Must be a hereditary condition

Once upon a time there was a little blond-headed girl who wished and wished she could be a curly-haired blond little girl. So she asked and asked her mother to give her a permanent. Her mother had done this for her before, and the little girl oh-so-wanted to do it again.

The mother graciously agreed and spent an afternoon carefully rolling and papering and clipping and applying all sorts of chemicals and solutions to the little girl's head.

And sure enough, when it was all done, she had beautiful curls.

This made the little girl feel SO grown-up, that when it was time for her nightly bath, she decided to take a shower instead.

So the little girl stood under the water streaming down on top of her freshly permed hair. The water pounded and pounded and straighted out the entire top-half of those beautiful curls. And down the drain went the perm.

Mother and daughter did live happily ever after, in the long run. ;)

But there is more to the story.

This little girl grew up to have a little boy of her own.

One day the little boy got a cold. :(

So his mama gave him some medicine to help it go away. The medicine said not to eat or drink anything for at least 15 minutes.

Approximately 13 1/2 minutes after his medicine, the little boy came out of the bathroom. His mama asked him if he washed his hands with soap.

"Yes," the little boy said proudly, "and then I brushed my teeth!"

The mama smacked her forehead with her hand and knew that in a sewer somewhere, a long-lost permanent was laughing and dancing with a fresh batch of cold medicine.

Astronauts don't tell everything

I sat observing and listening, feeling very impressed as Dale rattled on and on to a grown-up family friend all he knew about space.

I had no idea he knew so much about gravity, and the lack of it, and the hot sun, and, and, and.... the information just kept spilling out.

The kind friend (who happens to be dad to a home-schooled family) winked at me while saying to Dale, "Wow! You must have a really great science teacher!"

"No," came Dale's immediate reply, "I read it in a book."

Next week's lesson: not blowing mom's cover. ;)

Making a pretty thingy

I mentioned in my previous post that we were going to a scrumptious store full of crafty & decorative things.

It was definitely all I had imagined it would be. ;)

In one of the aisles full of fun spring-timey things we found a fluttery-ribbony-hangy thing(y).
I thought it was festive and pretty, and both boys like touching it.
Mimi had the idea of making one instead of buying it. And since we WERE in a store full of craft supplies, we headed right over to pick out our ribbon.

This is how things went from there, and how you can make one of your own:


You will need at least 24 yards of ribbon. We chose 3 different colors. One solid color would also be pretty.

We used a clean empty plastic yogurt cup to anchor our ribbon to.
Cut off the bottom of the yogurt cup, leaving about a 3/8 inch lip. A craft knife works well.

Then cut out the middle of the bottom, to make a ring:

Now it's time for the ribbon.

For a ring the size of a yogurt cup you will need about 24 3ft lengths of ribbon.

After the ribbon is cut grab your partner and glue gun and start gluing.

Bring the tip of each ribbon through the hole and glue to what was the inside of the yogurt cup:

After every few ribbons, turn the ring over and glue the ribbons down to the top (which was its bottom before you cut it off and flipped it over) and the sides.

This was the tricky part to me. Getting the angle of the ribbons right on the underside so they hung nice and straight and covered the sides was harder than I had anticipated. It took some overlapping on the underside. I was glad the hot glue was forgiving enough that I could do some adjusting before it set.

After all the ribbons are glued on, cut a piece of ribbon for a hanger - the length will depend on where you plan to hang your new pretty. Anything from 6-12 inches would work nicely. Glue each end of the ribbon to an opposite side of the ring - on the outside, like the handles of a basket.

Now to finish it off (and hide the fact that my ribbon left big gaps of yogurt cup exposed) cut another length of ribbon to go around the outside edge of the ring. This also covers where you attached the hanger.

Once the glue is set (which doesn't take long with hot glue - yay!), hang up your new fluttery-ribbony-hangy-thing(y).

Since these pics were taken we moved ours outside under the awning. It is so pretty in the breeze!

Catching Up

We came home from the hospital on Thursday. (Alan is doing great)

Saw this on the way home: What else can I say, really?

