Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

from our house to yours.

I hope you get to enjoy time with family, friends, and yourself.

Cheers to the new year!

30 days????

Two birthdays, a cool pottery wheel, cookie decorating, two more concerts, visiting, crafting.... What have you been up to the last month?

Happy Thanksgiving

I truly am thankful for my family and friends. They bring me great joy and happiness - along with craziness and a few tears.

Day off

Today the boys have off of school. We are going to walk done to the library...when I can motivate myself to take a shower. I don't think the medusa hair is appropriate for outside the house. I went away last weekend with my mom. I had a totally fun and selfish weekend quilting. All of the ladies around me were sewing/quilting for others. I sewed away on projects that I had started and only started one new on. AND they were all for me! It was so nice just to sit and sew. The weekend went so fast! Before I knew it, it was Sunday and time to go home. Hope all is well with you, kari

Someone had a birthday...

 Ian turned 9 on Friday. Oh my, you would have thought it was Christmas. He was up about every 45 minutes the morning of the big day to see if it was time to get up yet. Finally I said to him,"Don't ask me again until it is 6:00!"  Birthday presents you know.

He got a welding helmet from one set of grandparents and he wore it during his friend party to protect himself from evil forces. From the other set of grandparents he got a wallet with some money. Saturday morning by 9:15 the money was spent on an action figure.

The friend party was a SUCCESS! We had an old school party - you may remember the kind... Ian got to invite a few friends over (5) for pizza and movies in the rec room. They ate pizza, then went outside with the assorted nerf arsenal and had a grand time. They came in way after dark and "watched" a movie. Two friends were able to spend the night, so there were giggles until around 11:15.  Way past my bedtime.

Isn't this the cutest darn thing? I love it - makes me almost want another baby to put it on. Then again I can donate it and someone else can put it on their baby. Seriously it is precious cute - Kal even said so and knitting does not jazz him one bit!

Really... a whole month???

I can't believe that I haven't posted in a month. It has been so busy at our house with family stuff and after work  hours work.

Ian and I tested for the next level in karate. Ian did get his blue belt with some stipulations. He wants to add a few extra classes so that he can wear the blue belt to class soon. I am now a green belt. I had to do my test all by myself with 3 black belts watching. It was a bit unnerving, but it went well.

Teleportation

I'm waiting for apple to create a teleportation app. I think it would be perfect for many people, especially me. I wouldn't waste all of this time in the car driving from one place to another. Then wait to see the student. Touch the icon and zip, I would be at my next spot. If there was extra time, I could zip over to friends houses for a quick visit.... then back to work.....I haven't decided if I would wait a bit to see if they had all of the kinks worked out, I might be part of the pilot program.....

On other fronts, I got a really nice apron for my heart swap item from Irina. It is a beautiful linen plaid. I don't have a picture because I can't get my camera to take any pictures that aren't close up. The shutter won't even engage when I try to take a picture that isn't within 4 feet. It will work on manual, but not automatic. Any suggestions??? I tried to set it back to factory presets, but couldn't get it to work....

I also completed some knitted newborn hats and table runner - no pictures though because I am a bit p*&sed at my digital slr camera right now and am refusing to take close up pictures too JUST out of principle!

I know, I know...let it go Kari....it's really not worth it...seriously...it's not...breathe....breathe....


Oh the picture up top? It's from our vacation in Rapid City, SD. It was a cool little hobby shop for "boys". Lots of remote control vehicles and train sets. I really liked the sign.

Oh well.....

My day has been kind of topsy turvy today. When I woke up I had one plan and it has been changing about every 30 minutes. It will probably change before I finish this post.

So here was my first plan...Today when I arrived at my first school, I was going to go for a walk. I already knew that the first student I was to see was absent. Yesterday one of my co-workers told me about this 2 mile walk that she and another lady do during their lunch time. Ahh, I thought to myself. I can get my exercise in and be ready to see the second student I see in that building. I was HOWEVER 6.5 miles from home when my cell phone rang. Ian had lost part of a filling, would I please come to school and check it out. On my way back home to check on the oldest, I got a phone call from  a different person and she told me that I didn't need to come to that school at all because the student I was supposed to see was testing.

Ohhh, my mind went wild with delight. What you may not realize is that not going to that school saves me about a 210 mile round trip and a half day of travel and teaching. I had PLANS! I was going to take Ian to the dentist, go to the bank, take a walk, then get supper started so that we wouldn't have an excuse not to go to karate tonight! Of course, I had all of this figured out before I took the off-ramp to our town.

