Nauticus

We spent a day at Nauticus and the kids loved it.  They get to play with lots of stuff, and seem to love the water the best, though it was in tough competition with the sharks and the horshoe crab, and the submarine. 

The girls in the shark tank.

St. Patricks day parade

We have great friends.... The particular friends I am talking about live along the parade route for the St. Patricks day parade. They invited us over for brunch and to watch the parade.  The kids loved being with their friends and getting lots of candy and beads.  Thanks....
It is the only day of the year where even the Germans and Scottish pretend to be Irish.

I love this picture of Buddy with his arm around his friend. So cute.

Zoo Mermaid

Big Day

Daddy had his birthday this week, and to celebrate we had his favorite chocolate cake with Chocolate frosting. 

This little one also lost another tooth on Daddy's birthday, now she has a little bit of a challenge eating, but she looks so cute.

Zoo again

We spent another day at the zoo, the weather was a little warmer, but it wasn't too busy. Daddy took a few days off to spend with the family.  It was geat day.

The kids love playing in the cage, for some reason, it is their favorite part.

I even got some pictures of all 3 kids together, smiling is too much to ask.

Daddy of course has to get in with posing.

I did get this picture and it is one of my new favorites.

Winter Break

The kids have had their winter break from school and we planned a bunch of day trips, but some time was just spent at home.  The first day the kids were playing and they all came downstairs with $1.05 and asked to go to the dollar store.  Princess had helped them all count out money from their piggy banks. They even had exact change, the clerk at the store loved to watch them each make their own purchase.

I think this maybe their favorite store.

Buddy got a FBI police set that he is still wearing almost every day.

Munchkin got a princess ball and now loves the fact that she has her own ball, and she doesn't like to share it.

Princess got a coloring set that she completed in a short amount of time, but now she has mini markers to use.

Buddy's holster for his dart gun broke after about 2 hours, so I made him a new one and he loves it, this one is a lot sturdier.

Spring is coming

Things have been slowly warming up around here.  Daddy has been taking lots of pictures of the flowers.  These are all his pictures.  

The part that made me smile was that I asked him to mow the lawn (the weeds were tall) and he had to take a picture of the weeds before he mowed them.

Other sewing projects

I have been working on a bunch of other little projects.  I turned a pair of ripped pants into shorts (again) My kids are putting lots of holes in their uniform pants.  The day after I finished these, Princess fell off her bike and put a hole in her pants, so now I have another pair to complete.

I have also been trying to get a nursing cover completed, I followed the tutorial here. I like how it turned out, so hopefully it will be well used soon.  The only change I made was to add a piece of cloth diaper on the corner for using for little cleanups.

More No Sew projects

I competed a lot of little projects in a short amount of time.  These are some of the others. Munchkin requested a dog house, and then put her littledog in it to play.

Buddy wanted dinosours and then proceeded to put the dinosaur into the dog house.

The kids all played with these for a while.  They had fun and liked putting different legs on different dinosaurs.

It is fun to make stuff just to let the kids play.  They are some of the cheapest toys, and they like to help me make them. 

Ice Cream

I picked up a new book at the quilt show.  No-Sew projects with fabric for Kids.   It has a lot of new projects that are very simple and quick.  Most of them use fabric scraps and iron-on interfacing.  I have a feeling I will be making lots of projects out of this book.  I just need to buy some more interfacing and velcro.

Princess loves my new book so this week we taught her how to use the iron.  She did some cutting and created these with some help.  We completed the project in under an hour and she loves all her ice cream flavors.  (Lemon, chocolate, bubble gum, vanilla, mint, raspberry, strawberry and blueberry)

 Then she went up and set up an ice cream stand to sell ice cream to her brother and sister. 

There is a project involving making mobile's and dog houses.  I don't know which one will happen next.

Illness and stuf

The night after the kids played in the dirt illness found our house AGAIN.  Buddy started it at about 10 PM and ended up going to the ER for an IV at 8AM.  He was severly dehydrated and they gave him some meds to stop the vomitting that was still happening.   About 20 minutes after Daddy left, when I was about to take Princess to school, she started vomitting.  Thankfully hers was not severe, and she was feeling much better by dinnertime, she was back to normal by Saturday.  

But my plans to go to a church retreat got modified and we spent the weekend hanging around the house and engaging in germ warfare.  So far no one else has gotten sick, and Buddy was able to eat a single pizza crust for dinner tonight.  I am hoping that at some point this week everyone will be healthy, but knowing us, that may take a while. 

Of course Daddy had to take a picture this weekend.  Buddy fell asleep on the bathroom floor Friday afternoon.  The kid was so tired after being up all night and then still being sick the next day. 

 This is also what we spent a lot of time doing, hanging out on the couch and cuddling.  I just felt so bad that I couldn't really do much to help him feel better.  It just takes time and it was horrible to watch him feeling so bad.

