Road Warrior!

Once again, I am behind the eight ball in posting my blog! It has been a rather busy week and half. The beginning of last week was spent making our new banners for church. While putting letters on fabric is not that hard, it takes hours upon hours to satin stitch them on. I love doing that but Mrs. Magillicuddy was not too happy with me. She began to overheat! Thankfully, two of my sister-friends are now being trained to help carry the torch so they helped out. We finished them in FOUR days! Pretty good, eh?! I thank the Lord for them, for they know when I get a scheme - or one is given to me (think I Love Lucy! here) - I usually enlist their help. They can do anything!! I love them! And my one sister-friend was preparing for serious surgery this week and STILL jumped on the Lucy Bandwagon. My other sister-friend has a fulltime job and jumped right in. This was her first time actually helping sew. She is usually comic relief for us while we are trying to think seriously! She did awesome! :) We are in the process of planning the Easter banner. Thank the Lord, we have about TWO months for those!! BUT before the banners, here are some other things we have been doing:

We have a young married lady expecting her first baby and as you can see, it's a girl. The nursery theme is pink and zebra. I am not sure if it's black and white zebra or pink or both. I picked pink zebra. Here is the front of the blilt. I call it a blilt because it's a blanket and a quilt. There is no batting and no binding. I was lazy with the binding but as you will see in the following photo, I wanted to do something girly.

I made a vine border instead! It looks so cute on the whole quilt. I actually, not realizing it, took the photo where the vines begin and end so it looks a little confusing.

Here is the back! I love the back too. It was really fun to make. I have enough fabric left over that Lindsay is going to make a blanket for Beaker.

I had to take Robert to get his new glasses on Tuesday. He was thrilled. It took three weeks to get them! I was crazy frustrated. And when we got them, guessssss what? They were not the correct frames. But I didn't want to say anything because I was afraid it would take longer to get them taken care of so we took them. He likes these better, though. 

Here is one of the banners! The other one says, "The LORD is my Salvation". If you can't tell, it's blue flag nylon with silver lettering. Yup, Dallas Cowboys!! We didn't do that on purpose but that's how it goes.

One of our biggese challenges with Number Five has been sleep. She is NOT a sleeper. All of our children slept through the night by the time they were six months, some sooner, some a tad later. But no one, absolutely NO ONE went past nine months. Except dear old Number Five. I am not sure what she is thinking but she must think Mr. Handsome and I enjoy getting up at night. And our Maddie is so frustrated and tired! So, after some careful analysis and thought, we decided that Pat-Pat was the culprit. He is not big enough to hang onto all night so she loses him. Being the mastermind of creativity (HA!), I sewed a pocket on an oversized shirt and VOILA! The Pat-Pat Pocket Shirt! Now, if Mr. Handsome and I could just remember to put it ON her before bed! I may patent it and sell it. I could be an "AS Seen on TV" guy. Hey, there are two things I would love to be if I wasn't what I am now: A Wiggle or an "AS seen on TV" guy(well gal).

Robert is working on earning his Church badge for Webelos. So, Mr. Handsome decided we should all join in! Our first lesson was LAST week and we are making a Pizza of Faith. We started out with our pizza boxes (and no, these are not OLD pizza boxes - Mr. Domino's guy gave us five free, clean boxes!) and I used my e-craft to cut out big circles from cardstock. We discussed how the crust is like Christ in our family. Several answers: It is the foundation of the pizza and Christ is the foundation of our family. The pizza is a circle and it has not beginning or end, just like Christ's love for us and our love for each other in our family. There were several other terrific answers. This past week we worked on a Mezzuzah. It is a pouch that contains one of God's Commandments. We chose, "Love the Lord Love your neighbor". It is not an actual verse in the Bible but the whole point is to learn God's Word. This is from Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

Here is what happens when Mrs. Beautiful forgets to give her children a nap. Yup, that would be me! Poor Beaker crashed before dinner on Thursday. We started Revival on Wednesday and it went through Sunday. Mr. Chris Dallas was the evangelist. He was a very good speaker and we really enjoyed him. 

Here is the Gang with one of their friends.

