Star Wars!

Okay, late last night I finished my second peg people set

Star Wars!!The main challenge I hit here was not having a good super fine paintbrush. I had to dip my pencil in the paint and use that for Darth Vader’s & Yoda’s lines – which was really tricky and they’re not very smooth – I think the kids will still love them anyway (well, I hope so, at least!!)

This time I took the photo after I sprayed them with the clear acrylic spray – it makes such a difference!!

 

 

May the force be with you!! (and with me as I finish my other 3 sets!!)

 

If You’re going to play family games, be prepared for the consequences…

I might blog every day this week – there have been so many great things this Christmas weekend.

Tonight, however, I shall share with you our funny faux-pas courtesy of

Apples

to

Apples

(for those of you who haven’t played the game the gist is the judge places a word on the table and everyone else choose a word from their hand that best fits – the judge decides which one wins)

Word:

Intelligent

card accidentally played by our daughter:

Divorce

(hopefully there was no secret meaning there)

Word:

Neglected

The card I couldn’t resist playing that none of the kids understood:

My Lovelife

(my hubby laughed insanely – trying to decide how I should take that one – ha ha)

Word:

Playful

it came down to two choices:

Barbed Wire

vs.

Mafia

Barbed Wire won

and finally, the icing on the cake, so to say…

the word was, well, I don’t even remember actually. The card that won was The Mississippi River and I guffawed and Paul was saying something about Nauvoo being along the Mississippi River to which Em says:

“What’s Nauvoo?”

Dot, full of big sisterly wisdom and love replies,

“That place in Star Wars, Du-uh!”

To which Dad and I reply,

“Uh, Honey, that was Naboo….”

Star Wars for Cars

For the past year our local church building has been in the process of being renovated. As a result, we have about a 20 to 30 minute drive to church. Yesterday on the way the Lizy and the kids made up a new game. At first I wasn’t paying much attention, but then I noticed that they were calling each other “Paduan” and talking of  “Darth Vader”, so I began to take notice.

It was quite ingenious. They had decided all the white cars were storm troopers and the black ones were Darth Vader.  All other cars were fellow Jedi.

They started out with two weapons each – one blaster and one light saber. Every time a Jedi passed they collected one more weapon.  When a storm trooper or Darth Vader passed they had to spot it – yelling “Storm!” or “Vader!” or other such variations (it got pretty noisy sometimes).  If a storm trooper passed without notice they lost the battle and  half of their weapons. If Vader passed without notice they lost all of their weapons.  They could also fight off cars from behind.

I think the most fun was listening to Jacob try to get into the game by making light saber sound effects every time a car passed.

Children’s Museum

On the last Thursday of March we were given a free pass to the Children’s Museum in Portland. There was a family that couldn’t use it and it was due to expire at the end of the month. So, we bundled up our kids and took of on the last Saturday of March to go to the children’s museum. We arrived to a wonderful surprise!

Star Wars!

Numerous people were roaming about in full costume. The kids were so excited – and of course Paul and I were too.

I’m Not Dead Yet….or a random post to explain why I haven’t written in ages

When Jacob first put on the gas mask toy I recieved for my birthday, Paul was laying on the floor. He walked up to him, looked down and said, “I am your fa-er” in a very serious face and proceded to breathe loudly.

Paul and I laughed, and laughed, and laughed….

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One of my bestest friends ever visited back in July, the two of us got to take off on a Friday evening for some very fun girl time. Girl time is so fun, but there is something extra cool and fun about hanging out with a long time friend whom you haven’t seen in years. We went to the Comedy Sportz place in Portland, and laughed until we were crying.

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I’m really dissapointed with myself – I forgot to take any grandparent and baby pictures while my parents were here – I took lots of pictures, just no solo grandparent with baby photos for James’ scrapbook.

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James is now crawling.

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James has 2 teeth.

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James is pulling himself up to standing – I caught him standing in his crib a while ago and took a picture – I’ll be sure to post it.

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School shopping is done and school starts next Tuesday – Woohoo!!  Most of the clothes the kids have are fitting really well – so we got a pair of jeans for each one and just their basic school supply lists.  Backpacks and anything else they end up needing we will wait and use as Christmas presents.

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I finally made it to my first Baseball game ever! (since the last one I tried to go to was rained out.) We had free tickets for the whole family from Paul’s work. So we took everyone last Friday and enjoyed hanging out watching the game.  It was a lot of fun, and the 9th inning was a slam bang finish. It came down to our team at bat, two runs behind, the bases were loaded, there were 2 strikes and 3 balls.  He hit the ball and it was caught – so we  lost, but it was still a way cool exciting ending. 🙂  And, we even got after game fireworks. It was an incredible display and the kids LOVED it!