Went to get labs on Friday. Dale came too.

This is the mask Alan wears when we go to the hospital. He has a smaller, thinner one that he wears in other public places. (He doesn't wear one at home.)

Did some science Friday afternoon. Tried a different version of a 'make-your-own-mist' experiment. This one worked a little bit better. Still not very impressive.

But Dale had fun.

We are on our way out the door this morning (so why am I sitting here doing THIS??) to get labs again and then be standing in line for the GRAND OPENING of one the best stores to ever exist.
A place where you can buy glassware and candles, fabric and flowers, scrapbooking and craft supplies. Oh my!

Kids amaze me (especially mine!) :)

On several occasions lately I have noticed how much my boys absorb from the world around them. How much they learn without me teaching.

For over a year now, Dale has played a silly little travel game his Aunt Kristin taught him. And anything learned from your 20-something aunt (or uncle, as it was in my case) is immediately cool and novel and worth remembering for the rest of your child-hood, if not your life, right? ;)

Anyway, the game goes like this: every time you see a yellow vehicle you shout "yogurt!" I suppose the point is to see who can spot each one first. Either way, Dale loves it and keeps an eye out for yellow cars (and orange, too.... "jello!") every time we are driving.

Guess what has happened over the course of the last few months? ALAN has learned to play.

Which simply means he recognizes the color yellow and a name for it.

Hello! Wake-up call! Time to be sure we're throwing around the names of some other colors! Although I'm still not sure whether to just leave 'yellow' as 'yogurt'. :)


And then there is Dale.

In addition to his regular Scripture memory, I like to have him memorize a poem every now and then.

A couple of months ago he learned "I Never Saw a Moor" by Emily Dickinson.

In the meantime, we read "Walking Through Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. I ended up memorizing it and either reading it or saying it aloud here and there fairly often. I even posted it on my blog here.

Recently Dale recited "I Never Saw a Moor" for me, and I couldn't remember if he had learned anything before that one, so I asked him if he knew any other poems.

Instead of answering, he just started in:
"Whose woods these are I think I know....."

He could say almost the whole poem - 16 lines! - without hesitation.

I guess it isn't that he could do it that impressed me so much, but that he did it without me 'helping' or even knowing he was learning.

What a huge reminder of how MUCH kids absorb what's around them, and how capable their minds are!

Thinking on these things has left me with 2 thoughts:

1 - I want to intentionally expose our boys to as much as I can. No, they won't learn it all, but the exposure itself will do so much!

2 - I want to be sooooo careful about.... what we .... expose our boys to! They've both proven in very handy reminders (a gentle nudging from God, maybe?) how much they absorb without us even trying.

Isn't the mind of a child a fascinating thing?

Dirt & surprises

Greg's birthday is today.

Since he was off work yesterday for President's day we decided to spend that day as his birthday.

Guess how he spent a big chunk of the day?

Digging the start of a garden - and all for me! I thought that was awfully nice of him. :) Dale helped. :)

Alan held a tool long enough to look like he helped. :)

Look at that smile while he works!

Little did any of us know that before the day was over this little boy would be admitted to the hospital - again!

He is feeling just fine, but had some lab results come back pretty 'off' (much to everyone's surprise), so here we are!

Good thing we celebrated the birthday yesterday. And to make it all a little better? We brought the rest of the birthday cake with us. :)

HOTM Friday Meme

Today's Heart of the Matter Friday meme is a video about why you love your spouse.

This is my first video meme and it was much harder than I thought it would be! The following was my 4th or 5th take.

It wasn't until AFTER I got it all loaded onto Blogger that I saw how dark it is, but it took so long to load I'm not doing it over! So, even though I look like someone in the witness protection program, this really is me and my contribution to today's meme! :)

To be more specific about our "silly little games" - we have played (among other things): Uno, Yahtzee, Battleship (but don't tell Dale!), Mad Libs, and, our current favorite, Hangman. A morbid little game, but fun. :)

Happy Valentine's Day to you and yours, and be sure to check out Heart of the Matter for more videos!