Beware of Dog!

The last few weeks of school have been very heavy on ancient Roman history.
We read how in Pompeii they uncovered a mosaic that read "Beware of Dog!". And of course, we've looked at lots of Roman art and architecture, a lot of mosaics included.

So, as a fun "end of school" project I thought we could make mosaic stepping stones for the garden.

First, we got some $1 patio blocks from Menards, and flipped them over to the flat side. I had the kids draw out what they wanted. Jude wanted a sea horse and wanted me to draw it, but he drew, all by himself, a hamburger fishing for his sea horse. So, see if you can spot that later, ha!

I had a bunch of broken stained glass lying around. Seriously. I bought it when Jonathan and I were dating, thinking I would do something with it, and just now, 10 years later, did something with it!

We bought a $12 glass nipper and went to town cutting it and helping the kids arrange it. Then we used $3 silicone glue to glue the pieces in place on the stones.

We used $10 tile grout, and gooped it over the top. After two hours we used steel wool to buff most of it off the glass. Then the next day, after it had hardened some more, we buffed the rest off. Then sealed it with $3 acrylic spray.

So our total cost for this project was around $30, but we do have a lot of materials left-over we could use to make probably between 5-8 more blocks.

It was fun, and the kids liked the final result! They will go in our garden in front of our swinging bench!
Here are some photos of the process:

 Above and below is before grouting, after fixing the glass with glue.

 Jonathan helping with the grouting.

 Violet's heart.

 Jude's sea-horse and fishing hamburger.

 Oops, someone who likes flowers got a hold of the camera and took a bunch of photos of flowers.

 Sadie's.....flower....and bird.

Ezra's turtle!

 Okay, and I added these later...Jonathan helped me move them (heav-Y!).

 These are the kids flowers. I let them each pick an annual at Wal-Mart, and this is their flower bench.

This is probably really dangerous, but fun!

I can't exercise....with or without youuuuuu!

Obligatory Easter photos...and MORE!

Thank goodness Jan thinks to take Easter photos, and we live close, otherwise, we just wouldn't have any! But first, (just because uploading put them in this order) are some photos of Ramona. I was trying unsuccessfully to catch a smile. I got a weird one, I think...

This is hard to do with one hand, so here is a photo of the kids enjoying their Easter loot, BEFORE finding it!!! It's a physics problem.

Best family photo. Jude looks to me like a young and upcoming underwear model for JC Penney. You know, underwear, or khakis, or loafers. One of those.

Or maybe I was wrong and he's destined to become Mr. Universe. Stay away from steroids, son.

And I've run out of funny quips, so I'll comment on how Sadie looks super-imposed on this photograph. But really, she WAS there.

Found them.

Here is our poor exploited daughter giving a double back rub.

All I can say is: it was this photo, or a creepy one of her pouting and staring at the mulch.

Happy belated Easter!

Brandon Heath - Give Me Your Eyes

Peaches and Mohawks

Surprised by flash.

One is really zonked out. One is pretending for a photo op. Can you guess which is which?

Our little peach tree blossomed for the first time! Please no more freezing weather!

A natural mohawk? I'm thinking this one will have curly hair, too.

Active Alert

Ramona Belle

Ramona Belle was born early Thursday morning March 15th at 12:47 am.
She weighed 7 # 13 oz. 21" long, and 13" head and chest circumference.

Her name means "Beautiful counsel and protection."

I had been having contractions that were mildly annoying since Sunday evening, but they were irregular (anywhere from 3 min to 20 min. apart), and they didn't hurt *that* much. Plus, they always stopped as soon as I went to sleep and didn't resume until the next evening.

We let the midwives know, but weren't optimistic that anything would come of it. Then, Wednesday night, they were getting a bit more painful, requiring a bit more concentration to deal with. So once, again, we let the midwives know. They offered to come over and see us, which I didn't think was necessary considering some of the contractions were 20 min. apart. But they insisted they didn't want to miss the birth (to which we were thinking, "yeah right!").

They came around 10:00 pm and talked with us and stayed for about 20 minutes. I thanked them for coming out, but told them I didn't think anything was going to happen and I was going to go to sleep if I could.

About an hour after they left, my water broke, contractions started in earnest, and they had to rush all the way back! Less than an hour after my water broke, Ramona joined our family!

Still waiting....

We're still waiting for any sign that baby is coming soon. So far...nothing.

Jan, here are the projects I was telling you about. I just got the burlap in the mail today and finished the headboard. It's a little tall and doesn't cover the length of the bed, but I generally like it, and it was really cheap to make with mostly materials we had around the house.

Also, the bird collage was a very inexpensive project. I used calendar pages from all the old calendars we've been saving and goodwill frames gifted to me that I painted black. It takes up a nice big space on the wall in the basement and makes it look more homey down there.

New Camera

We had to buy a new camera recently as our old one cracked and wasn't taking great photos anymore.
Hopefully we will have figured out how to use it before the new baby arrives!

Here are some photos from our first outside, no coat walk of the year (it was 60+ degrees today!)!

A Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Ezra! We had a small birthday party today with about 5 boys from our church, which I didn't get any photos of, unfortunately.

