Kids' School Pics

Not perfect images, as they're pictures of pictures :)

And we're probably having C's re-taken.

T's Friday Night Guy's Night

When C. was in fourth grade, we made the switch from doing one-on-one "playdates" to having group gatherings once a month or so, on a Friday night.

I'd been telling T. that he could do the same and last week was his first one. As with C., the friends come over for 2 hours. They hang out, then have dessert, then hang out some more. T. chose chocolate fondue for his dessert. Here's pictures from Friday night:

T's Riveredge Field Trip

I was lucky enough to be able to chaperone one of T's field trips--to the Riveredge Nature Center to learn about plant and animal adaptations.

Here's some pics from the trip:Making a plant that would have adaptations to prevent it from being eaten by cows and sheep

Reading the task--find a plant with fuzzy or furry leaves or stems

Looking for insects adapted to living under dead, decaying organic matter


A competition between the short bills (fingers) and long bills (tweezers) to see who catches more "bugs" (toothpicks)

I got my first blog award ;)

AlexYearOne just gave me this:

My bloglines roll has expanded to 98 feeds (blogs I subscribe to), and I have no clue how I first found most of those. Her blog is an example. Many blogs I add and then quickly delete when I realize it's not worth my time to read all the fluff. But I have really been enjoying this blog! I was talking with some friends at Kindergarten drop-off yesterday about the decision to have a third baby. While I *thought* I was done after T. was born, I never fully committed ;) However, I knew immediately after M. was born that our family was complete. I am still very comfortable with that decision (good thing, since there's no going back for dear G.), and most of the time I am so happy (when I watch the other moms chasing wild toddlers, or hear them complaining about sore nipples or potty training or no sleep at night) that I'm done with that part of my life.

Anyway, I love reading Dawn's blog and her re-telling of Alex's birth and stories from his first year are so honest, and yet so sweet...

(And I'm still VERY convinced that three is the perfect amount of kids for us!)

A Froggin' We Will Go

I have not had the best luck lately with my knitting. I have always found (with a few exceptions/projects) knitting to be a wonderfully relaxing activity, but my last few projects have not been easy!

Although I *love* the pattern (widdershins) and love the yarn (Lorna's Laces), these socks are NOT knitting up true to size. I already switched the needle size from 0 to 2, and the sole fit tightly. But I knit past that and was only a few inches from the end (see:

and it's too tight to even put on my foot. :(

So it's frogged back to the heel and I"m trying to add in an additional repeat of the pattern, so the calf will be looser...possibly a scrunch-type sock. If that doesn't work, I'll have to frog the entire thing and find a different pattern. UGH!

The other thing I've been working on is trying to make a knit version of this crochet felted skull. Here it is pre-felting:

But I don't think it's going to shrink correctly. This, BTW, is after FOUR attempts initially. I think I need to give up and start knitting something fun.

Brag about Customer Service

Oftentimes we are quick to complain about customer service (watch for an upcoming post about Pick N Save!), but not so quick to brag about good customer service. This is a brag.

After crushing my wedding ring in the van door, I found out that the local jeweler (who designed my engagement ring 16 years ago and my wedding ring over 14 years ago) had closed. I asked on a local email list for recommendations and got three. I chose to go to the closest one and see what they'd charge to fix the ring.

I walked into Donnybrook Fair Jewelers in Whitefish Bay and showed them the ring. The woman working there looked at it and said, "I should be able to fix this right now". I should have asked how much they'd charge, but I wanted the ring fixed and I figured it couldn't be too much if she could fix it right then.

Less than ten minutes later (and while T. and M. roamed around the jewelry store, being rather loud), she came out and handed me the ring. Not only was it round again, she'd polished it up and cleaned it and it looked better than it had for a LONG time! I put it on, raved, and asked, "how much?" The woman said, "oh, no charge!"

You could not have surprised me more. And I cannot recommend them highly enough.

My ring is back. Yay!!!

Apple Picking!

It was a beautiful day for apple picking.
The younger girls may have eaten more than they picked:
Aren't the best apples always at the top of the tree? (Actually, in this case, the ones at the top were horrible!)
We picked lots of Cortland apples (the best, IMO, for cooking with) and then went out for a late lunch.

