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Eight

Posted by Wendy on September 17, 2014 Leave a Comment

Phone Pics 002

My Munchkin turned eight last week.

Eight!

I can’t believe it.

In the past, we’ve done a family-only-party (and by family, I mean extended family, not just the five of us) for the kids. But now they’re getting to an age where they have more friends – friends they want to include in their celebration. On the other hand, we don’t want to alienate the grandparents who have been part of the boys’ birthdays since they were born. So the way we handle it now is to do a special birthday dinner for extended family on or near their birthday, and then sometime in between the two (they’re only six weeks apart) we have a shared party for their friends.

We started this last year, limiting the guest list to only the grandparents, and it worked quite well. This year we opened the list up a little more to include one set of great-grandparents (the rest have either passed away or live too far away to come) and the aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was considerably more chaotic, but still a nice time. [Read more…]

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Posted in: Other, parenting | Tagged: extended family, family

Picture of the Week: Snow!

Posted by Wendy on February 7, 2014 1 Comment

Snow

We don’t get much snow where I live, so when it happens, it’s a big deal. Especially the amount of snow we’ve gotten the past two days. It’s crazy! We don’t have a TV, and I don’t spend that much time researching weather forecasts (this close to the coast, they’re usually wrong anyway), so the snow seemed to come out of nowhere. It started snowing around 10 yesterday morning, and it hasn’t stopped! The last time we got this much snow was in December of 2009. It’s better this time around, though, because we have the dry, powdery stuff. In ’09, it was a very wet snow, and we got around 12 inches, then it rained for a day, then it snowed again. So we had several inches of snow, a layer of ice a couple of inches thick, topped with more snow. You can imagine how awful that was! But this year, it’s just cold, not awful, so the kids have enjoyed playing in the winter wonderland they only see once every few years.

It was Small Fry’s first snow, so it’s been fun watching him watch out the window as the flakes fall from the sky, and this morning, we let him out in it for the first time (he and I had already gone to the store before it started yesterday, and I’m not much of a snow person, so I didn’t take him out yesterday). That’s the picture on the upper right. The lower right is Small Fry wearing Seahawk’s snow jacket. Too cute!

Is your winter wonderland as white as ours??

Blessings,

Wendy

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Posted in: picture of the week | Tagged: family, picture of the week, snow

Making Christmas Traditions

Posted by Wendy on December 19, 2013 1 Comment

xmas tree final

We live in the same town I grew up in, and my parents still live here. There are definite pluses to that: free babysitting, a close family, and never really “missing” my mom or dad. On the other hand, though, because we’re all so close (us, my mom and stepdad, and my dad all live in the same town; my brother is a half hour away; the in laws are a half an hour the other direction), we’ve never really had the opportunity to develop Christmas traditions for our own family. Since we’ve been parents for ten years now, we thought it was time.

(Our traditions thus far have involved “going to Grandpa’s [my dad] house on Christmas Eve, going to Grandma’s [my mom and stepdad] house on Christmas morning, and going to Grandma and Grandpa’s [my in-laws] on Christmas afternoon. Talk about exhausting!)

I mentioned once before that we explained the Santa Claus myth to our kids last year. They took it well, and we don’t regret for one second stopping the perpetuation of that particular tradition. We told the kids the true story of Saint Nicholas of Turkey, and based on his tale, we bought new “stockings” for everyone. Instead of visiting the Christmas section of the store, we visited the clothing department and bought real socks, just like those that Saint Nicholas would have stashed the money inside to help the poor people of his village. I then embroidered each of our names on one stocking. Because they’re real socks, we purchased them in pairs (obviously), so I’ve stashed away the sixth one if/when we have another baby.

stockings

Hubby and I each read the book The Zero Waste Home over the summer, and while we aren’t able to implement all of her tips based on the shopping options near us, the one that stuck with us the most was the zero waste, and yet “real,” Christmas tree. We had a real tree once when we were first married, and it was a disaster! It was so hard to cut the trunk straight enough to get into the stand that we just bought an artificial tree the next year. The author of the book had a solution that was the best of both worlds (a living tree, but easy and waste-free): a real tree in a pot. Bring it inside during the Advent season, and when once Epiphany comes around (traditionally the day the wise men visited Jesus), undecorate the tree and put it outside. The tree continues to grow in its pot all year long, but it’s not inside the whole year. We absolutely loved the idea! So this year, we’ve left our artificial tree in the garage and we purchased a potted Christmas tree (photo above, at the top of the post). We also decided that we wanted to go with a simpler, more natural look as far as decorations go this year. To accomplish that, we bought one bag of cinnamon-scented pinecones (do they have those where you live? You should totally get some if they do. They’re heavenly!) and I tied hemp cording that I found in the jewelry making section of JoAnn’s to each one for hanging. We wanted to buy some wooden discs to decorate for the ornaments, but after searching two craft stores, Amazon, and Home Depot, we couldn’t find exactly what we were looking for, so we made our own. The kids found a branch outside that had fallen from one of our many pine trees, and we took it across the street to our neighbor. She used her table saw to slice it up for us, and then she and Seahawk drilled a hole in each one. I tied hemp cord through each of those as well, and voila! Exactly what we wanted. Even though we’d originally planned to decorate the wood discs, once we got our branch sliced up, we found that it was beautiful all on its own, so we forwent that step. Add a string of white lights and a dozen candy canes, and that’s our tree. And we love it!

