Greek Festival

February 23, our family drove the 45 minutes to our church to have a Greek festival with our Pastor's family, the Nolans.
There was a market place, a play, Olympics, and -most importantly- food!

Hannah and Willa selling pottery and scrolls.

Emma buying a toga from Clare.

Lydia drove a hard bargain on Fig Newtons, grapes, and cherry tomatoes.

Willa and Hannah put on a play.

Ready...

Set...

Go!!!!!

The winners.

Elsie sporting her gold medal and toga-inspired sweatband.

The Symphony

February 22nd, Daddy, me, Emma, and Willa got to go to the Symphony to see Time For Three play a piece by Jeniffer Higdon. The two days prior, Daddy and Emma were able to hang out with them for a few hours both days. Emma says that the composition had 3, 600 notes and the group improvised for 5 minutes. Concerto 4- 3 took Ms. Higdon 3 months to write, spending 8 hours a day, 7 days a week on it.

As we posed for this photo, Seth joined us...

This is the smile he gave. :-) I was laughing so hard I couldn't get a clear picture!

What's The Difference?

Believe it or not, there are 3 years and 2 children between these pictures. The first is this morning, the second was taken in January of '05.

Happy Birthday Mommy!

2007- with Elsie

2005- With Seth (he wouldn't be born for another 8 days)

2003- with a golf stick (sorry, I just completely blanked on the name-- maybe 'cause it's 1 in the morning!)

I hope your birthday is wonderful, Mommy (even if you are feeling poorly...)!!!!

We all love you very, very, very much.

Happy Valentine's Day!

That's her 'kissy.' :-)

Pink Baby in a Pink Chair wearing a pink outfit with hearts on it, chewing on a red heart is pretty Valentiney to me!

Baby's 9 Months Old!

The Viking Warrior

... Just after waking up from the nap he took during family time.


He was embarressed.

Earlier today, Mommy and I were in the kitchen cleaning up. Seth ran in with his sword, and then suddenly knelt on the floor, folded his hands in a sweet little way, and prayed. "Deer Dod, peas help my doe bedder. Amen." (Dear God, please help my toe to get better. Amen.)

SO CUTE!!!

A Tragic Tale

"Please cut it off at once, Marilla, and have it over. Oh, I feel that my heart is broken. This is such an unromantic affliction. The girls in books lose their hair in fevers or sell it to get money for some good deed, and I'm sure I wouldn't mind losing my hair in in some such fashion half so much. But there is nothing comforting in having your hair cut off because you've... [gotten burrs stuck in it]..., is there? I'm going to weep the whole time you're cutting it off, if it won't interfere. It seems such a tragic thing."-- Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables

That is Willa's tale of woe this evening. This afternoon she played so hard in the yard that the burrs were immovable.

We all love her hair short! Of course, that's us girls. Daddy doesn't know yet... :-)

Eager Hands

Announcing my new sewing blog, Eager Hands! You can click on "Olivia's Blog" on the sidebar -> to get to it.

I only post sewing projects, so the frequency of the posts will only be the frequency of my sewing projects!

Fire!

Today Daddy and I were making lunch when Daddy thought he smelled something burning, wondering if it was something in the oven. Then Emma walked in saying that a house down the street caught fire. Let's just say we were cold for about an hour (from standing outside). Here the story is in Willa's own run-on words:

One of the houses on our street caught on fire it was pretty bad the man who owned the house was cooking and it caught on fire and he tried to put out the fire by himself and burned his hand badly he thought the fire was out so he went to the emergency room and called his mother and asked if she could make sure the fire was out but it wasn't so she called the fire station and once they got there and hooked up the hose to the fire hydrant well the fire hydrant didn't work so they hooked it up to the one on the other street and put out the fire we could here the fire men braking down the walls please pray for them
PS. The fire started around 1:00 or 1:30
And it was on TV too

Well, that seems to be all the excitement for today!

This Time Last Year...

The pond out front...

And the chubby brother.

Willa's First Sewing Project

Last night, Willa completed her first sewing project-- a tiered skirt! She did ALL of the sewing by herself. Didn't she do a wonderful job? (Oh, and by the way, the nine year old is over her sickness. )

You Know You're Not A Normal Family When...

• The two year old walks around saying, "I wanna make ice cream!"
  
• The eleven year old reads 336 pages of Brian Jaques in almost a day.
  
• The eight month old's favorite spot is underneath the computer chair.
  
• The nine year old's been sick for 3 weeks.
  
• The fifteen year old requests to be dropped off at Jo-Ann's for a few hours instead of the mall.

Vision Forum Give-Away

Crystal at Biblical Womanhood is having a contest to give away a Vision Forum $100 gift certificate. If you want to enter go here http://www.biblicalwomanhoodonline.com/blog.htm and scroll down to the post about the give away. Leave a comment on that post by Monday, January 28th and you'll be entered to win. There is a link to Vision Forum on our side bar if you want to look and see what they have.

