Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Lost in the Translation

S: "Mom, today the art teacher told us about a girl who hung on the wall for art."
Me thinking...one of those stunts that people pull- like the real people posing as wax sculptures. "Oh? so how was she on the wall?" " was she real?"

S: "Yes she was real, but I don't know how she stayed there."

Now about this time the others got in on the conversation and we figured out...

She was behind glass.

She did it for art.

She had a name but that was a piece of information that didn't stick in her brain. "Google it mom."

The conversation got a bit tense as her thick-headed family really couldn't pull up the name of a girl who stuck to the wall and posed behind glass.

Last night she brought it up again. I searched  "girl who was wall art" "artist who hung on wall"

Nothing.

This morning I saw the art teacher walking between the two schools and almost stopped her to ask about this mysterious artist.

Tonite the mystery was solved....her name?




was Mona Lisa!

Sunday, September 17, 2017

Camping, Applesauce, and Sewing


Before Labor Day weekend we talked about camping and discovered that Shekinah never slept in a tent. Daddy decided that would need to be changed, so he told her we would set up the tent in the front yard and sleep out. Well the weather did not cooperate and our front yard was a bit swamp-like. Rather than disappoint the youngest, we set up the tent in the living room sans tent spikes and slept with the windows open. Almost the same! Daddy decided the tent was sorta full so he slept on the sofa. They nicely placed many layers of blankets on the floor for me, but around 4AM I gave up and sneaked up to my soft bed and got a few hours of real sleep. Maybe mud would have been softer.

When you work for a quilt shop you never know what your next order will be. I do like the variety. This month I made a purse. I highly recommend "Aunties Two Patters- Bailey Island Hobo" for the clarity and simplicity of the directions. Some patterns require a masters in pattern reading, but this one was pretty straightforward. The hardest part was deciding which order to place the colors.
This one was a "design-it-and-see-if-it-works." It works. You could do a lot of different effects depending on the color arrangement.

School requires frappes some mornings, but icy frappes require fuzzy blankets.
School is going well, she is being stretched just a bit with physics and chemistry at co-op  this year and a part-time job. I like that I'm the "room mom" in chemistry, I'm actually learning something! I was introduced to significant figures and how they apply differently to addition and multiplication.


Shekinah still could use some extra with math and I found another math game that she likes. It involves three people. Each person draws a card (you can use any numbered deck of cards)and without looking at it puts it on their forehead. The third person adds up the numbers and says the total. Each person holding a card needs to figure out the number on her forehead by looking at her opponent's number, doing the subtraction. Who says their card first gets both cards. Most cards wins. You could do this with any of the operations depending on the skill level of the players. Add a challenge by playing with four people.


Applesauce day! Since everyone is in school or at work during the day, I decided to ask the eaters to join me in making applesauce on Saturday morning.
The goal was to be finished before lunch time.
Five baskets of apples five or six helpers we were pretty much finished by eleven.
I did start at 6:30 so I could get some apples cooked before they were out of bed.
Finding all the Fluff containers and lids, led to cleaning out one of the cupboards and purging the lonely lids and un-needed containers. Good-bye to a bunch of yogurt containers.

They even helped me clean up the dirty dishes...the lure of ice cream at McDonalds for all of us and a trip to the Re-uzit store for the girls might have helped.

This morning we ventured out of our comfort zone and attended a Lutheran church service. We (I) were invited to attend for a special service recognizing First Responders. It's nice to be recognized but it feels funny. The girls decided it wasn't so bad after all.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Thirty-one Years!

I'm sure there is a scanned picture here somewhere of that day thirty-one years ago. Back when we were delightfully naive newlyweds. The world was such a simple place then ah not really. I'm thankful that there was no Hurricane Irma that year because we went to Florida for our honeymoon. Some day we should go back. We keep saying that kind of thing, "one of these days we will go away by ourselves for a week".  Maybe next year.

One year we found ourselves in China adding a son to our family- that was seven years ago. One year we went to  VA for an Empowered to Connect seminar by Karyn Purvis and team. One year we went away overnight and took a two-year-old with us. One year we traveled the New England states for a whole week and one year we went to Williamsburg for a weekend. The last two were the PC (pre-children) years.
What did we do this year? The weather was influenced by Irma so we couldn't do anything outside and our time was influenced by the fact that the internet-upgrade guy was coming "between 12 and 4 PM".  Three of my conversations with the internet people told me that "no one needs to be home". The most recent two calls told me that a person over the age of 18 must be home. So which is it?

With that in mind we decided to watch a movie that I had heard so much about- "War Room". I realized again how powerful is prayer. With seven children there is a never-ending reason to pray.  I need to remember to pray specifically for my husband too. Yesterday he came home from work and I could sense that he had something on his mind, but the kitchen was full of people. He grabbed some clothes and said, "I'm heading for the shower, I was cleaning up a mess for the last 2-1/2 hours." He is a machine operator in a woodworking plant and he is on the first aid team there. My brain added 2+2 and figured he wasn't cleaning up saw dust. I know from my own experience you need to talk that stuff through. You also need God's help in the moment. We managed to discuss it later and again today.

 I also know that he takes very seriously the upkeep of our family. I saw a little note that came from his work shirt pocket.

Van $ 20,000
Roof $7000
Kitchen $2000

He's planning and maybe worrying about the future. Husbands need prayers--prayers for wisdom, endurance, and for knees that stay stable. (His knee had an MRI and he has a tear in the meniscus. That wasn't on his bucket list.)  My job is to be content, helpful and pray...short list that.

Lunch? Oh yeah, even though Facebook friends gave us many great suggestions, we headed to a small Mexican restaurant that is in the area, it's not Chi-Chi's but then nothing is anymore.

Got home and a few minutes later we had a phone call from "Mike" from the phone company, just checking if someone was going to be home because he was coming to upgrade our internet. There's our answer, you do need to be home. Very glad hubby was home too because "Mike" needed to run new phone lines because our antique (over 30 years is antique in the electronics world) wires would not handle the new blazing fast internet we were about to get (50mbps- well actually 49.49- for those who wonder about such things)

Sometime I need to write down the stuff I'm learning in Chemistry class and about down-sizing (we just helped son#1 move) and camping in the living room just so I remember one day that we weren't terribly boring.
and then there's grandparenting :)