So one day at the end of September, it was time to slow down.  Time to have some fun without spending money or getting in the car.  hmmm…how would that work?

First we got a 4 foot roll of news print we had inherited somewhere along the way and stretched it across the driveway and anchored it with construction demo.
Hubs filled a tote with hot soapy water (it was still a little chilly out, so it cooled off pretty quickly.
I lined up the paint bottles and sponges along the paper.
The children and I pulled off our shoes and socks and…

This is where God intervened to add to homemade fun…the city was flushing the fire hydrants, and there just happened to be one a stone’s throw away creating a small lake on our neighbors yard!  It was just beckoning, “Come splash in me!”  And so we ran to the end of the block as fast our legs would carry us and splashed and splashed.  We saw critters running from the flood and it was all I could do to keep the little ones from trying to catch them.  The water on the sidewalk was halfway up my shins, and the hydrant was flowing from across the street!  Did I mention it was sunny with a chilly breeze?  The man from the city was giggling to himself as he watched from his warm truck.  As the chill got to us, I discovered another nasty little problem…no-see-ums were nibbling me!  I don’t know how the kids could stand it!  Fortunately for me, there was a project waiting at home, so we waved a farewell to the man from the city and trotted home for more fun.  Hubs brought me my camera and…

 
Each of us grabbed a bottle of paint and let fly!  We squirted it all over the paper and walked in it and smeared it.  We painted ourselves, and the driveway and anything else in the vicinity that needed a little splash of color.  As time wore on, the paper began to tear and the children started to get a little too creative with paint and their clothes, so we headed over to our makeshift wash stand.
Did you know that tempura paint, once dried on a body, doesn’t entirely remove in the first…or second…or third washing?  Beware of those words, “washable paint”.  Washable paint indeed!  I had paint in between my toes for a couple of days.  Nevertheless, the kids loved playing in the tote and washing themselves from head to toe in the murky, soapy water.

It was a grand day, and no money was spent.  We simply made do with what we had on hand and we were all blessed.

Sorry, I’m complaining again…which is a habit as hard to get rid of as this stinkin’ flu…oops…there I go again.

Did you ever notice how once you start complaining it is near impossible to stop?  Add to that a personality that can’t help but see where things are going wrong (nor can that personality help pointing it out),
and a strong desire to FIX everything because…everything can always be better…EVERYTHING…no exception.
recipe for…desasterrrr…munch, munch, munch…
The person with these traits, well…she will remain nameless.

Sooooooo….other than sickies, I have been trying to gain some momentum on the Creepy Crawly Christmas production.  Thankfully hubby let me out on good behavior this weekend and I got to spend an hour and a half zig-zagging my way from one end to the other at the local Hancock’s scouring good deals.
I am so glad I looked at my reciept and verified it against the cutting slip (people, ALWAYS do this, especially on sale weekends), as I paid a whopping $56 for one yard of royal blue corduroy…bargain, indeed!
Anyhow, I called and explained that I was charged the correct price for 13.389 yards, when I really only received 1.389 yards.  My credit card breathed a huge sigh of relief as we rectified that little mistake this afternoon.
I don’t blame those gals at Hancock’s.
The people that come in there to shop are vicious, vicious I tell you!
If you don’t get in just the right place in the cutting line, all is lost…
especially when you get some gal with 15 bolts and she wants 1/8 yard of each! 
Scribble, scribble, whump, cut, fold, whump, restack bolt…repeat.
Then you get the gal that is eyeing up the line and sees an opportunity to “ask a question”, and gets to have her fabric cut for her trouble.
Never mind that there are two people in the queue before her
…if she just turns to us and mouths, “I’m so sorry!” all will be made well
…like she didn’t see me…I mean us…
yes, the people that go into Hancock’s on a sales day Sunday afternoon who haven’t been out of the house in days are definitely…
vicious!

Oh, and Sybbi has decided she doesn’t need to take a bottle and will fling it from our hands…and then scream…
Mommy is not happy…NOT HAPPY!

It’s not so bad…actually feeling really blessed to not have to have a boss breathing down my neck and telling me that I have to come into work and make “other arrangements” for my sick kiddos.  I commend you ladies that have to juggle all that!  I feel for you, and I am so glad that it’s not me anymore.

