I have been looking for days, days for this material I bought. I've looked everywhere and today when I walked by the play kitchen, guess what I find in the stove? My material. Thank you Amy.

Today was a cold and windy day.

We went to a storybook tumble class today. Amy enjoy jumping and rolling and hanging on the parallel bar. They have a couple stories (which we missed) and than sang a couple songs did some stretches and than played for about 30 minutes. We definitely will be going back.

After that we headed to the elemntary school to have lunch with Jaime.

There's a saying for Kansas weather if you don't like the weather wait 5 minutes because it changes all the time. I would say you have to wait a lot longer than 5 minutes but it's crazy it snows one day and the next it's all gone, freezing cold one day 60 degrees the next. It's a wonderful 64 degrees this afternoon hard to believe in January.

I haven't done very much crafting lately it seems we're always on the go some weeks are busier than others. I really would like to stay home a few more days just to get something accomplished.

Today we had our preschool coop and than afterwards we went to a going back to work/mourning SAHM no longer party for a friend. Someday that day will come to me and it puts me in a cold sweat. I would love to find something creative to do and get paid for it. The thought of going back to corporate America is something I never want to do again. I worked at a bank for fourteen years as a teller and customer service rep. I enjoyed the customer interaction most of the time and had a lot of fun, but there were things I didn't like.

I never posted this because I was going to scan some pictures of my mom and never got around to doing it and haven't posted because I was waiting and have other post to posts. So almost a month after I wrote it here it is



Today is my mom's birthday she would have been 76 years old.My mom grew up in north Missouri raised on a farm. She has 2 sisters and three brothers. She came to Kansas City and worked at Hallmark cards in the 50's, met my Dad, married, had my brother. They moved to Texas when my dad was transferred and had me. My dad passed away when I was 21 months, a year later we moved back to the Kansas City area. She worked for a temp agency and than met my step-dad and we had a blended family, not the Brady Bunch.

My mom loved to sew and was always sewing clothes for us and herself. She was a Camp Fire leader, Sunday School teacher, room parent, you name it and she was it. I remember a girl in Camp Fire coming up to me and saying "Your Mom is great" and back than it was like yeah right but that is something I've always remembered.

Our house was always clean, dinner always on the table, clean clothes. She taught me to sew, cook, crochet and other crafts. She always seem to be a calmer more patient person than I could ever be, we always had cats and kittens growing up mostly outside ones but still a lot of pets hanging around. I'm not sure where I'm going with this post but there is so much I wish I would have talked about with my mom or things I want to ask her and she's the only one with the answer.
She was there when I was pregnant at 15 and married, had Elizabeth at 16 divorced at 18. She was there and helped when she could, never telling me my choices weren't always right.
One time when I was eighteen or nineteen I remember her saying "You might take a shower everyday but when you go to bed with dirty sheets you're not clean" that cracks me up to this day because I thought she was going to say something worse than that, so I started changing my sheets more often.

Sad to say my mom bought my underwear for a long time I'd get some for Christmas and my birthday and the first time I bought some myself I bought the same size as my jeans and those were some big underwear.

My mom and step-dad divorced after 17 years together.

She was in the church choir and a bible study group and the ladies were having a movie night she said they were going to watch an Easter movie, when she came home she said it was an awful movie "Silence of the Lambs" I was like Oh my gosh I can't believe you thought that was an Easter movie.

She use to tell me someday you'll have a kid that's ten times worse than you or something to that effect and when I had that child she was too far along with Alzheimer's to laugh about that coming true. She enjoyed laughing and telling jokes or something funny and every year she got a kick out of buying a birthday card for her younger sister and brother-in-law whose birthday's was at the beginning of January.

Happy Birthday Mom. I miss you!

Kaitlyn was in the Ali Kemp Runway Fashion Show on Sunday. Here's an article with more information about the show and Ali. Jim went with Kaitlyn, I stayed home with Melissa, Jaime and Amy. If we has to do it over I think we would have bought tickets for all of us but when she started selling tickets you had to sell thirty tickets to participate in the fashion show. She didn't find out till afterwards they were letting the girls in without selling the minimum. She had a lot of fun and enjoyed the self-defense course. Jim took the camera and took pictures but somehow the pictures didn't stick, we're not sure what happened.

Happy New Year

School started back yesterday, Chowder the guinea pig had to go back to school too. Amy cried when her sisters got out of the van. I've been busy getting rid of stuff we don't need and have 5 bags for Big Brothers to pick up tomorrow.
My sewing area is in need of organizing and rearranging. It's a mess and I haven't done much sewing since Christmas.

We went to a friends house last week and we each made one of these cute snowman that was on Betz's blog here. Our children used scrapbook paper and stickers and created while we worked on the snowman. We were laughing trying to get the screws screwed in, the sweater would pop off the hoop every time we thought we got it. We had the smart idea of one of us holding the hoop while the other one tried to squeeze it together. They took a little longer than we expected we finally glued the sweaters to the hoops.I had to use the wire to close the hoops on my snowman. I think his scarf needs to be a little longer.




Here's a picture of the stocking I received in the Stocking full of Cheer swap. Susan was my swap partner she sewed the stocking by hand because she was in the middle of moving. She also used a hammer and leaves to print the leaves on the stocking, missing from the photo was a bag of Lindt truffles. Thanks Susan for the great stocking swap. Someday I hope to be able to write blog posts that don't sound lame but I usually have someone wanting my attention the minute I decide to blog.