I arrived at school and saw the tooth and immediately called the dentist. It was a huge hunk of filling. I was disconnected and when they called back they wanted to know what tooth it was - didn't ask that - had to hang up and walk down to the classroom where my son was messing around with a giant globe while others watched him. Found out which tooth, called them back and was on hold for 15 minutes. When they finally got back to me, they told me that he couldn't be seen until Monday at 10:15. My mind was yelling,"What??? I have plans!!!" My mouth said,"Monday at 10:15? Ok." So, I went back inside to tell Ian (did I mention that I had to stand outside for that time on hold because there is no cell reception in the school? It was 36 degrees.) and he was upset because he thought he wasn't going to be able to eat tacos today at lunch. "No problem with the tacos, just don't eat anything sticky. NO gum or jelly candies!"

So I decided to go to the office.....and here I am until I get into my car in a few minutes and drive to my afternoon school.

Lucky for me it's a nice day for a drive!

Have a good day everybody.

Missing

My leather thimble is missing. It looks like this - the natural fit one. It is a size medium and broke in to fit the naughty finger on my left hand. IF you find it or come across it somewhere, please let me know. I really don't like the rubber or metal one that I have to use right now.

::reality check::

Eating corn on the cob is even MORE delicious when you have to work a little harder.....

especially when you don't have any front teeth!

Wordless Wednesday

::reality check::

This is where I spend the majority of my time from September 1st to mid June. It's not too bad. I have heated seats and a 6 disc cd player, so I'm set to listen to books on tape - wait I mean cd. I get out several times a day to go into schools and work with students. I get to see the country side and experience the weather first hand.

Today was my first "real" day in the car and I wasn't prepared... no books, printed or otherwise, no knitting, no gum. Well, I fixed that after work tonight.

OH and I had my lunch eaten by 9:00! Not good people not good. I ate breakfast at 7:00. I just want to let you know that I didn't stop and get a "snack" later in the day. I was strong!

And here's a totally random reality check: My Ian is growing up. Tonight at backpack night, I kept smelling something - b.o. something. I must have looked like a freak smelling at myself at random moments. Random moments when Ian was standing next to me.... hmmmm. When we got home, I asked Ian if his underarms smelled AND the little bugger comes up to me and puts his pit right on my nose. Jeesh, it was him. My soon to be 9 year old needs deodorant.

::I have seen "reality check" on various blogs lately. I plan on playing along on a weekly basis. While the post may seem mundane, it is my reality at any given moment and I am grateful for being there.

Kick-a-thon

We raised $5,621.47.

Tonight was the kick-a-thon for Our Military Kids at our karate school. Ian and I had a blast.

See the middle of the board is popping out.

That's the center of my board between his elbows.

This was such a cool experience - one of total focus, power and control! I can't tell you how I feel right now. It's kind of unexplainable. Though I am a bit jealous - the boys are going out for ice cream with gma and gpa tonight on their way back to Armstrong.

This moment in time

Knit night

Most Monday nights, I meet with a few ladies from my church to knit. We started out making prayer shawls and branched out to afghans for our high school graduates, peace pals, and hats and scarves.

Mostly we meet to eat Isabel's cookies!

Isn't interesting how everyone holds the needles and yarn differently and comes up with the same product in the end.



I enjoy meeting with these ladies whose philosophies and lives are so different yet so much the same as mine.

I was just the photographer Monday night. I did not make any of the objects in the photos.

I want....

I hear that a lot lately.

I want more legos. I want to go swimming. I want to go out for dinner. I want a new guitar amp. I want another dog. I want a cat. I want to go shopping for school supplies. I want some new man wash. I want an Itouch 2nd generation that I can talk into and make it go waka waka ?!?!? Huh?

I want I want I want.

You know what? There are some things that I want too....

I want to feel comfortable in my body. Yesterday, I was walking to karate and feeling really good about myself - where I am and where I am going THEN I saw my reflection and was shot to hell! I know what I need to do is a lot of work and I am slowly (very slowly) getting there.

I want to be present when my kids are talking. Ok they talk A LOT, maybe I need only be present 50% of the time they are talking. They have interesting things to say. They have deep thoughts and worries and I want to be there. Not worrying about what's for dinner or whatever the worry of the hour may be.

I want to not fight with my husband over stupid stuff. I'm getting tired of doing that.

I want a little peace in my life right now.

I want to sit with family and friends and laugh and smile....

Oh and I want my sewing machine to work the way it is supposed to when sit down to sew at it!

want, want, want....


ps I know there are lots of good things happening right now in my life, but I needed to vent a little bit.

enjoy

Afternoon at the park

We headed down the street to the park this afternoon. Ian was determined to find frogs and Simon was in charge of making a habitat. I was the pack mule - of course.





We had a ton of fun there for over two hours before I got a call saying the rain was coming and we needed to get home fast. Ian zoomed home on his bike with Simon following behind. I, however, being the pack mule got wet. Lucky for me the Mister came and got me.

Baking - easy bake style

A couple of years ago, Simon asked for an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas. He pulls it out every so often to make something. Today was easy bake day at our house. Did you know that you can use regular cake mix in it?? I didn't until Ian asked me to look it up on the Internet and wa la there it was - easy peasy!