So just another day in paradise again tomorrow.  Oh, and hubs got a new parttime job…with a new schedule…early to bed and insanely early to rise…
did I mention that he’s not the only one rising early?
Can’t you just hear it???  Pitter-patter…and all that jazz…

Was I complaining?  Shame on me…

Enter our friend Cheryl who lives “out” in the country…on a farm even…no, not a hobby farm…a FARM, farm…like Farmville, only real…okay, you get my point.  Well, in all her family’s years of farming, they have had need to use a junkyard…it’s called Windy Hill.

Now, April and Cheryl both have hot dog cameras…the I-have-to-repent-about-it-when-I-get-done-photowalking-with-April-and-Cheryl kind of cameras…and me, well I have a nice little point-and-shoot-gets-the-job-done-but-somehow-leaves-me-wanting kind of camera.  So, most of my first few minutes were spent wondering, “will my photos measure up?”  But then I told myself…it’s not “really” a competition, just have fun.  Add to that my not having Photoshop Elements to run all sorts of “actions” ..so-called..(don’t ask me, but those two are chatting those things up all the time…and I must say whatever an action does to the picture just makes it all the more yummy!)  My anxiety on posting my pictures is overwhelming, nevertheless…

Here are just a few of my unedited favorites…odds and ends…not really a full car…those will come later…I may go through Memory Manager 3.0 and do some editing on others later, but for now, here are mine…and really…it’s all in good fun…these ladies are great to work and play with…it’s not a competition…really…

Hello friends,

Some of you know me quite well, some not very well or maybe not at all.  You may be receiving this simply because I have been following your blog and have enjoyed what I see there. I have a huge favor to request of you all.

A little bit of background.... my husband and I, along with our four kids, moved from California to Minnesota and back within a six month time period.  It's a long story, but the nutshell of it is that my husband Joe took a leap of faith, left his steady (yet unfulfilling) career and is following his dream of doing art full time again as a tattoo artist.  These moves have been tough on the family, but have had a lot of positive effects also. 

Joe was let go from his job in Minnesota in the middle of December, and by the end of January we were packing up to move back to California.  At that point, we could only afford to move ourselves, some clothing and key kid items, so the furniture and boxes were put into a storage unit to pick up at a later date.

Now it's been six months since we've been back, and business is slow.  I've taken on a job at Starbucks and we're doing all we can to make ends meet, but haven't had any extra to sock away to make the trip back to get our stuff.  The kids are missing their things, Joe is getting tired of the limited clothes he brought with us, and I'd love to get my hands on more of our art/ craft supplies as well as making this house look like home with familiar touches.

(Sorry I'm not good at making this short.)  Joe and I are teaming up and have come up with The Retrieval Project, a daily art project to raise funds needed to retrieve our belongings from Minnesota.  We have a list of 50 titles, and we are both painting our own rendition of each title, for a total of 100 original paintings, which we'll sell for just $40 each.  The project will be starting this Saturday, August 1st, and is expected to go through September 19th (50 days, 50 titles).

There will be a mixture of artistic styles happening in these paintings.  Watercolor, acrylic, collage, fabric, etc. 

The key to making this project a success is going to be promoting it.  That's where I'm asking for your help.  We have created a blog for this at http://retrievalproject.blogspot.com, and an etsy shop, where we'll sell the original paintings (http://retrievalproject.etsy.com).  If you would consider featuring The Retrieval Project on your blog, or even putting our button on your side bar, we would SO appreciate it!  In return, we will put your blog button on our site.  Just email me back and let me know that you've mentioned us or added our button, and send the code for yours.

If you go out to the MckLinky Blog Hop page, you will see the rules (Funny, because as a Christian, my old ball of wire was spinning up new ways to say the givens). So here is my take on three things every parent should teach their child:

1.  Be a lifelong learner.  Academically.  Relationally.  Physically.  Spiritually.

2.  Never despise meager beginnings.  Don’t be satisfied with taking the easy way to gain quickly.  God isn’t as concerned with the end goal (He has that part figured out) as He is with the journey (that’s where He shapes and molds us.)

3.  Focus on and speak of the good things, while being aware of the bad.  We need to be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.  If you only focus on the bad, and speak of the bad, then you can’t inspire to do better.

Well, those are my top three.  What about you?