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I have four of the kids enrolled in soccer this year and practices started last week. Liz and Dot are on the same team, Em is on a team for 1st graders, and Jacob is in Little Big Kicks which starts in September and is on Sat. mornings.  Luckily the park and rec does a soccer swap and we were able to get shin gaurds, cleats, and even socks for free – woohoo!  We will have lots of fun soccer photos to post soon.

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Last week Elizabeth turned her left ankle when she went running down the slide. It wasn’t swollen really, but I slapped some ice on it and pronounced her healed when she could walk on it without any pain.  It turned a couple more times during the week, but didn’t seem to bother her – she even went to soccer practice and was running on it without a problem.

Then, Monday evening, she was standing flatfooted when it gave out beneath her. She came crawling to me in major pain. I took a look at it and it was swollen and very bruised. We iced it and decided to take her into see our pediatrician the next morning.  Of course our pediatrician is out of town, so we ended up seeing the doc on call – she actually is very nice.

We were sent to the hospital for x-rays – possible displaced fracture and chipped bone.  The reason for the “possible” is because they could only spot the break in one x-ray, where usually it is visual in at least 2 of the 3.  So, this morning I spent from 9:00 am until 12:00 pm trying to find a orthopedist who could see Elizabeth before mid September.  I called at least 12-15 orthopedists before I finally found someone who could see her soon – everyone was either over booked, on sabatical, on vacation, or didn’t see children under the age of 12. I was continually refered from one doctor or clinic to the next, and was near tears, when I finally managed to get her in to an orthopedist at Emmanual Hospital in Portland – Tomorrow actually.

Ummmm…. and so much for soccer for her – at least she made it to one practice! We told her she could be the team mascot. We will still take her to all the practices and games, and if she gets off her crutches before the last game, maybe she will have a chance to play.

She’s having a hard time with it though – especially because she can walk on her ankle with little to no pain.

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After I got Lizard’s Orthopedist appt. made I took off to rent crutches and fetch a baby sitter so I could take James into Good Samaritan hospital in Portland for his urology appt in an attempt to solve the case of the missing testical.

They found it – which is good – however it is up in his stomach and the only way to get it down to where it belongs is surgery – there is also a hernia involved, so he would have to have surgery regardless. It isn’t a very major surgery, and I think it might even be an outpatient surgery, where he won’t even have to stay the night.  I didn’t think to ask at the time.  We don’t know what the surgery date will be yet, we should be getting a call to schedule  the surgery by the end of this week/beginning of next – the surgery will most likely take place at Emanuel Hospital – so at least it will be at a place we are very familiar with. 🙂

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Liz had her first sleep over at a friend’s house last night – she had permission from the pediatrician – because the friend is moving to Alaska.  They caught a praying mantis.  So today, Dorothy, Emily, and Jacob were trying to catch flies to feed to it. 

Just before I left to get the crutches and babysitter, they brought me a jar – they were so proud of themselves that they had caught a fly.  I took one look in the jar and nearly keeled over.  Jacob, in a stroke of three-year-old genius had noticed what flies are attracted to. So, he scooped up some dog doo-doos and plunked them in the jar. The fly flew in and they capped it.  I couldn’t decide weather to laugh, cry (from earlier stress) or scold as I stood there holding a jar with dog poop in it.

I finally settled on laughing – after I made sure that Jacob scrubbed his hands well with lots and lots of soap.

O.M.S.I.

It seems that every time I sit down to write lately I either get bombarded by screaming kids, or I start falling asleep. 🙂 With the joy and fun of the Christmas season comes the crazy business that seems to rob me of all time to sit and write about the things happening. 🙂

On Monday we took the kids on a special outing to O.M.S.I – Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. The reason for this (taking the kids out of school and everything) was so we could see the Star Wars display before it left at the beginning of January. I made sure it was a very educational experience. 😉

We are huge Star Wars fans and the chance to see models, props, costumes, etc. that they actually used in the movies was really cool. Not to mention all the really cool activities they worked in to teach you how they did different things, or how things apply to today’s world.

They taught about how magnatism is used to lift and propel trains.

They also taught about how air is used with hover crafts, and each of the kids got to go for a ride. Even Jacob. 🙂

At another station they got to explore and build robots.

And then there was all the fun we got to have looking at all the models, costumes, props, etc.

I even managed to employ the use of the force quite well with my husband, though I have found him some what immune to Jedi mind tricks.

“You do not need to take pictures of me.”
“Give me the camera.”
“You do not need to take pictures of me,” this time with a subtle wave of my hand.
“Hand it over,”
“You do not need to take pictures of me.”
“Your Jedi mind tricks do not work with me.”

*humph* well at least I tried, heh. 🙂

The only thing that I really wished that had been there were some of Padme’s wild costumes. There was just the normal one she wore on Taatooine in the first movie. All in all it was a ton of fun, and a really neat experience.

Oh, more photos can be found on my flickr account.