When we were getting back into the vans, I leaned in to put M. in her carseat after opening my door. A gust of wind slammed the driver's door on my hand. I saw it happen and felt oddly removed from my body, but couldn't pull my hand free. I reached over and opened the door and that's when my hand started hurting. Look at what the door did to my wedding ring:


I could barely get the ring off my finger, it was so misshapen. After all that, it's amazing that this is all that happened to my hand:
(just a sore where the ring dug in)

I feel very lucky that no bones were broken (or, as my neighbor informed me, that my finger wasn't sliced off by the car door!)

12 1/2 years old

Traditional half birthday cake....

We had our neighbors over to celebrate.

Clifford's Visit

My apologies again for the large space between posts... I volunteered a lot at the kids' school initially, and then they added this clause that younger siblings couldn't come along, so I essentially did little to no volunteering for two years, and now I'm back in the school full-force!

But today M. got to bring home Clifford. Clifford spends a night with each kid in the class and they are to draw a picture of what they did with Clifford.

Here's the book:
First M. showed Clifford Club Penguin:Here's what M. drew/wrote on her page:Clifford had a snack, played all sorts of stuff, had an unfortunate accident involving his bone/collar (luckily mom can sew a little!), and right now M. is reading him a story before bed:

Junior Kindergarten is so much fun. :)

M pictures

Today is picture day at school and all I wanted was a nice picture of M. before she left for school. Instead, I got these:

"I am" by T.

I AM

I AM a soccer player

I WONDER about global warming

I HEAR bats flying in the summer

I SEE many people

I WANT to be really rich

I AM a soccer player

I PRETEND to have 15 Webkinz

I FEEL glad to have a home

I TOUCH my Nintendo 64

I WORRY about the homeless

I CRY when family passes away

I AM a soccer player

I UNDERSTAND that I have two Webkinz

I SAY it’s simple if you believe

I DREAM that our world will have peace

I TRY to beat Tubba Blubba

I HOPE people won’t have war

I AM a soccer player

MY NAME IS T.

The PIF socks

Not a lot of knitting has been happening, but I've been working on MamaFitz's socks.

I really like the pattern and the heel flap idea as a toe-up. I also increased (by TWO sizes) the needle size for these socks. Still, I'm a bit afraid that they may be too small! I personally prefer somewhat more snug socks than baggy ones (especially since they loosen a bit as you wear them), but I hope that these will fit on her feet.

I guess there's no telling at this point. Maybe when I see her tomorrow, I'll make her try them on--since I'm over halfway done, I probably should have thought about this earlier ;)

Anyway, some pics:

T's pics from school

T's teacher is BIG into photography, and she has started a group on Snapfish so she can post the pictures she takes (cool!).

Here's pics from the first day (I'm including all of them that T. is in):She did the same thing when C. had her--and put a slideshow of the kid pics to sappy music at the beginning of the year.

In Phy. Ed.

In Orchestra
In the classroom

Groceries, 9/11/07

I haven't posted all my grocery shopping trips. I joined the brand new Costco and have done some stocking up/bulk buying there. It's not as easy (or fun) to post those sales, since I don't know exactly how much I've "saved" over other places' regular prices. But I will say that Costco is SO much better than Sam's Club (IMO) that I'm very happy I joined!

But I did have a good trip to Pick N Save today. I'm hoping to shop there less and less, since they've eliminated double coupon Wednesdays (grrrr!) and, of course, since I joined Costco. My *hope* is to do the majority of shopping for items that don't go on sale (and party stuff) at Costco, to buy produce at Sendik's or Farmer's Markets, and use Pick N Save to *only* buy their loss-leader items. Hope it'll work!

Total: $75.48
Savings: $58.71
Number of Items: 48
Pick N Save

best deals:
Colgate toothpaste reg. $2.59, on sale for $0.99, minus $0.75 coupon, final: $0.24
Filippo Berio olive oil, reg. $5.89, on sale for $4, minus $1 coupon, final: $3.00 (this is the brand that Costco carries in bulk, so I wanted to try a smaller bottle first)
Ziploc bags, reg. $2.75 each, on sale for $2, minus $1.50 coupon, final: $1.25 each
Barber stuffed chk. breasts, reg. $4.49, on sale B1G1F, minus $1 coupon, final: $1.75 for a 2-pk.

Reports on the first week of school

Yikes! I guess it's been a busy week.