Click here to enter your link in this Blog Hop

Yep, so yesterday all of you all just made my day!  It was so great to have all the birthday wishes!  I think I got like 25 facebook wishes, a couple of comments on my blog (those just make me giddy!  Want to see me giddy?  Just leave a comment on my blog!) my bro called me (Thanks Heath!) and even a call from my mom in WA.  She is doing okay as can be with the stage 4 cancer thing, and it was good to catch her in one of her “good” moments – any of you who have battled with cancer and the drugs that you have to take know what I mean.  Today is her birthday, but she had appts and knew that it wouldn’t be good to talk, so she called me.  It was sweet!

Plus yesterday, the home kids (Bear, Emmy, Linny, and Sybbi) and I played together…can you believe it?  We actually had a chance to play together!  The sun was shining and we wrestled in the front yard and watched the roofers and pretended to be eagles – now that is what I call a great job perk!  My eldest came home and wanted to bake me a cake, but between all the running to and from school and soccer and such, it just didn’t work out, but the thought was priceless.  Addie and I got to snuggle on the couch and even the few minutes on the way home with Gav yielded some sweet fellowship and a birthday bite of his after-soccer-pop-tart.  The piece de resistance (I know it PROBABLY isn’t spelled correctly, but are spelling and grammar even relevant any more?  Maybe I should start a series on that…hmmm…) was that my dear sweet hubby gave me a card and french silk pie and we watched tv till it was time for him to play his video games.  It was a great night!

Oh, and we even had a visitor, which I am trying to figure out how to share the video on here…it’s lost somewhere in the limbo of my mobile service…I can see it, but just can’t seem to link it or embed it (yeah, I’m a geak!)

I was able to get out two posts for our fundraising efforts –Thanks Mom and Dad for Choosing Life and In Need of a Cookie Fix.  If you are able to help we would greatly appreciate it, no pressure, but don’t be surprised if I keep mentioning them for a while (just a short snippet like this and a couple of hyperlinks – and I do get email notifications of comments so if you wanted to leave one…remember…me…giddy???), because I don’t want anyone to miss an opportunity to touch someone else’s life!

Other than that, I am gearing my excitement up for the Christmas production.  Lots of costumes!  It will be great, just got to get all my help lined up.  Already have the wings and antennas and some other small items accounted for(thanks Christine) – even may have 3 bomber type flight hats loaned from one of our actresses, just need a few more items, especially the bomber jackets – four to be precise…loaned, not to be kept…anyone got one sitting about from your Top Gun days???  Now it is just to get to the store and purchase the pattern for the nativity pieces.

By the way, speaking of creativity and productions and such, we did get the mural finished in the nursery at church!  Yeah!  I hope to get some pictures of it soon.  In the meantime, I wanted to thank all of you helped with the rough in – Tami M., Sarah E., Cohl, Gav and Joe (did I miss anyone?  Leave me a comment…you know…me…giddy???), with an extra special thanks to Sarah E. for letting Bear help with the toy “sorting”…patience of a saint, that woman has!  I commend you all!  It wouldn’t have gotten done without all of your help!

OK, well, I will try to keep up with you all, but again, thanks for blessing me with all the birthday wishes!

I must get off to my real job now…do any of you know what a blessing it is to be the the daughter of Jesus, Simone, Jim and Cheri? wife of Dave? the mother of Joseph, Gavin, Garrett, Adelaide, Emily, Caroline and Sybilla? and the friend of so many???

Let me just confirm it, I am a blessed woman!

Work has been slow lately (did you notice my levels on Mafia Wars and Farmville?…that’s not me…Dave plays mine while he waits for his “energy” to build up on his accounts…I think he’s got some sort of Pirate Island going or something …too funny!  Don’t worry, he has some apps out and we do have some work coming in…God is good and it will all work out according to his plan.)
The kids were a bit surprised when we said, you are going to have to earn it.  So I put on my fundraising hat and thought, bake sale.  How easy would it be to pull of a bake sale, where all the mom has to do is a little typing and kitchen monitoring?

Hmmm…well let’s see who plays along…

We are going to be baking Chocolate Chip Cookies.
We thought $5 for 2 dozen bits of home baked goodness was a fair donation.
I thought about pies too (those, I would make), but we will see how the cookie thing goes first.
Anyhow, we will be keeping this local, because I don’t know about the shipping thing…if anyone has some pointers I may be open to trying it.
Otherwise, I think we will just plan on pick up at church or make other arrangements.
Cookies will be made on either Friday or Saturday evenings and we will do this as long as there are orders for the next 2-3 weekends.

