Febuary: Finishing Phase Two

This weekend made me really thankful for the healthy way that I get to eat regularly. My son was competing at the state high school wrestling tournament at the Tacoma Dome (see his happy face in the center above) and there was hardly a thing I could eat at the concession stands! All very dairy- and gluten- filled, not to mention fatty! I am grateful that I have so many choices at home, and my husband and I both like to cook! Next year when we go to state, I'll bring a cooler of Paula-food in the car!

My Christmas berry bushes arrived! My he-man helper and I got them in the ground today. We planted a Sunshine blueberry, one Autumn Britten red everbear raspberry, one Rosanna red raspberry, and 2 Anne gold raspberries.

We have two more veggie bed frames assembled, so I'll just need to dig the sod out and level the edges to place them.

I am so thankful that we own a house now: we rented for so many years while my hubby was in the Navy and we kept moving around. I have wanted to put down my roots, literally, for a long time.

"Tea with Dagny" and "Donuts"

My latest doodle. I have been drawing in the Mary Engelbreit style lately, enjoying her wood/china/fabric textures, but this is my own confabulation. On Friday mornings, I sometimes go for a visit to one of my friends from church, Dagny, who is in her mid-80s and lives alone. We always have some tea and a snack, chat and pray together. It is good to have friends of all ages! She is so sweet and always writes down my concerns in her prayer notebook so she can remember to keep them in her daily prayers!

This second drawing is by my 12 year old son. He was home from school with a cold on Monday, and was amusing himself with my art supplies. He was impressed with the effects I get with the Prismacolor pencils over marker, so I gave him some pointers and he made this enticing plate himself! He was very tickled at all the praises he got when he put the drawing on his facebook page!

We' ve Got Her Covered

Two posts in one day: don't go into shock on me!

Immediately after I finished my memory quilt last month, I saw this pattern for a "heartstrings" quilt online and wanted to make one really badly. It is made of foundation-pieced strips laid out so that the red strips form hearts and it is super easy and fast. So I raided my fabric drawer and started, not sure who it was going to be given to. As the month went on, I realized that one of "our girls" (my best friend's daughters whom we've been close to for 10 years) was leaving in early September to go off to college! Could I get it done in time? Yep. I can't post it on my Facebook yet or she'll see it before I give it to her. I hope she cuddles up in it in her dorm room if she's feeling homesick and feels our love. Click on the picture to see it larger.

Here is the embroidery I did in the lower right corner to dedicate the quilt. I backed the quilt with a very soft striped sheet I picked up at the thrift store and tied the blocks with pink embroidery floss.

Just for giggles, here's a pic of me and my hubby at a barbeque this summer. He has new whiskers - I like them.

Goofy, Goofier, Goofiest*!

Well, the snow is most melted in our neighborhood and, thankfully, we aren't in a low-lying area now that is dealing with flooding. Gipper is happy that he can make it out to his favorite tree again without getting tummy-deep in the cold stuff. Although he is looking really bushy right now in a long winter coat, I don't really think he's a baby Yeti, like my son J. imagined in his artwork here...

My big boy has turned 15! We went out to eat at his favorite restaurant - Chang's Mongolian Grill - and he wore his pjs to be silly! Here Z is being goofy with his little bro at the table. Sorry it's blurry, but it's the only one of him where you can see his face... Most of the time, he was not being cooperative!

P.S. Did you know "goofiest" is a REALLY good word to score on in Scrabble? We're still Scrabbling around here.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all!

We had a nice quietish New Year's eve. We indulged in cravings for dinner - take 'n bake pizza with everything for the boys and Tom Kah and Pad Thai from Thai Cottage for hubby and me. Followed by another rematch game of Scrabble between hubby and I, trying to think up high scoring words while listening to our sons laugh their heads off playing with the Rock'em Sock'em Robots game they just finally got in the mail yesterday from their Florida cousins (which was mailed out Dec. 15, can you believe it?!) Then Z went off to the church for the teens' all-nighter and J is SO excited he'll be old enough to go next year! The teens (led by a band of amazing, wonderful pastors and parents) do 2 hours at Funtasia, 2 hours of Wii, 2 hours at the athletic club, etc. ALL NIGHT LONG! Not my idea of fun. Anyhow, at home the 3 of us watched the DVD of "The Indian in the Cupboard", which J has recently read. Nice movie. Then hub and I went to bed after exacting an agreement with J to shuterdown after the midnight countdown on TV. And listened to the neighbors shooting off fireworks all night.

