11.5 years later . . .

Nearly twelve years ago, Brian and I got married.  Yehaw, it was a good time.

When we got hitched, we asked close family and friends to make quilt blocks for us.
Unusual...but at the time we were in Minnesota and far from family.  I had plans to make a big quilt so that we could keep our loved ones close to us.

So we spent the following year piecing the quilt together, with help from Moose and Magellon.

 

We Embroidered borders with dedications to loved ones.



We cut out a gazillion squares of fabric for borders and the back.



We attempted to quilt the huge thing with my little sewing machine.





Well, we finished the front and back of the quilt.
And we started the quilting process of attaching the two together.

Then we moved to Michigan...and quilt was folded into a storage box.

Then we had Tamlin
Then we had Jude...
Then we moved to Ohio...
And before we knew it, a decade had past and the quilt was still unfinished.

Then Brian's mom stepped in.   She makes quilts, but has a lady quilt and finish the big ones for her. She offered to take our quilt and see if she could get in completed for us.

And with their last visit to us, she brought us a present :-)

 Our quilt is done and spread across the bed! 
Completed!!
Finished!


Our center blocks with items important to us at that time and photos.  We look so young!
Pieces of my wedding dress, Brian's kittle material, and other fabric from Renaissance garb surround the blocks.  We had great moments telling Tam and Jude all about each square and our family.

Thank you Marge and John and everyone else that helped contribute to this wonderful blanket.

Crouching Ninja, Hidden Spider

At the start of the month, the little ones have to decide what they want to be for Halloween...and there are no "backsies."  This gives me enough time to make/sew costumes before the 31st. 
When asked, Tamlin wanted to be a ninja, specifically a red and black ninja.  High-ya!
Jude wanted to be a spider, a rainbow spider...but this changed and he settled on a vampire spider.
Great!

For a ninja...no problem!  We have the costume up in our costume trunk.  I made sure it fit Tam, saw I didn't have to buy anything else, and forgot about it until this past weekend.   At the last minute, I left out the full face black mask and opted to add just a red headband.  What makes it special is the red velvet ribbon used for the headband was the ribbon that was on Aunt Rosilyn's honeymoon dress.  I love being able to use something from the stash to connect across generations.

For a spider...no problem!   To start, I had to find black garb for the foundation....another score from the mom sale...black shirt and pants in size 4T.   Daddy-O's black socks stuffed and sewn on for the extra arms.  I sewed knit eyes on a black stocking cap (which he loves).  The interesting problem was making the web.  Jude had originally wanted webbing that "comes out of my butt", like a real spider.  I wasn't going to make him a white yarn butt tail so I had to come up with something cooler and "sell" it to him.  I rolled around in the black hole that is Pinerest for awhile for inspiration, and settled on using duct-tape and yarn to make the webbing.  I think the result was pretty cool.

Last Friday was the Halloween Fun Fair at the YMCA.  The daycare workers at the Y transform the place into a freaky carnival, complete with games for candy, a maze, a spooky trail, face painting, and cookie decorating.   It is a great fund-raiser for the daycare programs and a great way to get the community together.  So, the boys and I got all dressed up to join in the festivities. 

Tamlin wanted a painted black face mask.  And Jude wanted...wait for it... painted spiders all over his face :-)  And Fangs...since he was a vampire spider.

 Tamlin the Ninja!

Ninja in action!

Jude the Vampire Spider!

Tamlin kept running around showing off his "sweet ninja moves" (his words).  There were lots of karate chops and kicks.

Jude ran around wiggling his many arms and yelling "I'm a Jiggly Spider" at the top of his lungs. He rocked being a little vampire spider.

Happy Early Halloween!

Carving Pumpkins

Carving Pumpkins:  Tamlin
Tam got his little pumpkin from a school field trip.  He insisted on doing everything himself this year.

Tam had no problem getting in and scooping out pumpkin brains with a spoon.  (He was a little squeamish about actually touching the orange inards).

He knew he wanted a mouth that went all the way around.

We even let him carve it out with the kit knives.  Yes, he had all his fingers at the end and no blood was spilled.

Carving pumpkins: Jude
Jude obviously didn't remember carving pumpkins in the previous years.  I opened up his pumpkin and he was "amazed" at all the stringy goop.  
He reached in to start pulling out the guts....

 Nope.
Nope...Nope...Nope.
He took out one handful and was done.
Nope.

I got stuck scraping out Jude's pumpkin while he decided to draw what type of face he wanted to carve.  His plan was that there needed to be two completely different faces.   Daddy joined us to help with the drafting and carving of his jack-o-lantern.

 We let Jude use the knife under close help & supervision of Daddy.

I got to do mine all by myself.  I tried out a scraping technique this year to give a bit of demension and depth...and TEETH!

Now we are ready for trick-or-treaters!