If you are interested in helping the boys (Joe and Gav) out, leave a comment and we will help you get your cookie fix on!

But what about today?  I have been thinking about what an awesome thing it is to be alive.  You see, I am not supposed to be here.  I don’t think I have told this story before, but if I have…sorry!  I don’t have time to peruse through my old posts today, so if you heard it before, just nod and smile like you do with your parents and pretend it is all brand new…it can be your gift to me!  Oh, and if some of the particulars are off, it’s my memory and I like it, and my mom used to tell it to me.  OK, so anyways as I remember the story, me even being born is a miracle…no make that a MIRACLE!

Back in the day, my dad worked at the Nevada test site, you know near Area 51 and all that jazz…anyways, I guess he had been “radiated” or something and wasn’t supposed to have kids.  Well, in 1973 my parents were blessed with a bouncing baby boy complete with red hair and the cutest freckles (lucky stiff) and I think sometime shortly after that mom said something about getting her tubes tied…hmmm…  I guess they were making some other arrangements not to have another child, and add to that abortions becoming more readily available (Thanks Mom and Dad for choosing life!)  Imagine their surprise when the stick (did they even have sticks back then?) had two little purple lines on it.  Back then, my parents were a little, oh, how would you say it…hmmmm…rowdy???  Anyways, I came out healthy as can be and was loved, even though I was a surprise.  Happy Birthday to me!

Now, this all makes me realize that we live everyday with choices that effect the rest of our lives and those around us.  Free will is a great responsibility.  What if my parents had aborted me?  What would my husband be up to right now, had we never met(possibly being a professional Mafia Wars and Farmville player??)?  What would my parents’ life be like…would they still be married or would they still have gotten a divorce?  What about my brother?  My uncles and aunts and cousins?  What about my April?  What about all the beautiful and gifted friends I have been blessed to know over the years?

So, in that spirit, I come to you with a simple request.  In about 11 days the St Cloud area Pregnancy Resource Center is having it’s 19th Annual Walk for Life.  The mission of the PRC is to share the love of Jesus Christ by preserving the lives of unborn children and meeting physical, emotional and spiritual needs of its clients through medical, educational and counseling services.  The PRC is a non-profit, pro-life, faith based medical clinic.  Please prayerfully consider supporting our family, and if you have supported another walker in the past, please give them a call and pledge your support to them.  If your pledge is over $5, then you can just email me your address and you will be mailed the particulars for sending it in.  I need to communicate my pledges by the 3rd of October, so let me know if you are interested.  Otherwise please pray that the PRC will be able to continue fulfilling their mission in Christ!

So anyhow, my SIL set me up with an account and gave me a free “coupon” for a family fold (you can print greeting cards right on up to 12x12 storybooks).  Which by the way, “Thank you so much Jan!”  This is the finished product, (a card for my mom’s birthday) and as you can see, cute stuff…and yet look at that unedited text box just floating up there.  Hopefully this is not what printed for my mom, because it is most definitely not what I was viewing when I clicked publish.  OK, so not off to a good start there.  So a quick review of the product…the free content is adequate for my taste, and with the ability to use a “dropper” to change a paper’s or an elements color by pulling color from the picture, then I find it difficult to spend the $25 a month for the premier membership when finances are strapped (membership does go on sale sometimes for 3 months for $30, so there is some redeeming quality).  The editor is somewhat intuitive, however, it is difficult to see what layer you are on or switch to another layer…there is a lot of guesswork, IMO, in moving things forward and back.  Finally, it is all online which is great in a way because it doesn’t bog down your laptop.  However, I bet you have to save a lot, which is something that I forget to do, which may be why some of the formatting and content I placed are missing.  But it still wasn’t the way I viewed it when I pushed the button that said, “Yep, this is how I want it to look!” (No, that isn’t the name of the button, but I can’t remember it and don’t have time to look it up.)  I haven’t talked with them yet about repairing this, as maybe there really isn’t a problem with the actual card, just with the display on the website.  So, hmmmm…two hours on the laptop…I am not quite sold on it…yet.

I will be doing a full write up on both Heritage Makers and Creative Memories SBC+ software and grade them both, so you can compare each ones apples to apples, oranges to oranges, and kiwis to kiwis.  Probably this winter…