Tea Party

               Little girls ready for a tea party -oops one little boy wiggled onto the sofa

             Serving tea and eating cucumber sandwiches, steamed buns, egg and olive, and cookies

 And a certain little girl who knew how to manage a tea cup (with hot chocolate) like a pro!

(We managed to keep our mother awards by having plenty of left-overs)

What are You Reading These Days?

 I think I have read "Go Dog Go" over a hundred times in the last 6 weeks

  I have hidden it in the bookcase

                                                And Missy Bright Eyes

                                                  Finds it every time!

                                    I will need to take sterner measures very soon.

               PS. Tomorrow we will go to a tea party, just the girls and me...the boys get to stay home and do the laundry. I will probably have to hand in my "Mom of the Year Award"

Shekinah's First Christmas

with us that is.... We kicked off the weekend with a family dinner. She had met my siblings and their children before, but had been very shy.  I wasn't sure how she would do especially with the men of the family.  I did not need to worry, by the time evening rolled around she was stealing her uncle's chicken...well, first she stole his seat, then she asked for his meat.

                           snuggled right up to older brother, since she knows he is OK now.
                      

        On Christmas day we opened gifts, here is Ezekiel reminding me that he was my Christmas gift 15 years ago.

                   Then the boxes kept getting bigger!

                               Wooden marble rollers still sound the same!

                            We managed a chocolate cake with peanut butter icing for Christmas supper


Quote of the day:  "Mom! Faith hit me!"   by a cute little 2 y.o. who is learning to tattle.

Ectrodactyly

A year ago I really did not know much about that big word. I saw a little girl who stole my breath away...an oh, she didn't have all her fingers and toes.

We applied to adopt her mostly because both daddy and I felt like God was telling us that she was our child.  When we showed our information to one of the doctors, they said "she will need some advice about having children when the time comes, because her children have a 50/50 chance of having ectrodactyly as well."

I did do some research and what I found was a bit scary.  Split hands and feet involving four limbs is seen in  1:90000 births. Often other nuisance type problems go with this...dry skin, bad teeth, and problems with tear glands.  Then I stopped reading.  My husband was very sure that this child was to be our, so I could relax knowing that it wasn't just my overactive mother heart.  Or worse "how young does she think she is?" "does she think they can save them all?"

I met her, we came home and I've been talking about her ever since. She's an amazing little girl...but that's not what this post is about.

Ben has to do a short speech at school on a medical subject of his choice. So he picked ectrodactyly. As he is doing his research I picked up on something that had bugged me before when I was doing my own research....the pictures of the tiny little babies with cleft hands and feet...why did they look like that? DUH mom! those are aborted babies.



OK, I told myself not to jump to conclusions, did people really abort their babies 'just' because they are missing fingers and toes?!

Then I joined a FB group for people who are living with ectrodactyly or are pregnant with children diagnosed with ectrodactyly and I found my answer....Yes, abortion is advised when people are carrying children with ectrodactyly.

I am so glad that Shekinah's birth mom did not have access to a sonogram....look what the world would have missed!!


Quote of the month:  "Why can't you be like other moms and help us with our homework?" (this from an A, B student)

" I thought when I'm the oldest I would get to pick the easy jobs"  (this wasn't the father of the clan speaking)

I Think She Likes Them!

She always did like Ben, but she really kept her distance from Demetrius. Glenda managed to get into her good graces by playing toys with her, but of course little one manages to avoid the camera.

Tonite she learned that Demetrius' phone not only has a 'bubbles' game, but it has a camera! She took pictures of mama, Metri, and her favorite book "Go Dog Go"  Now if Demetrius offers her a whole hamburger (hold the roll) he will forever have a place in her heart. That girl loves meat!

Public Service Annoucement

Don't put your finger in the pencil sharpener, not even the non-electric type.

Do You Like My Mao-zi?

Shekinah loves the book "Go Dog Go". I can supply a fair number of the words in Chinese and the pictures tell the rest of the story.

Tonite Ezekiel fashioned a foil hat for her and Joseph took her to see it in the mirror and for once I was on hand with the camera.

More Strange Projects

                         I love a challenge, but one of these days I'm gonna refuse a job. This

                        one involved covering 50ft of cotton clothesline with fabric. Then I

                        sewed the clothes line together with a zig-zag stitch.

                       Cut the crazy thing into 3 inch sections and sewed it together to make

                       the sides of this wonderful .....Casserole Cover!

                       What will they think of next! it was fully lined with thinsulate, but

                       it was almost more than my 25 y.o. machine could take!

                       Oh and of course they wanted it before Christmas!