I have been putting my e-craft through its paces. I am no scrapbooker and I am going to tell you why. I am lazy. It is waaaaaay too much work to put together one page with two photos. I love the idea of scrapbooking but I'm just too lazy for it. I love using my e-craft to cut fabric. And so far, I have been able to cut 100% cotton quilting fabric, polyester with glitter, and flag nylon. The flag nylon was a complete surprise but we are trying to figure out how to make the banners so that we can use all the same fabric and now we can! Woo hooo!! I just picked a simple circle first.

Then I went wild! WOW! Doesn't that look cool?!

Here is poor Beaker this past Sunday after church. She is sooooo tired! She fell asleep right after I snapped this photo. OH - and there is Mr. Handsome! I am trying to help him eat healthier. I actually averted a snack attack by making him a VERY healthy smoothie tonight. So proud of myself! 

Here we are at Snow Carnival NIght in AWANA. Maddie is first on the right and her buddy Madison. They are making snowmen cupcakes.

Robert, er, maybe you need to clean your face?! ha ha ha hahaa!! I never made it over to Lindsay. Beatrice was at home because she had the dreaded stomach virus. On Saturday, Robert, Kristine, and Lindsay all had it. I can say that God blessed us because it did not last long with anyone. That is, it was not more than 8 hours. 

Here is one of my leaders singing a great action song Mr. Dallas had us do in the service Sunday night. Look waay down the row and the fella in the black shirt is her husband and also one of my leaders. My friend's dad  from the photo is a leader too. We have a tremendous time with our group. The kids have sooooo much energy!

I took Beaker to Dollar Tree and we decided to feed the seagulls. So, we went in Dollar Tree and bought a can of Pringles, or PrinKles as Lindsay calls them. We came out and not a bird in sight. Not one. As I was opening the van one lone bird flew over the van. I told Beaker we would throw the chips and see what happened. Within seconds this is what happened. Just a word of wisdom from the voice of experience: Potato chips are really not good to throw when a whole flock of seagulls is starving! I couldn't get them far enough away from the van so Kristinie the Great and I had to hide behind the door. Next time, pretzels!

Here we are at Best Buy. Beaker is holding the plugger (as she calls the power cord. She figured out how to put it in the back of the computer and then asked, "Where's the wall?" hee he) and she is ready to go home. Can't you tell.

We met my mom and my sister-in-law for lunch at a local restaurant on Monday. This is my nephew John. He and Kristine are buds. Beatrice and his sister Rachel LOVE each other!

My Mom is a bit obsessive about things. When Beaker dresses herself, I let it lie. So, Beaker put her shirt on backwards and it was driving Dorothy crazy! She turned it around for her. Good thing she hasn't seen her with her pants on backwards. I tell people Beaker doesn't know whether she's coming or going.

Here is Beaker cutting up in the game room.

Maddie photoshopping a photo!

This past Monday, we celebrated our 100th day of school. So, instead of me having a great celebration for the kids, they had one for Taylor and me. It was  a lot of fun.

This is what you find in THE BOY's laundry when you have been elected to do his chores for the week. I had a contest last week to see who could keep their drawers the neatest and he won. So I have to do the winner's chores for the week. I actually got all his laundry folded and put away. I stopped turning everything right side out, though, after about the eighth article of clothing.

Our big excitement for Saturday was Maddie and her team won a basketball game!! She was overjoyed. I didn't get to see it because she and Robert had four games on Saturday so I took them to two and Mr. Handsome took them to the other two. They were done by 1:00. On Friday, we started co-op. I am teaching a basketball class. Apparently a lot of parents said their children were NOT happy about taking the class. But by the time the class was over, they had a great time! I was glad because it was a fun group of kids. Maybe I will get myself back to posting on Sunday night this week. Tomorrow is nursing home and Mrs. Everett turns 94 on Thursday so we are bringing cupcakes and cookie bars for everyone. After nursing home for the past two weeks, we have been getting our nephew and niece in the afternoon and bringing them with us to church. I remember how much I loved being taken to church and thought they might enjoy it too. John, Rachel, and Beaker are all in the same class together so they have a great time. Have a great week!