HIVES!

These are not the greatest pictures but it gives you an idea of how miserable Macey was. Last Sunday at about 10pm, Macey comes to me and tells me that she is itchy. I lifted up her shirt and this is what I found. This is her back and I know the picture stinks, but you can see the splotchy red parts. It was like this all over her body. Here is her back: It looked like someone had punched her in the face.

Big red welts on her forehead.

We can't say for sure what caused them but Jason and I are about 90% positive it was an allergic reaction to the penicilin (sp?) she was on.

It is 4 days later and she still looks pretty bad and is still very itchy. Benedryl wipes her out too. The doctor gave her some on Monday morning and this is where she was about a half an hour later:

This was taken from my cell phone camera.

busted

When I got to Molly's concert last week, I got there plenty early to position myself in the best possible picture-taking spot. I knew the gym would fill up fast so I was pretty proud of myself for getting there in time to get the PERFECT spot.
And it would have been the perfect spot if they were in the same spots they were in at the last concert. For some reason they were on the complete oposite side this time. So no pictures of her acutally playing her bass.
I settled for getting pictures of her during her down time, waiting for the other bands to perform.
One small glitch... she spotted me trying to get her picture so she hid behind her bass, like this:

So then I would text her and threaten her if she didn't knock it off, so I have some pictures of her trying to slyly read her texts, like this:
Can you tell by her fact that she is very frightened by my threats?

But I did sneak this one in:

the neighbor

Our next door neighbors are the kind of people that have lots of pets. 3 dogs, 1 lizard, 2 guinnea pigs and the newest member: a toad.


They just brought him home this past weekend and you would have thought they brought home tickets for everyone to Disneyland.







His name is Motor. Welcome to the neighborhood, Motor.

What I've been up to...

Recently... not much. I feel like I can take a breath right now because I am done with my second quarter. I just found out that my GPA is 4.0. HUGE relief!! I took 2 classes this quarter and one was fun, fairly easy but a lot of work and the other was fun, not so easy and a TON of work! So, I'm pretty happy with that.
But, on to much more exciting topics...
Here is a shot of Molly and her best friend, Lexi. They were both one of the many kids that were a part of an honor ceremony for their GPA's. Molly's was a 3.783!! (And that is with taking a 9th grade algebra class too!) Jacob just missed it, by the way. We are still pretty proud of both of our Junior Higher's grades!! They are nothing like their parents at that age.

Let me also add that Molly has not worn a dress or skirt in YEARS! She went out and picked this dress out all on her own and paid for it with her own money. She is a pretty thrifty person as her dress cost only $15! I offered to buy her some nice shoes with a little heel on them, nope, she didn't want any heel at all and borrowed some flats from Lexi.

Here are the girls, all dressed up! GOOD JOB!!!

And here is Maya with her science project. She worked so hard on this (actually, WE worked so hard on this). She tested three different brands of batteries to find out which one lasted the longest. Next time you need batteries, trust that little bunny... he really does keep going and going and going. She did a fantastic job!

more to come, I need to go make dinner...

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testing a new signature line

here goes......

Valentines

Just in love with this year's Valentines.


Maya made these same ones last year but they were such a big hit tht she wanted to do them again this year.

Macey's are so stinking cute, they make me smile every time I look at them.

Start with this picture of a cheesy smiling girl.


lamenate the picture and add a yummy lollipop strategically placed... and there you have it! EASY!

oh yeah, you also end up with this lovely mess!
Happy Valentine's Day to all of you out there!!

same old same old

I really don't have anything new or excititng to update here. We are still plugging along, trying to at least come together at the dinner table each evening. Sometimes that means eating dinner at 9pm, like last night. I hate doing that but it happens.

Right now I am taking 'Music for Young Children' as one of my classes. We were supposed to make an instrument and I couldn't decide between a rainstick and sandpaper blocks so I made both. I've got pictrues of the process here but no real final outcome shots. Sorry, brain fart. And I don't really care for how blogger.com works because it adds the pictures in backwards order of what I put them in as, so you have to start from the bottom picture and work your way up.








4. Spray painted, usually a favorite part of any project, but I really had to get in there and around the handles so it was a little tricky. Also, lesson learned... don't use this kind of spray paint without sealing it before you use it. It will make your hands gold. After they were dry, i hot glued on the sandpaper and they were ready to go. My kids (daycare and my own) love these too.
3. screwed on the handle. We went back and countersunk the screws so the sandpaper would be flush with the block.

2. Drilled holes in the center

1. Here is the start of my sandpaper blocks.

3. See the inside is full of nails. Doesn't really look like a preschool toy does it!? this is the last photo I have of the rain stick. Just picture it filled with marbles and dried corn, capped off on the ends, wrapped in colorful wrapping paper, and then covered with contact paper. Kids love it!

2. Strategically placed drill holes with nails in them. Maya drilled almost all of these holes.

1. Rainstick started with a piece of PVC pipe.

That's all for now.