Merry Christmas!!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas! I know we have. 😀 The quilts and snakes were a hit and so were the family nerf guns. We’ve been having wars ever since. I forgot to tell one of the best highlights of making the quilts. As I would lay them out on the floor to pin them to the frame James would come up behind me and climb onto my back. As I crawled around her would go on ride after ride. He had a blast, and quite honestly, so did I. 😀

Our resident Santa moved away, which called for action. There was no way I would have time to make Paul a costume, so I got creative… It wasn’t perfect, but the kids sure had fun with it!

Spit Fire even enjoyed the season (most of it attacking the Christmas tree, heh) 😀

We have had a week of giggles and fun and hope you have too!

Making Christmas

Well, I didn’t make all of it, but I had fun this year making some of Christmas. The girls were in desperate need of comforters this year. Their old ones had fallen apart, so I decided, rather than buy them I would make quilts.

When I was a kid my mom made my brothers denim quilts and I loved them. A while back my mom gave me a huge basket of old jeans she had collected, and over the years we have added to it. I decided denim quilts would be the thing, though they are horribly heavy, so I decided to go with denim and fun pink girly prints. They turned out marvelously cute (though very flawed 🙂 ), and I have to give a huge thanks to the Joan Fabrics empoyee who advised me to use embroidery floss rather than yarn to tie the quilts because it looks nicer and won’t ball up. Yay!

For the boys this year I made snakes – my mom used to make us these too when we were kids and we loved them. They are over six feet long.  They were a hoot to stuff – and quite literally a pain. 😀 The only way to get the stuffing all the way done into them was to swing them through the air toward the ground as hard as I could. After a few minutes the stuffing would move a couple of inches and I’d scoot my hand up and keep swinging away. My arms ached for days afterward.

And of course, for James’ birthday, is the fleece blanket in the background.

Next year I’ll reverse and make quilts for the boys and snakes for the girls. 😀

Your teacher said what?

Yesterday my fifth grader came up to me in tears while I was cooking dinner. “My teacher says there are too many people in the world because there are too many big families and we have a big family and I’m worried their going to split us up.”

I think I got whiplash from my neck snapping around to stare at her while the other kids, because of course everyone had to be present at that moment, broke into confused and distraught mayhem. “Oh, honey. There’s plenty of space still on the planet and they couldn’t split our family up.” I went on a little about laws and such, then asked, “Did your teacher say because you had a big family you would be split up?”

“No, that’s what I felt like she was saying.”

“What did she say exactly?”

Elizabeth made a few more sniffles in an attempt to calm down. “She said they are planning on sending people to live on the moon because we are overpopulated because people have too big of families.”

Inside I was fuming, outside I managed to remain calm and collected and reassured my family that nothing no-how would be able to split us up and separate us.

We talked some more and sweet Elizabeth says, “maybe I misunderstood, mom.”

Misunderstood? Maybe, but all of it? I was fairly sure she didn’t misunderstand the big family, overpopulation, and live on the moon parts. Honestly, I could care less about living on the moon, I was just bothered by the impact the big family comment was having on my daughter. I dwelled on it all evening and this morning I decided it was worth a call to the school over. There are a lot of large families in our area and I was worried about the other kids who might be worried but not mention it to their parents, etc.

So, I called the principle, and she was understanding and said she would talk with the teacher.

There are a few things I am grateful for because of this situation, first I am so glad that Elizabeth was comfortable coming and talking to me about something that bothered her so much. Go Liz! Second, from everyone’s reaction it was evident that even though they may fight a lot, they sure do love each other. 😀

While these are wonderful things to realize, I would like to clobber the teacher for causing needless alarm and worry to a young child. I can understand it in highschool, even middleschool, but grade school, when most kids aren’t old enough to understand personal and political agendas or view points? Come on.

Has it really been over a month? (a random post)

Wow. I’ve been writing so much, I haven’t realized I have neglected my blog so terribly. Another NaNoWriMo has come and gone and I while I have completed the goal of 50,000 words in a month the first draft of this book still isn’t completed. I have come to the conclusion that it is really hard to keep up the blog while I am writing a book – I feel guilty if I have time to write and I don’t spend it on the big project. 🙂

At the same time – I miss all of my blog friends 🙂 So, with November being done with I am hoping to be around more.

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About a week after Jacob was kind enough to bring the police over to the house James got a hold of the phone and dialed 911 – seriously – 3 visits from the police in just over a month is NOT my idea of fun. Thankfully we haven’t had any more visits since then.

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I had the most awesome piano recital! I only have a few students and while I am a firm believer in piano recitals and such, it seems silly to have a recital with only one or two students playing (my adult students don’t have to play, and about half of my students right now are adults). So, this time I contacted a local rest home and held the recital there. It was a hit! The residents loved it as well as the piano students, in fact, the students asked if we could do that for the piano Christmas party this year. 😀

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I get to be in a bell choir! It is so much fun 😀 I have always wanted to be in a bell choir and it is just a hoot and a half.

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Surprisingly enough, we have been able to dodge all the sick stuff – well until last Friday anyway. Jacob and James had their H1N1 shots on Friday morning and then out of the blue that night James was sick with the croup – bad enough we wound up in the ER in the morning because, though we had managed to get his breathing better, it was still very labored. He’s doing a lot better now with the meds he’s on, but he had us quite worried there for a while.

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I am revelling in the freedom and novelty of having a child old enough to babysit her siblings. The idea of being able to run an errand without five children attached is mind blowing. The idea of being old enough for that to happen is even more mind blowing.

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The best and final randomness – Paul will be done with school tomorrow! Like graduated done! This last term has been the hardest ever. Partly because he’s been taking two classes, and partly because we are so close to being done I can taste it. It will be wonderful to have him around again in the evenings and such. Not to mention, having the stress of grades and all that done with. Now we just need to figure out a job to allow us to buy this house or any house anywhere. So, while we’ve been job hunting all along, it is going to begin in earnest and where the wind blows us is where we will land.