Fetching Pumpkins

After we get all decorations up, it's time to carve pumpkins!
Last year, our local popcorn man invited us over to Brunswick for a small fall festival. We liked it so much, we went again to the same festival this year...and it was a great spot to pick out our pumpkins.  Since it was over there way, we invited Travis and Kelly to join us.  It was a warm October afternoon, so no coats needed . . .but chalked hair was asked for.  What a hoot.  (And, as a side note, Jude calls Kelly "Miss Kelly" like he would any of his school teachers.  It is very cute.)

The festival is a mash of local vendors selling salsas, jams, tupperware, artwork, vintage garage sale, signs, teas, produce, flowers... I was shopping for Christmas ideas and Brian was scoping out possible future competition if he ever decides to can and sell.

Then, there are the odd turkeys, turtles, fluffy rabbits, and alpacas to pet.  The turkeys were a hoot because they would "talk" back at you when you gobbled at them. The bunnies really did seem like little mops with tiny legs and ears, but SUPER soft.  The alpacas were very friendly, especially with my kids holding cookies :-)  But they did get the chance to feed them "real" alpaca food from their hands.

Yes, there was face painting, not done by me.

Now that I know a bit about face painting, and have some experience with painting kids... I just feel so bad when I see others have a go at it...and try so hard.

These two were good, but slow, the bane of attempting full face coverages.  I'm a cheek art type...fast, simple, few highlights and glitter = awesome enough for littles.
 Lately, I've been toying with the idea of painting around town at these festivals for tips.  Maybe next year.  They boys ended up as a tiger and a spider.

And there were pumpkins!   They put out a patch of pumpkins, all $5 and under and we let the boys pick one out.  Tamlin insisted on picking one for me, since he had a tiny one he got on his field trip the previous week to the orchard.  Jude just wanted a really big one.  And did you see that Jude's shirt is covered with spiders?  $1.00 special from the Mom sale and it's Jude's new FAVORITE shirt.  Yeah Spiders!

Afterwards, I could only convince the tykes to wait one day before carving up the orange fruit.

Conference

Brian and I attended "parent-teacher" conference for Tamlin last week.
Pssht.

I always feel a bit awkward at these things.  I met Mrs. Sprinkle back in August at the start of the year.  She seemed nice enough, happy, mostly organized, somewhat divided attention that is necessary for managing 20 first graders.  I always figure that if Tamlin's getting into trouble, then we would here about it via note, phone, or email.  From our end, we make sure he does his homework and practices for his tests, and try to remember to send the reading log in daily.

I'm amazed at how well Tam's reading...much more than I remember being able to do at this age.  And math comes pretty easy to him, so much that Brian and I are constantly pushing him to do more.  Then I'm always filling his head with science facts.  But we don't know other parents of first graders, so we don't have any gauge on where he is compared to his peers. (And should we be worried?)

So we sit down with the teacher at the little person desk, with our knees up to our eyes, and smile at Tam's teacher.  We have 15 minutes to here her impression of our little dude and to bring us up to speed on how he is doing in class.  

Results?
Okay...mini-brag here:   He's doing great, really great, like really, really great.  At our school (our public school), there are three teachers that split their classes up according to how the kids are doing on that subject.  Tamlin sees the the enrichment teachers for both math and reading. His scores place him well above the benchmarks for his grade and he puts him on par with second grade mid-year. I'm really glad that they are able to keep pushing him by doing this split teaching technique and he's not getting board.

Way to go kid!
I totally blame all the reading we do, along with all the experience we do together as a family, and that we don't spend all day on electronics.
But what to say to the teacher when you get a report like this?  Can't act smug, slightly weird to act proud, don't want to seem surprised, just say "glad he's doing well; he likes school and we like teaching him at home too."

Great job, Tamlin.  Hugs all around and keep up the good work!

Tam's studying science

Yeah!
Tamlin's getting science time at school now!
I'm so excited!

Kiddo is learning about classification of animals...but only the "easy" ones...you know: mammal, bird, fish, amphibian, reptile, insect. (Not even a hint of nematodes or cephalopods or arachnids!) Tam's assignment was to bring in one photo of an animal to help the class with this sorting/classification task.
One photo...Pshaw!

Apparently, Brian's father saved all of his old "Ranger Rick" magazines from the 1980s so we now have a small stack of them. These awesome little magazines from the National Wildlife Federation have tons of photos and short articles about animals...targeting a 7-10 year old audience.  (I really need to think about getting a subscription for the boys).

We found many photos in only the three magazines we flipped through...several that Tam excitedly cut out.

Final Tally to take in?
Hedgehog
Ostrich
Pelican
Cicadas
Camels
Baby swans
Sea dragon
Rainbow fish
Rhinoceros
Humpback whale
Crocodile

And his favorites:
a mosquito larvae to stump his teacher
and a two-headed snake for coolness factor

And Jude insisted on the Clown fish (Nemo), a cool sea dragon, and a weevil.  He's taking them in for show-n-tell this week and then hanging them in his room.