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Hope you had a good New Year's eve too. One of my resolutions is to take more pics (I kind of took all of 2008 off) so I don't have to use Google images for my blogging...

Taking it for a Test Drive

I am working on a longer-term sewing project: a twin bed-sized quilt. It is made up of ALL the cotton prints I have on hand, including a lot of old clothing scraps. My sons' blankies, my college bed sheet, my hubby's old robe - lots of memories. Plus, I am randomly sprinkling in squares with embroidered pictures. Nothing too girly, because my younger son asked me to keep it "unisex" (in case he calls dibs on it in the future I think. He is a sentimental one!)
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But as you can see, someone else is calling dibs on it already, before the squares are even all sewed together.
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"Itz mine, Mommee! OK? Thanx!"

Painting & Parenthood

I'm working on the last bits of the balcony mural - yesterday I did the clematis in the pot on the balcony. I always have loved Clematis "Nelly Moser" and now I have one, ever in full bloom! (click on the photo at left for a bigger view)
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In other news, I just set up a "myspace" account, dohh! One of the requirement for our teen's having a facebook/myspace is that his dad and I are his "friends" and we can see what he posts on his general friend profile. For you non-techy parents, it means that you can see his main page and photos, etc. along with the comments that his other "friends" add to his page. It does not mean we can see his private chats. I am continually astounded at parents who do not even know that their kid has a facebook/myspace, much less what the kid is posting on it! It is very eye opening! And did you know that your kid can post to his myspace/facebook remotely, even adding photos and video from his cellphone when he's not even sitting at the computer? Think about it...

Cap'n Jack & Cap'n Zack

This guy is not my son...
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bbbbbbbbbbBut this one is...
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Today my 14-year-old got his whole pirate get-up on (including the eye makeup, ho ho!) and I dropped him back at school for his homecoming skit rehearsal. Each class is assigned a movie and has a team making a skit for the homecoming assembly next week. The freshmen are "Pirates of the Carribean".
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Who is this guy?? Math geek? Champion wrestler? Pirate? All of the above!

"Why is the milk always gone?"

Back to School for the First Time

Weird, weird, weird! Yesterday felt so weird! After nine years of homeschooling my 14 year old and his 11 year old brother, they both went off to school for their first day yesterday. Z is a freshman in high school and J is a 6th grader at the neighborhood elementary. Both of them are already very comfortable at the schools: J tried his on for size last spring for 6 weeks, and Z has been taking math and French at the high school for two years and has club wrestling practice there too. But yesterday was weird - they were both gone all day at the same time!
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The first day went pretty well for both of them. J has most of his buddies from last year in his same classroom, and he has hit it off with his new teacher already, although she has a rep as the "stricter" of the two 6th grade teachers. He came home exhausted and hungry.
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Z had a bit more adventure at the high school. He was threatened with a "swirlie" by a senior who "didn't like" his wrestling sweatshirt. Thankfully the senior was accompanied by another who knows Z (and his abilities) from the wrestling club and he talked him down. On another threatening-in-a-different-way note, Z is the ONLY GUY in his PE aerobics class last period. Whoo-hoo! Z and 30 girls!

I neglected to take any back-to-school photos, stunned as I was in the a.m. sprint yesterday, so here is a pic of me at work on my mural for your viewing pleasure...

The word is out...

First it was an invitation for my 14-year-old son to enter a math competition sponsored by the National Security Agency. Now, today, it's recruiting materials from Phillips Exeter. I guess his math testing scores from the school have been released...

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Is it possible for me to have somehow given birth to my brother's clone??

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Photo is from Z's "white 'n' nerdy" costume last fall. He'd probably rather have you see this one.

Summer Stuff

The garden has exploded! We have finally had a week of warm-to-hot weather, and everything is growing right in front of my eyes!
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We did have a little "incident" concerning some of the gorgeous, almost-blooming foxgloves in the garden ... my 11 year-old son decided to eliminate most of them with his pocketknife. "Protecting" me from their poisonousness, he said. Ahem.



This week my husband surprised me with a beautiful new piece of art, "Edge of the Aspens" by local Washington artist, Steve Harmston. I had admired it at the local art festival a few weeks ago, and he contacted the artist and bought it for me. It is a serigraph (a.k.a. screenprinting) and is a limited edition print.

