water and toes

This is our last week of summer break, even though it is just now really starting to feel like summer (weather wise). Yesterday I filled up a bunch of water balloons and squirt guns and when Rob got home early (as we had planned), he had a water fight with the kids! There were two baskets each equally equipped filled with "ammo". They had a great time ganging up on daddy, and then it was off to swimming lessons! Rob takes the three oldest down to our community center pool once or twice a week and gives the kids swimming lessons. When I am able, I go along with Mr. S and Miss J and take them to the "kiddie pool" there (about 18 inches deep).

Now to the toes. Miss E has been asking to do toe nails again for the last week or so, but always when we are in the middle of something. Last night we both remembered at a good time and so we were able to do nails! She did mine for me (since I can't reach!) and her own. She did a great

job and had fun choosing colors for both herself and for me! Miss J was so very excited when she saw all of the colors and was sure she wanted in on the fun too, so I did her toe nails. She was quite sure she wanted the red, her little toes look so cute!

a tisket a tasket...

...a lovely apple basket!

"A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver" Proverbs 25:11

I made this for a friend at church. She was recently diagnosed with cancer and her best friend mentioned this verse, having a box that she could save all of her notes in (decorated by our girls), and then the thought came up that it would be nice to have a place to drop off notes for her at church. I had seen the apple fabric just days before while shopping and I knew it was perfect when the verse was mentioned. I hope this works out well and is a blessing to her through her treatment and recovery.

pizza rolls

I made pizza rolls today for lunch. The kids love this lunch and though it does take extra time I'm able to make four to five pans of them and freeze them, so it is worth the extra effort.

I just use my regular bread recipe (which makes four loaves of whole wheat bread), make up pizza sauce and shred cheese (this time I also cut up some pepperoni too). I rolled it out like I would for making cinnamon rolls and added the sauce, cheese and pepperoni (remember this is for the kids, so I just put what they like on!).

The roll it up like you would when making cinnamon rolls.

Cut (again like making cinnamon rolls) and place in a greased pan. Let rise for 20-30 min or so and then bake at 350 for about 30 min.

Miss J was so excited to watch me put these together. Pizza and bread are two of her favorite foods, she just loved watching it go from bread dough, to pizza, and back to bread again! You should have seen the look on her face when she saw

how much dough I had made!

Its done!!!!

I finished my new diaper bag and all of the accessories to go with it a couple of days ago! I took the pictures yesterday, but just did not get around to posting. I've had a cold this week and I'm feeling a bit run down.

My mom took me shopping for the fabric while we were in Portland as her birthday gift to me. I had in mind what I wanted and was thrilled that is was actually quite easy for me to find exactly what I wanted. I made up my own pattern after thinking long and hard about all the regular things I will want to have in this bag. I'm very happy with the way it has turned out, and I think I'm going to enjoy using it. My guess is that I'll use it for about a year and then I'll be ready to design my "perfect" bag for the toddler stage when I will not need to carry as much stuff with me.

I made bibs, burp cloths, a wipe case, wipes, a changing pad and a nursing cover/blanket all to match the bag. I did not do this because I wanted everything to match so much as to help keep things

organized. When any of these things goes through the wash or is seen anywhere in the house we will all know that in NEEDS to go back in the diaper bag. That way I'll always have all those things with me when we go out (or at least I SHOULD!). I've been doing the same thing with the cloth diapers for over a year now, the white ones are for the diaper bag and it has worked out so well. I've ordered some newborn

sized white cloth diapers also. I was tempted to order some that would match the bag, but white is better since it will always look okay with whatever baby is wearing, and I'm already used to pulling out the white ones.

I'm planning to make myself a small purse/large wallet that will go in the diaper bag (there is a pocket inside all ready for it). It will be big enough to hold my wallet, phone, glasses and few other odd and ends, but will not take up too much room in the bag. It will be a while before I get to that though, I've got other projects listed first on my "to do" list.

Things I would have done differently-- I think I would have used more interfacing. As I was working on the bag it felt very sturdy and I truly did not think I would want it any stiffer, but once it was all together I realized that one more layer on the body would have been nice as well as in the inside pockets. I think the handles are a bit too long, but I'm going to leave them for now, I can fix them easily if I decide they need to be shorter. Over all I love the bag though and I'm looking forward to using it in about three months!!!!

Cheeseburgers anyone?

My dear friend Kathi came to visit a couple of weeks ago, we had a great time chatting, and
catching up. She mentioned these "cheeseburgers" that she had put together as a fun thing to send to her husband who is currently deployed to somewhere over in the big sandbox. I asked if I could swipe her idea since I thought it would be fun for the kids to make these (the goal was also to send them to deployed friends). This is a picture of us with the kids on the couch.

