Friday, March 19, 2010

Garris Visit

We had a chance to visit TJ's cousins in Indiana. It was a great weekend and the girls had a blast with Colby and Dalayna. We are sad they had to move away, but thankful to see how God is blessing them.

Fun before bedtime

How long do you think it took for them to go to sleep????

Children's Museum


Colby was a snack for the dinosaur. :-)

Checkers

Jaylyn is a good shopper

Slide!

Adley driving the ambulance

They are going to fix Colby right up in the ambulance!

Dalayna driving

Adley taking Dawn's blood pressure

Brushing some teeth.

Leighton having the time of her life.

Colby giving the weather

Jaylyn and Dalayna are great news anchors

Dawn and Adley were getting them all set in the audio booth.

TJ & Jaylyn in the moon phase booth.

They are so talented, they can even be radio DJ's

Other fun

The gang after a great meal at Redamaks

Lots of fun at the house. They would bring Leighton in and drag her around like this. And she just kept kicking her legs and laughing! She liked to go!

Dalayna was always on the move. I had a hard time catching a picture. Finally, a nice big grin!

Girls just wanna have fun.

Spring is Coming!

These are some outside pics from a couple weekends ago when it warmed up a bit.

Chinese New Year

Since our family has so many special little girls from China, it has become a tradition to have a Chinese New Year party. We also have some other family friends who have adopted from China so they also joined us. Lots of people, lots of food and lots of fun! We also were able to collect some money for TJ's cousin, Shane, who is preparing to go to China to live.

Just "part" of the food!

Desserts

Year of the Tiger Cake

All the kids

Our China Girls, but missing sweet Dalayna!
Left to right: Mavery, Eden (our pastor's daughter), Haddie & Hannah (friends) & Sage

Uncle Ray and Leighton

Poppy and the girls

Lyceum


Here is the first day of the new semester of our Lyceum classes with the St. Clair homeschool group. Adley was soooo excited because this semester she is three and can now take some classes. She has Kindercapers (Kind of a literature/activity class), a playtime and Wee Little Rest. She really loves it. Jaylyn has a Magic School Bus Science class, a playtime, Five-in-a-Row (Lit/activity class) and our Tapestry History Co-op class. She is also enjoying her classes. The Magic School Bus class is a definite favorite. It is kind of a crazy long day, but a lot of fun to be part of a group with so many other homeschool families.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Leighton is Nine Months Old

I was thinking the other day that Leighton must be doing some things like waving and saying, "hi" earlier than the other girls. But, I looked on the calendar and she is right along with them. I am just clueless and thinking she is still tiny and shouldn't be doing these things. If only I could slow these days down.
Her nine month tricks include:
  • Waving and saying "hi" or "dye dye" instead of "bye bye"
  • she is now officially crawling and not just scooting around backward and in circles
  • She does her hands up high for "so big!"
  • She loves to eat her baby food still and is also enjoy some new table foods
  • She still loves her sisters
  • She still smiles so big and is adored by everyone
  • She will drink from a cup
  • Pulls up to knees and sometimes feet
  • Her hair is finally growing in "a little bit"
  • She wants to stand up and walk around, but will settle for happily squealing while Jaylyn holds her up under the arms and drags her around. :-)
  • She has also sat herself up from laying on the floor on her belly
Here she is doing her own gymnastics "bridge"!

Here is where I found her after she was crawling on her belly and then sat herself up to have a look in this basket.

This is fun!

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Arts & Crafts Time

Because I have nothing better to do with my time (ha!) I have been doing little crafty things here and there. In fact, I have a few things I have started and not been able to finish yet. So, these things I am mentioning were all pretty much done in January or February. I can't explain it, but since the new year, I have been in a crafty mood. Apparently the same thing happened to Shannon because we both started doing little crafty projects about the same time. I think it is partially because we both seem to visit some of the same blogs and there are some super crafty ladies out there who have been posting some fun things. Some of them have been pretty inspiring lately with what they can make for almost no money. It can be addictive! :-) Although, with the amount of stuff these ladies craft, I'm just going to assume that they all must have nannies and cleaning ladies in order to fit all of their creative time in. Ha! I have not been able to do much lately (and apparently no blogging time either as you have probably noticed). It seems suddenly like I am back in the middle of the holidays again and it is just go, go, go!

Anyway, I just thought I would post a couple things that I have done. You saw the first wreath I made a while back here. I have also made another wreath for the door made with some left-over coordinating material from the curtain hanging there. And some burlap which is the big craze right now. Actually, I need to fix it now because the folds have started sliding down and I'm not sure about the bow part. I'm not sure that this is the most complementing picture either. But these burlap wreaths were on crafty blogs everywhere. I think they may have started here.

Jute stuff is also big, so I wrapped a styrofoam cone. These ladies are wrapping everything in jute. Here are a couple other people's cone trees here and here. I wasn't really using it as a Christmas craft, but Jaylyn does keep calling it a Christmas tree. :-) Here is mine.And, since Shannon and I seemed to be in a crafty mood at the same time, we decided to get together and tackle a craft project. She just posted about this on her blog here. You will find gobs of gals making these things called a "family rules canvas". I think it was started here. It was really fun - especially doing it together with our kids running around. :-) Actually they were really good and Makenna even pushed Leighton around in the stroller until she fell asleep!Our canvases and papers all ready. Deciding how to arrange . . .

Getting ready to stick them on and cover with Modge-podge.

Ta-da! I really liked how Shannon's turned out and she plans to do another one with Bible verses. fun! Mine was a little different than the "family rules". I changed mine to family values and used the values and target behaviors that tie in with those from a couple that does a ministry called http://www.valuesdrivenfamily.com/. I had to condense some of their descriptions for them to fit, but I like it.


Here is a wall art piece I kind of threw together. It is just a picture I printed off the on the computer and attached onto some foam board. And in this picture, it looks like I can see some nice finger prints. Hmmmmmm. . . .
And another popular project - silhouettes. These I did rather quickly with some scrapbook paper as the background and brown paper for the faces. Although, I will need to replace them eventually since I don't think my brown paper was fade-resistant as my dear cousin Amber reminded me about. But, I did want to add a few touches to them anyway. I liked how some people have added a bow or something to the silhouettes. Anyway, these are a start.And if you are in a sewing kind of mood, you can join my friend Mitzi who read Noell Piper's blog and decided to join a Sewing for Haiti project where they are sewing pillowcase dresses and cloth diapers for an organization in Haiti that helps orphanges, etc. If you are not into sewing, Noell and Mitzi both provide information on some other items they need that you can buy from Walmart online and do a ship from site to store to the contact lady who will get them to the orphans. Awesome! Mitzi's site is here. Noell's site is here. Mitzi even posted her first pillow case dress she made.

And a forgotten thanks to my also crafty cousin Amber who I forgot to mention in my post about the birthday cakes. She always helps me big time when I am doing the birthday parties. She is great at helping me brainstorm and think through these cake ideas and then she helps me make and ice them too! Woohoo!!

So, go get crafty and pray I can have some more spare moments to craft some more! :-)