I snuck this photo of my 14 year-old son through my studio window while the boys were washing the cars. He's camera shy - shhh, don't tell! My baby - wahhh!

Sailed into Seattle

Yesterday we went down to Seattle to the Center for Wooden Boats, where we toured a replica of Columbus' ship, the Nina, that is in port for a few days. It was handmade in Brazil for the celebration of the 500th Anniversary of Columbus' voyage to the Americas and it tours all around now as a traveling museum. Amazing to me that it was only 93 feet long, and that the 27 man crew spent the entire voyage on deck, the hold being used for animals and supplies. Here's a pic of my nephew and my boys hamming it up on board.

Ups & Downs

Well, my son J. has been perfectly thrilled with his brand-new 5th grade experience ... until today. It seems he and two other boys are working on a display for the health fair together (on E. coli, echhh!) and one boy is not pulling his weight. And tomorrow they all have to miss recess to finish the project in time. Oh the tragedy! My husband & I have both told him that this is just something that everyone deals with their whole lives, not that that relieves the tragic unfairness!

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Here are some pretty peony buds I bought at this Saturday's farmers' market. They finally had a nice, warm sunny day and it was packed with people and their puppies and children. Some enterprising couple was making a killing selling Hawaiian shaved ice! Besides the flowers, I bought a locally-made soap and granola and a bush fuschia. Not too much interesting by way of produce yet - still wintery stuff.

The Good, the Bad & the Cute Little Dog

Rather than subject you to the sight of my latest project (converting the boys' "toy closet" into a clothes closet as we move the men into separate bedrooms this summer), I will show you my cute little zuchon, Gipper, in one of his favorite poses: over the arm of the living room couch. With my enormous tulips from last Saturday's farmers' market in the foreground. They are mega-huge - the blooms are more than 4 inches tall alone.

On the plus side of the disaster downstairs, my 11 and 14-year-old sons are down there, playing a long-forgotten board game, laughing their heads off together.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the precious mommies out there!
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Here's to my gramma, who just moved OUT of assisted living back to her farm for the summer and fall ... Thank you, Gram, for all the summers on the farm, homemade dresses, teaching me how to sew and make homemade jelly. For sharing all your art supplies and sharing your love of crafts and painting with me. For planting rows of flowers in dozens of varieties, and letting me fill up your house with bouquets all summer. For trips up to the log cabin on the lake that you and Grampa built. For frying the fish I caught. For getting me ducks or kittens or a lamb or bunnies to play with all summer.
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Thank you, Mom P, for raising my island-boy husband up on the other side of the world from me. For loving him and praying for him and for telling him how handsome he was (even when he was a pudgy pre-teen and he wasn't sure he believed you). Thanks for reading to him and working hard so he could go to private school and for sending him off to college in the Midwest USA where I could find him.

Thanks, Mom for going through everything you did to have us kids. Thanks for driving us back and forth to the Midwest so we could know our grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. Thanks for the ballet lessons and art lessons and for being a lunch room mother and a band mom. Thanks for sending me off to college and telling me that you wanted me to study whatever made me happy. Thank you for all your support as a mom and grandma for 42 years.

And happy Mom's Day to my sister and sis-in-laws, and all you lovely blogging mommas!

In the Garden of Weedin'

Today was the first day of the church's teen choir plant sale, and my sweet son had gotten me a gift certificate (with his own money, not dad's!) for Mother's Day. So we went down and supported the choir's summer tour with a little shoppin'.

Although the maple pollen is considerably less than last year's, it still whacked me today. I weeded a few hours and ended up wheezy and stuffy-headed. Oh well, rain is predicted again tomorrow and it will wash down the pollen count again. I hate to see my tulips engulfed in dandelions and those nasty jumping-seedy weeds, but between the rain and the pollen, I'm not getting done very quickly! I hope to get my new plants in while they're healthy.

On the changing-from-homeschooling-to-school front, things are going very well. J is loving the local school: coming home with tales of new friends and soccer at recess and the principal shaving his legs at assembly (he bet the kids if they made their fundraising goal he'd do it). A big change, but he's taking it well. I'm very proud how brave he is!

Manly-Man Firepit

Recently, my 11 year-old got it in his head that we needed a firepit. For the summer, you know. So we can put up the tent and camp chairs and go camping in the backyard and make hotdogs and s'mores on a daily basis.
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After some internet research (no, we do not live in the city limits and yes, we can legally have a firepit, it must be 25 feet from all structures which makes the only option smack-dab in the middle of the yard, and various how-to-build-a-firepit websites), he and daddy went for it.

