Glimpses of our Day

Today was such a refreshing change from our school routine. Aunt Deb spent the night last night and hung out for a while today. I dug into my bins for our Christmas paperback books. I keep children paperbacks in four canvass bins and rotate them; they were exceptionally excited to see all the "new" books and spent a lot of yesterday and today reading them. It made me realize that it had been way too long since I had swapped bins.

I made bread first thing this morning so that Deb could take a loaf to her Arabic professor; (doesn't everyone give their Arabic professor bread?) I have also been making small loaves for the widow down the road from time to time.

I didn't mention that it snow-flurried last night. You would have thought the sight would have been far more impressive by all the excited yelling at my house this morning, but it was enough that James, Ben, Tori and Julia played outside far longer than usual since it has gotten so cold.

Tori worked hard to make a tiny snowman like she had just seen in one of the books. He's sleeping out on the bench by the front door.

Moriah helped the kids make paper snowmen, since we didn't have enough real snow to make the real thing. They turned out quite cute.

I'm not sure what our project will be tomorrow - maybe the ornament kits that have been up in my closet for the last several years!

We just received an extremely urgent prayer request about a teen in our church - I'd ask you to say a prayer for Sarah. She is being rushed to a hospital in Richmond by ambulance since the weather is too bad for the medic helicopter.

Christmas Break

I decided last night that we were starting our Christmas break NOW instead of next weekend. It is the only way that I can see working the fun stuff into our Christmas schedule. My plan is to do one Christmas fun project each day next week as well as clean out one area of the house that is driving me crazy. My announcements are often met with some complaining, but this one only brought rejoicing.

Big Boy Bed

As I type, the crib is being dismantled and stuffed in the basement. I got rid of all the baby items as Elijah out-grew them, but I'm keeping the crib and high-chair (and hope to use them again.) We talked up the "big boy bed" enough that Elijah was excited to move into his toddler bed. I put the border on his quilt last night, then threw it into the wash so the the raw seams would fluff up.

JD had today off from work, so he kept all the little people this morning while the three big girls and I headed to the base thrift store and Commissary. Check out these three pictures that I got Elijah for $1 each; the tractor is a canvass and he is pretty impressed with it. In reality, the pictures are actually hanging straight; I did a poor job proving that with this photograph.

He isn't so impressed, however, with the quilt I labored over. He told me he likes white beds and threw everything off of it. While he was napping, on the couch, Tori re-made the bed nicely for him and he threw a bit of a tantrum when he saw it. He again ripped the blanket off and tossed it on the floor.

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Turns out the bed is good for jumping as well.

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That's my wild little man; he is so much fun. I've always enjoyed the two year old stage (seriously.)

Tomorrow's Friday again? Where do the weeks keep going?

Quilt Update and Website (and a distant birthday)

JD took little Elijah to town with him to run errands while Alei attends Aunt Deb's girl small group. It has actually given me the time to finish piecing the quilt together that I'm making for Elijah's new "big boy" bed. My child #9 is the first child that I actually bought a toddler bed for, because he is going to continue sleeping in our bedroom for a while longer due to bedroom logistics. We have plenty of bedrooms, but none near our room (and who am I fooling anyway, he generally sleeps with us the latter part of the night.)

So, here's the quilt all quilted and pieced. I need to bind it, then trim and clip the in-between-the-square-seams so that they will get all soft and fluffy when I wash it.

Here's the website if anyone is interested in making the easiest quilt I've come across.

http://bloomandblossom.blogspot.com/2010/10/raw-edge-layer-cake-quilt-tutorial.html

You shouldn't have to see the quilt again until it's finished on the bed.

A more important thing to note is that my oldest son turned 19 yesterday and spent his first birthday away from home! Thanks to the wonderful people in Durango, he had a wonderful birthday in spite of not being with his family. He does fly home next Friday for his Christmas break, so we are all looking forward to seeing him for the first time in four months. Whenever the kids ask Elijah what he wants for Christmas, he says, "Brother to come home." It will be fun to see Elijah's excitement when he walks off the plane. We are all heading into D.C. for the big event!

Just When I Was Going to Blog...

My story sounds like the traditional "the dog ate my home-work" story, but it's true...JD ran out the door to pick Moriah up at soccer practice and I was preparing to do a quilt update post, when the phone rang. JD was calling to let me know that the old woman (who's not been the coziest neighbor) called to tell JD that she had my white silkie chicken and was trying to keep her five dogs away from it. I yelled for James and Ben, grabbed JD's flannel shirt and ran out to the van. On the two minute trip down the dark, narrow road in my enormous van, JD called back to say that she couldn't hold on to silkie, but she put all her dogs in so that they wouldn't hurt the chicken.

Long story short, we came back for more appropriate winter gear and flashlights, but we couldn't find little silkie in the 100 acre woods. I'm hoping that he somehow survives the cold night, the foxes and raccoons, and her dogs in the morning long enough that we can find him in the day light. This is the hard part about country living - we've lost several cats and lots and lots of chickens.
Something is currently killing my guinea hens, one every few days. Whatever it is doesn't drag it off, like the foxes do, but kills it and eats only a portion and leaves the very unwelcome mess for us to come home to. So far, it's been only during the day when we are gone. I DON'T know what my wimpy dogs are doing while this is going on , but I'm back to thinking that we are going to have to get a "real" watch dog in the spring.

