Mei Tai

About a month ago, my friend Kirsten asked me if I would be willing to make her a Mei Tai. What is a Mei Tai you may ask? Well it is a baby carrier. I went about making this with a lot of help from several websites and really had a lot of fun working on it even though some parts of it really pushed my sewing limits. It is headed now to Nevada and its new home where I hope that Kirsten will enjoy carrying around her youngest son in comfort.

Thanks for the opportunity to create this Kirsten, I hope you like it and get a ton of use from it as well.

Garden Update

It has been a lot of hard work digging out the rocks and putting a more permanent and easy to care for edge to my garden but I finally have the first section complete. I am really liking how it looks now, clean lines and very easy to mow around.

The daylily and lychnis in the picture are close to blooming now and will bring a wonderful blast of color to this area. This is also my first official summer picture of the garden

The Moon and the stop sign

This month's full moon and clear skies gave me an opportunity to use my tripod. Every other time I have tried to get pictures of the moon they come out blurry because I cannot keep my hands steady enough but I managed to get a couple of really good shots this time around and thought I would share them.

The stop sign is pretty clear too.

A Blanket and a "Blanket"

One of the things that happened on Father's Day was that Mack, my brother-in-law, opened a birthday present from my mother-in-law. It was a beautiful afghan and she stated will be the last one she makes as these large projects are getting difficult for her. Here they are with the gift.

Each of the kids claimed a piece of the wrapping or ribbon that came from the package. The other night, we found Michael sound asleep with his new blanket, birthday gift wrap.

Father's Day

A good part of the family was able to get together for Father's Day this year. We spent the day and had lot of fun. lots of food, and a really good time!

Fund Raising

Patrick came home with some exciting news for the last week of school. He was elected Vice President of his class. We are so very proud of him. With his office came the responsibility of raising funds for Homecoming with his class will be sponsoring this year.

I decided to help out with the summer fund raising and for the last couple of weeks the kids have been serving snacks for a local Senior Citizens dance. The kids have actually had a lot of fun with this, gathering the food from their classmates and taking it over, setting up and then cleaning up after.

Here is a picture of Patrick with some of his friends hanging out at the dance.

Kindergarten Celebration

For Jonathan's last day of school there was a celebration. All of the kindergarten classes sung songs and then at the end of the show were told that now they were first graders. The kids were so excited about this and all of the stood an inch taller and with bigger smiles on their faces than when the day started.

Here he is with most of his classmates.

Tub Time

A lot of you know that we have a virtual garden of eden in our bathroom. We love the plants in there and it certainly makes for a nice place for me to take a long bath at the end of a busy day.

On occasion we put a fountain in the bathtub and let it run, the plants sure like the extra moisture in the air and it sounds good!

The other day Dan gave Mikey and Charlie a bath and let them play with the fountain as well. They sure had a good time!

Reading Awards and Science Project Update

Zackery received a reading award for the 4th quarter of school. He read over 800 minutes in the last 3 months. That was great in itself but when they announced that he was one of only ten kids in the entire Junior High to have received a reading award for all 4 quarters, I was really proud of him.

Here he is with two of his classmates at the awards ceremony.


Zackery also did his end of year science project in class. It was a success. He presented his slide show and everyone could understand him. They all got a chuckle out of his last slide that stated, "That is the end of my presentation, thank you for watching". Very typical of Zack. When he did his experiment in class, the balloon got a small hole in it and started to leak all over the desk, but his aide came to the rescue and put her finger on the balloon so it could blow up properly. At the site of that, all of the kids were impressed.

2nd Grade Picnic

Alyssa's class had their end of year picnic and I took Mikey and Charlie with me to celebrate. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate and we had to have lunch inside the classroom but it was nice enough to go outside and run off some energy, not to mention lose a bit of the sugar high that all of the kids had from an excess of cookies and brownies.

We got a picture of the whole class.

And one of Alyssa flying by as they were outside having fun.

It was sure a nice event and I will be missing these kids next year as they get separated to go on to 3rd grade.

Last Day of Preschool

Today was the last day of a very awesome year of preschool.

This year had Michael out of diapers and potty trained, not to mention out of speech therapy which is awesome as well. Michael has grown by leaps and bounds, so much so that he will be starting Kindergarten next year when we originally thought we would wait another year.

Charlie has also made huge strides this year. He has words now and a language that we are beginning to understand. In addition he is beginning to pick up a little sign language which started out as a game with one of his aides and ended up with him coming home and spelling his name for us. He can also write his name now and sing the ABC's and count to 20.

Here are a few pictures from today.
Michael and one of his friends.

Charlie having a great time.

Michael giving his gift to their teacher.

Charlie giving his gift to their aide.

And finally both of the boys with their teacher.

Garden Stuff

I spent a little bit of time in the garden this week. Finished clearing around the last Japanese Barberry and moved some yellow and orange daylily into that spot. I am hoping that they will provide weed control since doing any kind of work around the 1 inch thorns of the barberry can be dangerous.

And I got a new color bloom on my iris. This one is called American Classic. I love the ruffled edges. The iris have spread so much that I will need to move some that are on the outer edges of their space to a new place in the fall. It is good cuz that just means more color somewhere else.

Who knows how much time I will have for the garden in the next couple of weeks with so much end of year school stuff happening. With the weather forecast calling for cool temperatures and showers, I am sure it will manage without me until I can get my hands dirty again.