But, we did take some photos of the games we played after the fact.
Because of our house purge, we had some huge cardboard pieces lying around waiting to be recycled. So before we hauled them away, we got some good use out of them.

We made a bean bag game, with matchbox cars for prizes (there's a little flap on the bottom), and we made a reversible race track/bunko car game.

The kids had a ton of fun with the cardboard games, and then we ended with a giant balloon pop. Where we tied around 75 balloons to kids ankles and they ran around popping them and retrieving the starburst candy inside.

It was a lot of work for the kids to pop the balloons, because Jonathan and I only blew up the balloons a little (not wanting it to be too easy). They ended up resorting to stabbing their balloons with the sharp edges of their race cars and sitting on them. So they worked off the candy they won!

Then we had cake---a Spiderman DQ cake that looked like it was supposed to look!

It was a pretty fun birthday and a nice end to the week!


Ezra really liked his superhero LEGO! Thanks, Mimi and Papa!
This LEGO car was from one of this friends and he put it together all by himself after the party!
You can see below that we stapled some 1x2's (normally for canvas building) on the back of the cardboard for racing "tracks". The black things are styrofoam like pipe coverings (forget the name) that we found abandoned in the park nearby. We cut them into pieces and glued them to the cardboard, and they worked really well! They are just the right material for bouncing cars all around.

One of those weeks....

Oh boy, I'm glad it's Friday but this week has been a doozy.

We started off our Monday tired, as usual, and with one forever obstinate child who did NOT want to do her Math lesson, and proceeded to make the rest of the day pretty un-fun.

Tuesday our day started off with the dog getting sprayed by a skunk, frantically giving it a disgusting tomato juice bath, only to realize that that is an old wives tale that doesn't really work, giving it a dish-soap, peroxide bath instead, and having one of Jonathan's co-workers arrive to take him to work at 7:30 when I am groggy and in my pajamas and the house smells like skunk.

Also that day, Jonathan was gone until 11:00 at night for work (Career fair in Ames), and we ALL had to load up into the car to pick him up for his late return (at least we didn't have to drive to Ames). Oh...the cat also vomited on the carpet several times on that long, long day.

Wednesday and Thursday more random vomiting here and there, kids all needing baths and haircuts, finger nail and toe nail trimming, and basically a whole grooming service to assist them in basic hygiene.
Trying to shove school in when we can, visit from the supervising teacher which lasted two hours, and a midwife appointment late in the evening.

Then, today is Ezra's birthday and I wanted to make something healthier than our usual yellow/white cakes. So I made a carrot cake, which I tried to turn into something resembling a large Lego, which ended up just looking like a crumbling pile of crap with bird poop and marshmallows on top (Ezra very naively reassured me that it did, in fact, resemble a Lego somewhat).

And for some reason (temporary insanity, all the vomiting of the previous week, maybe sheer exhaustion) all the kids decided to conspire together to ruin Ezra's birthday and fight and pout about the fact that he got a couple presents. Jude and Violet seem to lack any concept of birthdays being a yearly event, and that a year is longer than the time it takes them to ask me if they can have this or that toy or cake.

Then, ALSO today, the city of CR replaced the shut off valve for the water at our rental because it was leaky and it was their responsibility. You would think this would be a good thing....one less thing we have to take care of. Except when they replaced it, they left the water ON (even though Jonathan told them many times we are working on the leaky plumbing and that's why it needs to have a new shut off valve) and it leaked into the house MORE than it was before. Luckily there was no real damage that wasn't there already.

Did I mention that Jonathan sprained his ankle or something and is limping around like an invalid? Oh, and I can't sleep at night unless I take Benadryl which has the fantastic side effects of motherly (pregnant) guilt, and that oh so lovely hung over feeling in the morning????

AND I have at least FOUR weeks left of being so huge I can't see my own feet let alone the zipper on my pants!!!!!!


#UR#@()(#$#@


If you read this far, I'm am so, so very sorry for you. Try to wipe your mind and think happy thoughts. Imagine a lovely beach and pretend this never happened.

Re-using and Refreshing

In our house scale down, I am often getting side tracked by other projects.

One of which is an old desk that we have been storing in our basement. It has functioned down there as little more than a surface to put things occasionally. I decided if I made it look a little spiffier, it could easily be a nice desk for me to do small watercolors and sketches.

I wanted to paint it to cover up the old scratches and dingy wood finish. So I picked a nice blue color, painted it, and now it sits nicely in our master bedroom.

These drawers are the color the whole desk was. I didn't get a photo of the whole desk before I primed it.

I've never really primed anything before, since I usually don't mind if it get's a "worn" look. But I really wanted the blue to be the actual color, so went the extra mile to prime this desk.

This is the desk after painting! I've always like colorful furniture, but it seemed too risky. But I really like how it turned out!

Another project was this old barn window. I am always trying to figure out new things to do with them since we have so many. I saw some fabric I really liked and thought, "that would look nice behind the glass panes". But it was $20 per yard.......on sale. So instead I drew out the pattern on a piece of paper and copied it onto the window with paint. It still seems kind of plain to me, any suggestions my crafty sisters and mother in law?


Now that those two things are out of the way, I can get back to cleaning.