayed in cookie land. Yum! Mike(my BIL) made a pot of spicy chili to cut the sweet overload. We also did a little cookie/candy exchange and although I'd like to say I passed out the little boxes of cookies that I made up...we ate it. All of it. THATS why my pants are tight and I'm slowly coming down off of my Christmas sugar high. I feel yucky!

holiday hello

I've been a little distant from blog land as of late. We've been enjoying our first holiday season in our new house. It's been filled with baking, eating, gifting, talking, sleeping, and learning when I do and don't fit in to my present surroundings or company. It all rounded up nicely with a 2 day headache and waking up this morning to find out that we were out of propane. It's a bit nippy in the house. We'll just forget that I asked Chris to check the propane levels a couple of weeks ago, twice. We're new to propane as we had city gas before. I'm sure it always happens on the weekend too when the propane company is closed. I won't grumble about our electric water heater anymore, since we can still take hot showers. The propane company is supposed to come by once a month to check the tank, and I've seen him drive by twice in the last 3 months but never once did he stop. I think they forgot about us! I'll soon be looking like the kid in Christmas Story, unable to put my arms down. It's already down to 62 in the house so I'm sure it will be in the 50's in here by morning. Yikes! The kids think it's going to be fun to sleep by the fire place. I just wish it had a blower or wasn't just for show. Most of the heat goes up the chimney. I'll spend the next couple of posts showing our December pictures and trying to catch up on our winter break happenings.


We've had a couple of cold snaps this month and a couple of snow flurries. Too bad nothing stuck. My hummingbird feeder was frozen though!

The kids were so desparate for snow that they put on their snow gear and were making frost angels.

Goobers. Hope everyone had a nice Christmas!

BABIES!!!

We finally had baby chicks this morning!!! The kids came in screaming and couldn't wait for me to get some out for them to hold. I had to distract the mom while putting her in a new enclosure in the chicken yard and swipe them up quick before she started pecking at me. She was kind of ticked! The other girls are quite curious and circle the cage to see what the peeping is.

So far there are 4 out and 2 eggs left to go. She had 3 taken away from her by momma #1 and I cracked one open to see if there were any babies still alive as it had been quite a while since she started sitting on them. I was concerned that they were dead. That's another story and needless to say it wasn't dead. The kids got a good lesson in farm life and I felt bad. Good times, good times.

Now the kids are in heaven! Hopefully I'll get some pictures soon. I decided to let momma#2 get settled again. She was busy rearranging the bedding and trying to get everyone warm again. Hopefully they'll make another appearance this afternoon.

VACATION HERE I COME!!!

One nice thing about working at the kid's school is having the same schedule that they do. That means I get ALL of the vacations that they do too! After this past week I need it too! Talk about a bunch of wound up kids. We could have harnessed the energy and powered a small town! I don't have any pictures to post, just thoughts to ponder. One was what to do when I'm driving home from the gym at 6:30am when it's still dark and 29 degrees outside and a small light comes on in the dash. It's one I've never seen before...let me show you...(!). That was what it was...(!). What the...well, what does that mean? Is it really necessary for a car to have 25 different symbols on the dash to tell you when it's got it's panties in a wad? I like my truck. Low oil, change oil, check engine, etc. It just tells me in WORDS on the readout on the dash. There was no way I was pulling over to check what (!) means. Isn't an exclamation to come at the END OF A SENTENCE? Where is the rest of the warning? I know what the oil symbol is and the temp is. Those are universal. So, when I got home I checked out the owner's manual. Oh, poor baby. It means the tire pressure is low. Ok, if it's going to be that picky it needs to just talk to me, you know, in William Shatner's voice. Ma'am, your tire pressure is...low. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, you know? When it's warm outside the (!) goes away. Aww, it doesn't like being cold with low tire pressure...only warm. Maybe I should laminate a card with all of it's symbols on it for quick reference. Naa, that would be way too anal. Well, that was my moment to myself. Now it's off to do a project with the kids. The frustrating part of vacation...it's really not a "vacation" since I become a source of entertainment for the next 2 weeks. At least I get to sit around and not shower if I want to...

more chicken drama

I had another momma(we'll call her momma #2) chicken given to me that is currently sitting on her nest of eggs. Don't worry, my squirrel chasing cat is "guarding" her for me. I thought the momma was kicking out dead eggs since we would find a couple sitting on the ground out of her nest all cold. Then I found momma #1 get in her nest and peck at her until she moved over to let her steal some eggs to peck at. She was trying to kill the babies! What a snot! So, I had to move Momma #2 to a make shift cage outside of the coop so the chickens would leave her alone. On to part 2: She's been sitting on the eggs for about a month and typically the chicks hatch at 21 days so now I'm thinking she was off of her eggs for too long and they died. When I shook the cold ones there is definitely something solid in there so I know they were fertilized but somehow they didn't survive. Too bad. The kids were so excited too. I'm just afraid that if I don't take them away from her soon she'll slowly wither away to nothing as they stay on the eggs all day and get weaker and weaker the longer it takes. So, tomorrow I have to shine a flashlight on the eggs to try to see if they are alive and take her from them and put her back in the coop with her murderous peers. Who knew there would be so much drama in the chicken world?