Peanut Butter Fudge

OK, the easiest candy I've ever made

1 pkg graham crackers  (1/3 of the box)
3/4 cup butter
1-1/4 cup peanut butter
3 cups confectioners sugar

12 oz chocolate chips

Melt the butter in a microwave safe dish. Add the peanut butter. Mix in the sugar. Crush the graham crackers (fine is good, but whatever) add graham cracker crumbs to the mixture. Mix (I use a fork) until everything is blended.  Press in a 9 x 13 pan. Melt the chocolate chips, spread on top...let it cool and cut into squares.

OR you can roll the peanut butter mix into balls and dip into chocolate.

Don't worry too much about neatness, these will not hang around long.

More Reasons I'm Not a Photographer

Why I'm Not a Photographer

Because when I try to get Christmas card photos of my darlings I get this.

Actually managed to crop some suitable poses for a collage on the card.

Oh and the those are the girls' dresses...'cept Shekinah, she just
needed a shiny frilly dress like her sisters so I grabbed the nearest
one. It doesn't bother her that the velvet is coming off at the creases.

New Blog

Since we are starting a new phase of life I think I will start a new blog...stay tuned while I think of a new name etc.

Winner!

I decided to do the drawing right after 3 so that I don't forget it!
Despite all the proffered help, I thought I'd better choose the one that
can't read.

Congratulations Deanne! She entered via my e-mail...hopefully she will
answer me soon!

Up-Cycling - Christmas Program Dresses

( what was left of the silk blouse...the rest were snipples is that a word?)

Hope was telling me that she NEEDS a new dress for the Christmas program...on Friday. After  all they are supposed to wear DARK dresses and the ONLY dresses that no one had seen were LIGHT-colored dresses.
I have much sewing-for-$$$ that needs to be done.  When my girls have clothes that are not stained, have no holes, and are still long enough I will push off the fun sewing in order to complete my quilt orders.  BUT I felt guilty after delivering the quilts on Monday so I decided to check G**dwill to see what I could find.
There just are not many decent dresses for pre-teen girls.  I decided to check out the skirts, thinking I'd just make a bodice to put on a 'nice' skirt...

So I came home with 3 tops and 2 skirts.  Two of the tops said "professional dry clean only"  so I threw everything in the washer on cold water wash. They all came out OK.   The one top was kept to wear another day because it was too small to cut the bodice of a dress.(If your original blouse has buttons down the front make sure it is XL if you aren't planning to re-use the button front)

directions and lessons learned:
Wash the 'fabric' to make sure you don't end up with a dry clean only dress.  (the bodice of Hope's dress is silk)

Make sure the blouses you buy are big enough to cut your desired pattern.

The velvet top had no openings, just a very loose neckline (more fabric)  so I cut the front of Faith's dress from the front of the blouse and the back from the back...cut off the sleeves with a scissors...no careful seam opening this time.   Left the sleeve hems and seams alone and  just shaped the top of the sleeve using her dress pattern.  Had enough of left over fabric to make interfacing.
Her skirt basically went straight to the dress with only 4 pleats added at the waistline. I cut off the original waist/elastic stuff so the seam would lay nicer, but kept the hem intact.  I could add a belt, but she does not like belts and would rather have a loose dress.

Hope's silk bodice did incorporate some of the side seams of the original blouse, but I didn't think it was a problem. I would have liked to use some of the decoration that was at the neckline,but it looked worn and there was a stain (note for next time-check closer).  The sleeves originally were a square cut pattern (at the top), so I just reshaped the top and again left the seam and bottom hems alone...they could have decoration.

I did line Hope's bodice with some cotton fabric to give stability and modesty ^^   The belt is from some leftover silky fabric that was laying around here. The flower was given to her by a classmate.
  The skirt was wide with pleats  so I reshaped it with her pattern...lost the pockets in the process and discarded the belted/elastic waistline, but was able to keep the hem...

Two 'fancy' dresses in one busy day....the beauty of this is that you don't have to "like" my color combos or their or my pattern...you can go out to those RACKS of ladies clothes and pick from ALL SORTS of fabrics and make your dress...just think what you can do with those HUGE dresses you can find.

Big Girl!

A certain little girl actually used the big potty three times in one

day! Hmm, wonder if she was working on this before she met this-a

mama? Or maybe she's incredibly smart.

Oh and you can still enter the book give-away, go back to this post   you have till Wednesday.

Panic Origami

Were setting the tables for the big family dinner tomorrow. Dilemma:in
what do you put the individual servings of candy? I know, should've
thought about this before. finally found an easy origami box pattern on
line. We needed 48 of them, so I rallied the troops. Shekinah did so
great with her pieces of paper, but now she fell apart...to stressful
watching all those people busy folding.