1. (row 1 of pics) First, they scored 2 SUVs-full of used cement blocks on craigslist for $50 and spent an afternoon driving, loading and unloading them.
2. They went to the local hardware/garden store and bought 5 bags of gravel for $4 each.
3. After marking out a 3-foot diameter circle, they laid out the blocks and determined the size of the hole to dig. They dug it 10 inches deep, with a 2 foot French drain in the center.
4. They laid out the blocks and water-blasted them to get the clumps of dirt, millipedes and dead squooshed earthworms off.


5. (row 2 of pics) J filled the French drain with gravel (this is to aid drainage so there's no standing water in the firepit, even when we pour water to douse the fire)
6. ... then filled up the pit with a few inches of gravel ...
7. ... and it looked like this!
8. J started to place the blocks around the pit - it took 14 to make a solid circle.


9. (row 3 of pics) J dry-stacked the blocks, alternating the alignment.
10. When he was done, it looked like this! Pretty professional, huh?
11. Then he chopped up some logs...
12. ... And christened the firepit with its first bonfire and marshmallows!

What a nice project for $70 and a few afternoons! They're so excited! Oh, and the really cool bonus? They have so many extra cement paver blocks that I have enough to pave the paths between my raised garden beds - something I've wanted to do since we moved in!

The End of an Era

Whew. Lots and lots of changes in my life. I've got to say that this has been the most painful year of my recently-turned-42 year life, but that, although excruciating, the pain has not been for nought. Good has come of it. Like breaking and resetting a poorly-healed bone, I imagine.

My journey through employment was short-lived. After 90 days, the jig was up and I'm unemployed again. After 14 years mothering and jobless, it was a roller-coaster ride back into the world I lived in B.C. (before children), back when I was in my 20's and was willing to make the job my first priority, 60, 80 or 100 hours a week if duty or the client called. But at this stage, finishing up our homeschool year, mothering and teaching and trying to get my head straight, I wasn't the "team player" that I used to be. And that is my choice.

And, speaking of homeschooling: this nine-year era of my life ends in just a few weeks. The big guy is headed to high school as a full-time freshman in the fall, where he has already spent a few years taking advanced courses I couldn't teach him. He seems excited at the prospect, already stepping up his pace of getting school work done right away, in preparation for a full schedule next year. And looking forward to our promised summer project: moving his brother out so they each have their own rooms. Aaaah! Teen bliss! They've shared a room, willingly, for 11 years, but as their developing personalities diverge as they mature, they need more independence for the sake of peace and sanity.

And not-so-little second son? He took a trial visit to the local elementary 5th grade this week (which he LOVED) in preparation for switching from homeschool next fall. BUT, after his visit the teacher, principal and school psychologist all advised me that they'd like to see him start 5th grade NOW.

Be. Still. My. Heart.

After much discussion and prayer, we decided that this is indeed the best course, for many reasons. So starting Monday, May 5th, my 11 year old, my baby, will go to school for the first time.

We bought school supplies and school lunch fixings with our groceries yesterday. He is very excited. This boy is Mr. Social and will know everyone's name the first week, and have them all over at our house by the second week. The elementary is relatively small (2 classes of about 25 for each grade) and a half-mile from our house.

So, I know I'm blathering. 98% of families have done this with their kids from kindergarden, but for me it's all new. And exciting. And a little scary.

This is my drawing of me homeschooling, done 2 years ago.

Happy Thirty-Twelfth Birthday to Me!

Today is my 30-12th (42nd) birthday! Hmmm... does that mean I should be twice as mature as a 21 year old?

I am planning to spend the day homeschooling (only 6 more weeks to go, and the boys are going to public school next year, so this is really the end of a 9 year era of my life) and then the four of us are going out to eat together. There is a new restaurant nearby that I saw reviewed in the Seattle Times which is owned by a man from Naples, Florida - near my hometown. It's called Casper's Everglades Supper House. We're going to go check it out - eat some gator and talk Southern!

Journey to another world...

Just got back from a week in Florida visiting family, going to the beach, boating, going to the beach, eating out, going to the beach, visiting theme parks, going to the beach...

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The difference in palette astounds me! Washington is cool gray, blues, and dark cool greens. Florida is yellow and coral and chartreuse!

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The trip was a nice mixture of relaxing and busy.