C. reports that she absolutely LOVES seventh grade. Not only is she in the same house as one of her best friends (and they haven't been together since second grade), but she's also in the same house as a "really cute boy"! Not only that, said cute boy asked her to be a partner in Science class! Oh, and he sat next to her TWICE at lunch. She hasn't had a lot of homework yet. Oh, and her Lit/Lang teacher was in a car accident Monday night, so she hasn't met him yet.

T. is also off to a great start! He's got the same (wonderful) teacher that C. had in fourth grade, and he goes to fifth grade for math (with the same wonderful teacher that C. had for fifth grade!).

Both T. and C. started soccer this weekend. Here they are in their new uniforms:
Both will have tough seasons. The majority of T's team moved up to Select/Traveling teams, so his new team is a compilation of several other teams (all of whom lost players to Select). C's playing on a bigger field, and with more players, so her team combined with the other local team, plus it's rounded out with some kids from neighboring suburbs. In addition, there are two younger sisters who are "playing up" to the U-13 level. Toughest of all, there are so few teams at this level that they are in a U-13/U-14 league. Most of their games will be against U-14 teams (not to mention teams who have been playing together for a year or more already).

M's not old enough to do soccer yet (NEXT year!), but she's off to a good start in K-4. Her school does a very gradual easing-in for the K-4 kids. Only half the class attends each day, and it builds from 1 hour with parents, to 1 hour w/o parents, to the full time (2 1/2 hours) w/o parents (but still half the class) and finally on this Wednesday the whole class will be attending for the whole time. Her first day went great. She was very excited for her second day, but came out afterwards in tears. On her third day (today) she came out very happy and told me that she had "so much fun".

I'm looking forward to a very uneventful (ha ha) year. I'm T's room parent, and will be working in the library for both of their classes, so that will be fun.

First Day of School, 2007

Not much to report yet (although M's first day went great, it was only an hour and I was there the whole time!), but here's the obligatory first-day-of-school pics:
C, with our neighbor, V.

The Elementary kids.

Does un-knitting a sweater count for the SAM KAL?

One of the coolest features on Ravelry has to be the Groups. One of the groups I joined is called Thrifty Knitters and it was there that I found out (in detail) about buying sweaters at thrift stores, and raveling them for the yarn. I had a coupon for our newly-opened local Goodwill store, so we went to check it out.

C. found this men's size large 100% lambswool Old Navy sweater for $5. After my coupon, it was under $4.50.

And after washing, drying, and raveling it, I got:



(an awful lot of wonderful yarn!) Here's a closeup:


C. wants a sweater of some sort knit out of it (so I WILL be eventually knitting another sweater). But I'm addicted to this! I did some more research and found that cotton is another good one to ravel. There were a lot of mens and womens cotton sweaters at Goodwill, so one of these days I'll have to go back.

Oh, the possibilities!
(and C. said it wasn't breaking my yarn diet if I was buying SWEATERS... Oh, how I love that girl!)

:)

p.s. if you're interested in doing this yourself, here's a link to a great tutorial. The big thing to watch for is to make sure you buy a sweater that is knit, then seamed. If you have one that's seamed and then cut, the yarn will be in lengths the width of the sweater! No good...

Back-to-School Time!

School starts for my kids next Tuesday, but their cousins (who go to a Catholic school) started yesterday. G's sister (K) and I have started a tradition of taking our girls out for one last celebration before school starts. This is the first year that M. could go, too!

We go to a cute, quaint little restaurant in Cedarburg called Cream and Crepe. (go ahead--click over and look at the menu!)

Here's the girls:

After some yummy crepes (Creek Specialty for M & B; Tree of Life for C; Combination Star for K and Noon Day Lily for me), we took some time to wander through the cute, kitschy shops (or is that shoppes?) of Cedarburg.

K. and I decided we should open up a little shop that sells glass things, stinky candles, lawn ornaments, retro candies, and serves coffee, because there aren't nearly enough of them in Cedarburg.

We also walked past a church that I think even MY family could attend. Doesn't that look like a stained glass image of Darth Vader?
And then we headed back to Cream and Crepe for dessert. C and I had the mocha ambrosia; K and B had the mosaic, and M. had Strawberry.

And then we met the guys, who had been doing more manly pursuits (eating cheeseburgers and going bowling).