Before calling the kids down to start putting these together I made up a sample tray of all the steps they would go through to put these together. It helped them to have a visual of what they were doing. They were all thrilled to get to work on these, they had a great time and worked very well together. Miss J just watched and hollered from time to time for a new cookie, it was a bit boring for her (we could not trust her with a job, she would eat it all!), she ended up in the playpen for the last 15-20 minutes as we could not have her free to wander around touching everything! We are sending boxes to a couple of friends that are deployed over to the big sandbox (including Kathi's husband), and to an uncle stationed in Germany. The kids drew pictures earlier in the day to send along in the boxes. Rob is also taking a tray of these in to work tomorrow.

It took the kids about an hour to do this whole project. It made quite a mess (frosting, honey, sesame seeds and five kids will do that you know), but it was easy to clean up. Most of the mess was on the table and not on the kids (except for Mr. S who managed to get red frosting all over his fingers and mouth!). While they were busy with this I was able to make my wipe case pretty! It was so easy to do, and easy to put down when the kids needed help and just pick up again. It matches my diaper bag that I just finished. I'll try to take pictures and post tomorrow.

Oh, and here are a couple of little soldiers-

our chore chart

This week we are practicing with our "new" chore chart. We've been using this system for quite some time, but I re-assigned chores and switched some of our focus days around so we need some time to adjust before we start back into school.

This is the system I've been using for a few years with changes as needed here and there. Last year the big change was putting it on a white board using permanent marker (and erasable ones to mark what has been done, or things that change frequently). This has worked out so well because it is right out in the open where every one has to look at it and see what they still need to do, and I can tell at a glance who has not done their jobs (including me, its so easy to get sidetracked by a little one wanting to read or cuddle and forget what I was doing!). Each child is assigned a color and I use colored erasable markers to put a dot next to their jobs. Even the non-readers can look to see that they have a job that has not been marked off and ask a passing "reader" what that job is!

The biggest change this year was changing around our "focus" days. Mostly our errand and cleaning days needed to be switched around. We were running errands on Thursdays the day after AWANAS, and it just was not working to run around all morning with kids that had been up late the night before. Also our cleaning day had been Fridays, but we like to use that day for field trips and sometimes Rob is off on Fridays, on those days it was hard to get the cleaning done.

Mr. S is doing more chores this year. He has been the slowest to learn to do chores, but he will often rise to a challenge, in the last few weeks he has been talking to us about what a big boy he is. We figured it was time to give him more responsibility. Right now he is mostly just shadowing Mr. R and Mr. M on jobs that I know he is ready for. I'm guessing that by after Christmas he may be able to take on a couple of the jobs on his own at least one day a week. For the bigger kids their biggest changes are not in the jobs themselves but that they will either have less supervision from me, or that they will be training a younger sibling to do the job (which is adding work for them).

I also schedule "nap time" on this board. My three oldest don't need naps at all, but this is quiet time so they need to be assigned things to do that are quiet. Mostly that is school work, reading or on cleaning day that is cleaning the bathrooms. Also I use that time to have one on one time with them. Each child has a "special helper day" on that day they come down early to help with breakfast, they get to walk to the mail box, and spend time with me during nap time.

We're working out the kinks this week and I've found a few things that need moving around, I'm glad we have one more week before we will start school. Over all it seems to be going well though.

the laundry fairy strikes again

Well, our laundry fairy has been at it again. This time, however, she was also trying out some other skills. I'm not sure which one she was going for, but it could be housekeeping, librarian, or even Sunday school teacher. Whatever it was it was a bad combo! You see, Miss J LOVES to read. She often walks around with a book in her hand and more often than not that book is a Bible. We think it is great that she loves God's word already and encourage her in her love for it. She also likes to help out by picking up garbage and throwing it away. Really, she likes to do just about anything she sees her mommy doing. Well, yesterday she must have been doing all of these things at once. This morning my washing machine beeped at me and gave me an error code as it was doing a load of diaper laundry (yep, I cloth diaper my babies. I LOVE using cloth!) As I inspected I could tell that quite a bit of paper had gone through with this load, but I was stumped as to what it could be and what could have so much ink in it to have turned all of the diapers grey (you can see where this is going can't you?). Then I found it. The cover to Rob's NAS Bible (its black), one of Miss J's favorites. Ugh! Thats right a WHOLE Bible went through a whole extra long/ extra hot wash cycle (thank goodness we were dealing with "clean" gray, paper filled diapers!).

Rob spent the afternoon cleaning out the drainage pipes for the washer and it seems to be

running fine now. I'm so glad he is able to do things like that, he is the BEST!!!!! I've been rinsing diapers trying to get the paper and dye out of them, but they were washed with vinegar which sets dye, so I have little hope that they will ever be pretty again. Oh well...