Quilt Show

I did manage to escape the house of illness for a few hours on Saturday.  I went to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival.  I haven't been to a quilt show in a very long time, and it was great.  After walking around for 4 hours my feet really hurt, but I was inspired to work on some new projects.  I also spent some money, because the vendors were spectacular and there is not many good quilt shops around here. 

I was a little dissapointed that most of the quilts were machine quilted, but they were all beautiful. These are some of my favorites.... They are not great pictures, but it was very crowded and it was hard to get anough room around you to get a good picture.

This one was cool, they acually quilted a food service apron on her, and the food on the plate was 3 dimensional and very realistic.

 This was machine quilted, but the detail on each of the ships was amazing.

 This I just liked for the color, it had a dark background, but the bright colors for each of the blocks and the borders drew your attention. 

 This one I liked just because it was fun.  It would look great  for 4th of July.

 This was a variation of a white on white and was hand quilted with colored thread for parts of it.  The reverse applique in the middle really made you look at it several times.

 This one I just liked because of the details in the flowers.  The whole quilt re-used too many of the same blocks to really look creative, but each of the blocks was well done.

 This just made me smile, not many people would make worms look cool and fun, but the person succeeded.  It was a beautiful and fun quilt.

 This quilt was copied from a puzzle that I have seen before.  This woman took the picture of the puzzle and turned it into a quilt.The background is a watercolor technique, but the quilts and balloons are pieced and then appliqued.  The overall quilt was beautiful.

 This one was a collaboration from a quilters guild.  The girl and her outfits each have circles of velcro, so you could actually dress the girl.  Each woman in the guild made an article of clothing.  It would be a fun toy to have done a little simpler and placed in a children's classroom or a girls bedroom.

There were a lot of quilts with 3-D elements, and I don't usually like those, but this one was really pretty.

Now comes my favorite, I have started to do needle felting, and have done some little needle felting projects, but now I have a new goal.  This woman used wool suiting fabric and created a crazy quilt with a combination of techniques. 

 The background is all wool suiting fabric, and some of the animals are simple machine applique, with the wool suit fabric.  Some of the other animals are needle felted onto a machine applique piece and then all of the little pieces are pieced together.

 Then she did all sorts of hand embroidery to finish off all the seams and add flowers and details to the entire quilt.  In the end hers was a little busy, but crazy quilts tend to be busy.  It was just beautiful and I loved it. 

  Now I need to gather all my stuff, and I will do the needle felting, convince my mom to piece it and then convince my sister to do the hand embroidery.  Maybe it will get done in about 20 years. 

Dirt

We have been enjoying some nicer weather lately, so the kids have become re-acquainted with their digging spot.   This week I was working in the house when I hear yells of "Mommy, "Buddy" found a snake, come see, come see!!!"  Of course this was his snake, but we added a few of these to the garden by the end of the day. 

 The kids in all their digging fun.   I think they are looking forward to planting stuff in the garden soon.

Independance

We are trying to get our children to be a little more independant and do things for themselves.  We know we are outnumbered and the more they do themselves the better.

This is good, and we actually got to sleep in one morning last weekend.  The kids got up and got themselves breakfast and then watched TV for a while.  We didn't get out of bed until almost 9AM, it was wonderful.  Princess is old enough to help her siblings and they were all proud of themselves, and they got a treat of watching TV. 

Then this week Munchkin surprised us.  I heard noises at 2AM on Thursday morning, and it took me a few minuted to recognize the sound of dishes being moved around.  Munchkin is independent, and had quite the list of accomplishments. 

• Got out of bed quietly, (I think she even used the potty)
• Moved the stool to turn on lights in kitchen, basement and dining room.
• Gotten out 5 bowls and placed them on the table in front of each chair
• Gotten out 5 spoons and placed them next to each bowl
• Set 3 cereal boxes in the middle of the table.
• By the time I made it downstairs she was standing on the kitchen counter getting cups, which she planned on filling with water from the refrigerator.

I finally convinced her that it was time to go back to bed, she had a drink, went potty and I had to cuddle with her for a while.  She finally went back to sleep.   At least I know that she is capable of feeding herself and setting the table.  Quite the accomplishment for a 3 year old.   I just wish it wasn't at 2AM.

Daffodils

 Yes, I found daffodils the first weekend in February, 4 days before we got more snow.  But they were there and I had to enjoy them.  I only found this one little patch, in the sun, but protected under a tree. 
We went for a walk in the Botanical gardens, and it is a quiet place in the winter.  I was looking for some more color and we went into the tropical garden greenhouse.  It was really warm, and there was lots of color.  This is my favorite shot.

The kids favorite part of our walk, watching the planes take-off from the hill next to the airport.  They have a speaker set up to hear the control tower, so they had a blast watching a bunch of planes.

My ever wonderful husband, who puts up with my crazy ideas and tolerates watching planes take-off, just because he loves his family.