bad blogger

I've been a bad blogger lately. Not only have I been bad about keeping up with my posts, I've been bad about responding to people's comments. I've also not been visiting my normal list of blogs lately. Bad, bad, bad. Too much going on. The main reason I'm online now is because I'm having a Christmas party at my house tomorrow and I am tired and not wanting to clean my house. Hopefully I'll be able to get it all done tomorrow and if not, I'll just have to get over worrying about what people think about my messes!!! My house is very LIVED in at the moment. I did get most of my baking done and my food stuff planned. I have the tables for the kids to decorate their cookies set up and ready to go. I think I'm hucking the huge pile of clean clothes in my closet! Priorities, right? Cookies, yes. Clothes away, no. Here is a picture of my 2 new Frenchy Bags that I finished. I love these bags. Now to use some different fabrics. The green one didn't turn out to be as enjoyable to my eyes as I thought it would be. The small one is great for a trip to the mall but not big enough for me to use as my everyday purse. Minor details. They are fully lined and have dividers inside. Next I plan to finish Evan's quilt. It's nice to have a place, although out front where it can be seen, where I can leave my machine set up and get my projects done little by little. I used to have to put it away all the time in our old house. I'm able to get much more done now.

Happy Birthday!

Look who's pooped! She's hiding under my sewing machine.



Look who's passed out on the couch. Why, you ask, are they so tired?

They were up ALL night playing with the 7 girls that spent the night last weekend for Amanda's 9th birthday. Sophie was in heaven with all of the attention. The cat chased the laser light all evening. The girls all did really well and finally stopped moving when I read them their last book at midnight. Then the giggling started about 6am. I think I drank an entire pot of coffee and a couple of diet cokes on Sunday. Ugh.

I can't believe my little girl is 9 years old. It seems like yesterday that I was going to the hospital at 12:30am in labor. This was her first "friend" party with no boys or relatives, just the girls! There was lots of giggling, eating junk, and playing with the new toys.

I made them play the newspaper wrapped jumbo Hershey bar game. They had to put on the scarf, gloves, and hat and then try to unwrap the Hershey bar that was wrapped in many taped layers of paper. During this time the girls took turns rolling the dice until someone got doubles. Then the next girl had to get dressed and try to get the chocolate bar opened before the next double was rolled. There was lots of yelling and squealing. I love this game. I took them on a hike for an hour the next day after breakfast for a little revenge. Ha, Ha, Ha!

TGIF

I haven't been that great about posting lately. I even forgot my camera on Thanksgiving...both of them. So, I'm going to do a run down of our happenings. Let's see, the 4 cheap fish I bought got ICK all over them and medication didn't work. That was fun. The most annoying/exciting part was that about 3 days after their deaths, which spanned a 3 day time period, I noticed floating grains of rice with BIG eyes. Nice. One of the sick fish had babies, 5 of them, that are now swimming around in there. The thing is, now I can't get anymore fish until they get big enough to not turn into lunch for anything I added. They aren't growing that fast. Now it looks like I have a tank with no fish, again. Our cat tried to take on a squirrel and chased it into a tree. Is that normal? I didn't think cats tried to take on squirrels. I'm not sure if she was going to eat it or kick it's butt. Either way she's a tough girl! On to the pictures...

I'm not sure if this is a Dolley or a Tvedt thing, but I had to have this damn pig. My Mom has a croaking frog at her house, whether or not she wants to admit it. Come to think of it we've always had some sort of moving stuffed Christmas toy, even as a kid. This one oinks out jingle bells while walking along and squeals when you pull it's tail. At least I waited until it was about half price. Not sure I should have admitted I bought it, but there it is.

Evan and Dad had a sushi night when Amanda was at a friend's house .

They like playing with all of the gross fish parts. This was a crab claw that Evan was moving.

Chris talked the kids into raking the Mulberry tree leaves for $5. They lasted about 10 minutes. Chris ended up raking about 300 pounds of leaves. The next day there was about the same amount of leaves on the ground again. He won't buy a leaf blower and likes to rake them. Whatever. I wonder how many years I'll have to ask him if he's ready for a blower.

The kids tried out their new aprons we made. Amanda is measuring flour for bread.

Is this the cutest darned coat ever or what? Of course she can't wear it to school so I'm not sure of it's practicality or how many times she'll wear it before she outgrows it. I couldn't resist. It was going to be part of her Thanksgiving outfit but since it was probably about 68 degrees that afternoon it was a little warm for it. We've finally been having some cooler weather this week so maybe she'll get to use it soon!

I guess that's about it for now. This weekend is the slumber party weekend for Amanda's 9th birthday. Ahhhh! Wish me luck! I'm probably going to have a caffeine drip hooked up and ready to go for Sunday morning. Have a great weekend!