So, tomorrow I'll plan on my quilt update post; I still have to figure out how to border a quilt. I'm thinking that I'm going to keep going on my little sewing time over Chirstmas and whip out some twirl skirts for Julia! Oh, and Alyssa is going to start her own quilt for a very special somebody as soon as Grandma picks out squares from her suitcase of already-cut quilt squares and sends them to us.

Modern Day Slavery

Human trafficking recently surpassed drugs as the biggest illegal money maker. Unfortunately, there are many slaves working in plain sight right here is America. Here's a story of 20 West African girls that were brought to America for an education and were forced to work in New Jersey braid shops 7 days a week without pay for years.

http://www.theroot.com/buzz/african-girls-held-slaves-jersey

So, so sad.

Quilt Verses Corn-rows

There was only one thing that I really wanted to do this weekend and that's work on Elijah's quilt. It's been so fun that I'm very anxious to get back to it. I started quilting the individual pieces after this picture was taken; this quilt is put together after quilting each individual square.

I haven't touched the quilt since Thursday, because since school ended yesterday, I have done nothing but hair - NOTHING! I took out Julia's hair, washed it, combed it out and then redid it. While Julia played in the bathtub yesterday, I took out part of Tori's and started re-cornrowing that part of it. I just finished Tori's this evening.

I'm pretty excited that I've finally mastered basic corn-rowing; I just wish that it made the whole hair experience faster - so far nothing seems to make it faster.

I cornrowed all of Tori's, in three different layers.

I also cornrowed the front of Julia's, but did box braids in the back. They are both happily covered in beads and you can hear them coming two rooms away.

I asked them to stand for a picture together and this is what I got -
I sure do love my little girls; one day they will appreciate hair-day! There will be no quilting tomorrow either as my house is begging to be cleaned.

Depraved Indifference - So, So Worth Your Time!

This would be powerful if they used a child in any nation, but it really hits home when I think that it could have been one of my little Liberians!

Seriously America? Seriously?

I am not a huge fan of Facebook. There are things and pictures that people post that I want to see, but I always have to scan through tons of updates that are boring and mundane. Of course, I feel I'm boring and mundane at times on my blog, but no one is here trying to read something more important and being subjected to my dinner plans. (Actually, I sometimes enjoy menu posts, it's just the "I'm eating meat-balls, yum yum" status updates that wear on me around the 7th round.) Due to my annoyance at reading these, that is why I only update on FB when I feel that it's actually a contribution to the site. If you're wondering why I'm still on there, it's in an effort to keep up with my teenagers lives.

I say all that to say this... The last three times I have gotten on FB, on the right side is one of their zillion groups that you can join - it's the "help fight pet obesity" group. REALLY? I'm sorry, but that is insane. First of all, it's an ANIMAL! It's not at school, shooting quarters into the Coke machine or a teenager that is working at McDonald's, therefore, eating way too many double-cheeseburgers on break. It's a DOG and if your dog is fat, it's very, very simple - don't feed it so much. Give the dog a half a bowl and stop sharing your after-dinner Little Debbies. Pet obesity is so simple that there should seldom be a conversation about it, much less a Facebook group.

On an even more important level, there are children dying from hunger every few minutes (or seconds) and we, as Americans, are on FB chatting with other dog owners about their poodle's weight problems and buying them special doggie diet food. I totally have my new pet peeve in life!
Because none of my dogs are over-weight or have a current picture, I present Elijah napping in his boots yesterday - he's even cuter than a fat Pomeranian, I think.

I'm off to teach my boys to borrow while subtracting, for the third day in the row.

This Morning

Last night we had our 2nd "adoptive moms support group meeting." Although it sounds official, in reality it's a few adoptive moms I know eating and talking at Panara Bread until they close and throw us out. It's nice to be in the company of similar moms of large, adoptive families. On the way last night, I stopped and bought a rotary cutter and board to cut out Elijah's tractor quilt. It turns out that things have changed since I made my last quilt in 1997 and scissors aren't good enough for the job these days. I bought the cutter and board and was dying to try them out this morning. Since I woke up a little earlier than usual and no children were up, I intended on just cutting out one or two of the fabrics. Next thing I know, it was 11:00 and I was still cutting away in my pajamas with children eating, doing school and "helping" all around me. I finally had to pack it up and focus on what I needed to be doing. I have a hard time setting things aside when I'm enjoying the progress I'm making. (It's always nice to have a cat "hair up" a project before it's even finished!)

I did have some enthusiastic "ironers" however; I originally enlisted Alyssa for the job, but the boys came along and insisted on an equal opportunity.

Moriah took it upon herself to teach Julia to write her name a few nights ago; I'm taking all the help I can get right now, so I was thrilled with the progress. Each morning, Julia says, "how do you spell my name again?" Once she is reminded, she sings it enough times that she should have it down any day now.

I'm short a tiny bit of fabric on Elijah's quilt according to the pattern; however the size of this quilt is quite a bit bigger than my other crib/toddler quilts, so I'll see if I decrease the size or make another trip to the fabric store.