Stress Balls and Other Stuff

A quick game of Chook toss

After daddy brought in the newly finished game

There are 3 more for sale with "chooks"

Then because  D____ had one at school we needed to make stress balls too

Fill a balloon with flour and add 2 more layers of balloons and a "mask"

See the video here

They weren't perfect but it was sorta fun. No one made me a stress ball tho'

maybe because I don't have stress?

For weeks my dryer was making a noise similar to a kindergarten on candy canes, or 

a number of small animals with their tails caught in a door,  or

...well you get the idea. He had tried to take the dryer apart a few weeks ago and gave up

"they probably don't want people fixing these things"

We put most of the Christmas bonus in the savings account because we were sure that one of these days there would be no more screeching and the dryer would just give up.

The other night tho, he was perusing a fix-it site and saw the proper way to get to the guts of this dryer. He found the problem, called the appliance store and -small miracle- they had the parts in stock! He used the leaf blower to clear out 10 years of lint and my dryer now runs beautifully.

Unfortunately, the Christmas bonus probably has to fill in the gap of 8 hr work days and no

Faith Builder scholarship fund as of yet.  The state budget hold up has trickled down to  that part of our lives.

I finished my litter of chickens

to go with the toss game.

In preparation for Christmas day, I made about 75 dumplings and 48 egg rolls

and didn't want to waste my quiet day, so I took a con-ed course on Bloodborne Pathogens.

I need to keep up with my con-ed if I want to keep my EMT certification.

The other night I thought I saw something unwanted in my pantry, so I started cleaning out.

I had been hoping to just buy those nice canisters from Rubbermaid, but decided not to wait.

I have glass jars and Sharpie markers. I don't have great handwriting but Hope was in bed.

We will have to see how long it lasts...an no, there is not a" before" picture.

He's Home!

But first a few things so I remember...and you might find them slightly interesting too.

Shekinah gets bored on her stay-at-home days and I quite frankly am not bored. It would be very easy to let her watch B-bear movies all day, but really how much mama and papa bear can we watch?

I remembered a craft from my elementary school days and thought maybe she could do it without too much supervision. Sure enough! I had to start the wrapping but after awhile she got the hang of it.

And best of all the other kids were impressed, they never saw that particular craft.

Hope and I have been saving our dollars from small jobs and finally

we had enough to buy an overlock! I really debated buying a medium priced ($400) machine, 

but settled for the $199 Brother 1034D off Amazon.

My mom ran a couple dozen diapers on it and we did some dresses,

broke a needle (operator error), and changed out threads a few times and I still like it.

It is noisy, but it has speed!

Then the much awaited Christmas Program. 

I only needed to make one dress this year. Faith could wear Hope's dress from 

Big Brother's wedding in 2011

and a dear friend gave Shekinah a hand-me-down last weekend and it was perfect.

Then finally! We went to the Inter-City bus station (I could write a whole blog post about that bus station. I'm pretty sure it was built in the 70's and only recently enforced the no-smoking rules.

The carpet is probably the original floor covering as it carries the odors of  at least 25 years of cigarette smoke. The ticket holders for the next buses were an interesting mix. There was one middle-aged white man making a number of phone calls. His phone calls included a call to someone in FL in which he compared our weather to theirs- it's the same. Then suddenly he took our Lord's name in vain and called another person and asked why they hung up on him-made me flinch he sounded so angry with Him. Then yet another number and asked for 'Nicole on 3rd floor a social worker'  and did she talk to so-and-so and what did they discuss.  We were distracted when Shekinah noted a woman walking on the sidewalk outside with large strategically placed holes in her jeans, 'MOM SHE HAS HOLES IN HER PANTS' I realized that she was opening the door of the bus station to come in  and I quickly, quietly told Shekinah that we won't talk about other people's clothes. That didn't stop the stares. There were other quiet people sitting and waiting and I wondered about their stories.--OK that is enough)

Finally,just before our parking meter needed to be fed more coins, the right bus pulled in the parking area! Sure enough, one person looked very familiar.

I expected a bus load of tired people to come down the steps, instead a total of three people were on the bus. I didn't realize they would run a bus 63 miles between the two cities for 3 people, but they did and I'm glad!

God gave Ben three seats to himself for the entire flight, so he managed to sleep some of the time.

Madam Shekinah was suddenly shy around "my Ben" but till evening she stuck like a leech.

We saw some of his pictures tonite. It is good that he saved some of the stories till he got home, but he had a stretching time, learned much independence <insert sad face> and will probably find our small house a bit confining.

I saw the title of an article tonite "Go and Let God Stop You" I reluctantly showed it to Ben and he said, "yeah, that's what I've been hearing the last four months."

Zeke responded with " Well, Jesus tells us to be like children, it's like 'get in the way and then He can tell you what to do'."

Well it's time for bed, the house smells good because I finally remembered to make baked oatmeal for my DH's breakfast, maybe I'll have a bowl before bed. I also started some kefir. Update on that tomorrow...or the next day. edited to see if e-mail works