The End of The Epic Series

Grandma caught the squirrel! Yahoo! She just called to tell us. Stay tuned for up dates!

Emma

Grandma's Got a Squirrel in Her Drawers

Today we begin a new series. We call it "Grandma's Got a Squirrel in Her Drawers". Well, okay, we are purposely misleading you. The squirrel's not exactly in her drawers, but I suspect that while she's at work each day, the squirrel comes out and jumps into her sock drawer and lays there for long periods each day (probably with the remote in one hand and some leftover Christmas candy in the other) because... well, ... because he just CAN. Here's the story. Approximately one week ago, a squirrel decided that 13800 Florida Ave was a cozier home than 123 Maple (top floor) and moved in. Not that there's been an actual sighting, mind you, but because in the middle of the night one can hear the squirrel running, now get this, and I quote: "through the walls."

Okay, now I know for a fact that Grandma does not have any cooking sherry, so I am prone to suspect at least the theory that some critter with a magical ability to disapparate through walls is making a nightly ruckus. Is it a squirrel? Well, let's consider the options. In the places I've lived, we have a critter we call a "rat" This critter, I can tell you, does actually have the ability to chew through concrete. I once saw a rat hole that was dug from under the back yard concrete stairs over ten feet away through the foundation of a house into the floor of a basement. And both holes were well concealed. Hmmm... mighty rodents will one day rule the world (if they can take it away from Seth). Here in Wheeling we have a chipmunk (Chippy we call him) that lives under our back porch. We like him. For several weeks last summer I saw him darting across the road at about the same time each day. Creature of habit. Chipmunks are smaller and can squeeze into most anything. I'm inclined to think one of these has moved in. What's your opinion? Please reply.

Posted by Bruce

Once Again... Sewing

Yes, I've been sewing again-- this is the reason for the lack of posts. The past few days I've really enjoyed making skirts. I've used the same pattern for all three. It's a circle skirt with optional ruffle around the hem. This one doesn't have the ruffle, I just added lace instead. I made it for me to match a dress Emma has.

This is the first one I did, and I actually completed it before the new year. This picture isn't very good, because it washes out the dark brown and doesn't show the turquoise sequins on the flowers. It's sooo pretty. This one does have the ruffle.

This is another. I made it for a Christmas present for a friend (I haven't given it to her yet, though.) And, again, this isn't a very good picture. It's mint green and dark brown, not grey and black. This too has the ruffle.

I've really enjoyed being able to make these and I'm hoping to make more in the future.

The Happenings Of The Last Three Days

We've had many events in the last few days. The recurring theme, however, has probably been sickness. Willa's not felt well the last 3 days, Mommy's first day down is today, and I was down yesterday. But the good news is that I am completely recovered and I even organized our dining room, cleaned the basement (those who've seen our house know that this is no easy task), and got out of bed before 9!
Seth, right after he had fallen down almost an entire flight of stairs with a helmet, the above "sword" and sunglasses. All he said was, "I want my sunglasses." :) This kid's gonna rule the world someday.

Yesterday, since I wasn't feeling well, I was excused from regular chores. I practically locked myself in my sewing room. It was a slow day, though. All I did was make Emma a petticoat, Willa a pair of bloomers, and myself a pillowcase (above) that I actually decided to bead while Daddy and I discussed a website we are designing. Oh, and all of that was made out of a flat twin sheet. Plus, I have some left over which I'm planning on using one of these days... :)

Wanna hear the main subject of our dinner conversation? It started when Emma made the comment, "By the way, nobody eat the raw brownies I made today. They taste like dryer sheets." :) I guess what happened is that right before Emma put it into the dish, she washed it out and failed to lick it to make sure she had gotten all of the lavender dish soap off, before putting the dessert in the dish. I noted that lavender was edible and that sent us on a string of "wouldn't ___ dryer sheets taste good?" Yes, we were talking dryer sheets again, not dish soap. Here are some of our "blanks:"

chocolate dryer sheets
strawberrry "
cherry "
apple pie "
cream cheese danish "
roasted salmon "

I laughed the hardest at "roasted salmon dryer sheets" when Daddy said it! :)
After that when everybody else was up from the table, Daddy and I were talking about funny things Seth did. He related the following story:

"The other day, Seth was running through the living room and stopped suddenly. He put his arms straight out at his sides and then just fell straight forward to the floor. He didn't even put his hands out to catch himself." :)

I'm tellin' ya, he's gonna rule the world. Well, I better go now. All of dinner needs cleaned up and then I have to edit a couple videos, make Elsie a pair of bloomers, and practice piano. Tootle-loo!