Earlier this week, my dad brought the kids a gingerbread house to build and decorate. They loved that project! I had fun decorating it with them, too. I’m thinking next year, we’ll try doing it completely homemade, though. There’s nothing I love more than making something most people just buy. I did the icing and the kids did the decorating. I’m especially proud of the icicles hanging from the roof!

gingerbread combo pic

One last thing on our new traditions. Gifts. We rebelled hard against consumerism last year and didn’t buy gifts at all for ourselves or our kids. Don’t think us complete Scrooges, though; we gifted our kids with “experiences.” We took them roller skating and to the zoo at different points during the year as their Christmas presents. This year, we’re trying to walk the line between getting the kids “nothing” and going absolutely crazy – like the grandparents are likely to do. I first brought up to hubby the idea of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh gifts that Jamie from The Unlikely Homeschool does. We tossed ideas around for a couple of weeks, and were getting a few good ones for each category (Gold is something desired, i.e. the “big toy” the kids want; Frankincense is something for everyone to share; and Myrrh is something of spiritual value), but then hubby found this little poem that he liked even better for simple gift giving:

gift poem

(I don’t know from what website he found the poem, so if you do, please let me know so I can link back and give credit where credit is due.)

So that’s what we’re doing for each boy. Most of the things are chosen, but not all are made/bought, but we’ll be ready by Christmas.

What are some of your Christmas traditions?

–Wendy

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Posted in: parenting | Tagged: Christmas, Christmas traditions, Christmas tree, family, holidays, parenting

Weekend Fodder

Posted by Wendy on August 26, 2013 1 Comment

Happy Monday, everyone :). I hope your weekend was lovely.

It rained quite a bit around these parts. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t good anyway.

So, I don’t have pictures from all of our weekend activities, but let me tell you, it was busy!

I’ve mentioned before that we go to a bilingual church – about 1/3 of us are “white” and the other 2/3 are Hispanic. About half of the Hispanics speak both English and Spanish (which is why we’re making Spanish our foreign language in our homeschool this year – we want to be able to communicate more easily with some of our brothers and sisters [hermanos y hermanas :)] in Christ). My husband is the youth leader in our church; there is one “white” teen and a dozen or so Hispanics. One of the girls turned 15 earlier this summer, and that means a Quinceañera! This one was on Saturday. It was the first time I’d ever been to one, and it was quite an experience. If you ever have an opportunity to attend one (without crashing, lol), I definitely recommend it. It was interesting to see their culture outside of our regular church service – which to be honest, includes the Spanish language, but not much of the culture. They did the “whole shebang” from the dress to all the gifts to the fancy reception afterward. I said afterward that it was like a wedding with no groom! That’s how fancy it was.

On Sunday after church, we had a wedding reception (with both bride and groom this time!). My husband’s cousin got married. The happy couple won an all-expenses-paid wedding cruise in Portland, so they had limited space for the ceremony, which meant we only got to go to the reception. It was nice to see some of the extended family again.

I also spent a little bit of time with my sewing machine. Remember that I only have a few outfits? Well, the spaghetti straps on my dresses broke, so I had to fix that. It’s not the first time I’ve had to do so with these particular dresses, but it’s an easy task so I don’t mind doing it too much. Unfortunately this time, though, one of the straps completely detached in the laundry a few weeks ago. I remember setting it aside so that I could reattach it, but do you think I could find that strap when it was actually time to make the repair? Of course not! So I cut two inches off the bottom of the dress and made new, thicker straps and then rehemmed the bottom. It was a little terrifying to cut up my dress – I love it! – but as my hubby said, I couldn’t have made it worse. It was already unwearable. In the end, it turned out perfectly though. I’ll do a full post on how I did it later this week :).

What did you do this weekend?

–Wendy

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Posted in: Other, quilting/sewing | Tagged: family

Vacation

Posted by Wendy on July 26, 2013 4 Comments

My husband is self employed, which means no paid time off – which means we don’t take many vacations. In the 12 1/2 years we’ve been married, we’ve had 3, and one of those was our honeymoon. But he’s worked hard to build his business and trips will be easier to come by in the future.

Anyway.

We went on vacation to Southern California last week. We left super early Tuesday morning and got back super late the following Tuesday night. We rented a car for the trip – our 1991 Toyota Celica would never have made the trek. We didn’t tell the kids we were going; we just moved them to the car at 4 a.m. The idea was that they would wake up at their normal time and we’d be nearly to the border. Alas, that didn’t work. They were too awake from the move to fall back asleep right away, and within an hour we had to spill the beans because Seahawk had an anxiety-caused stomachache.

The first day, we drove 15 hours (including meal and bathroom stops). It was rough, but by pushing through so hard, we had an easier Day 2. We did, however, stop to see the Sundial Bridge in Redding, CA. That was pretty neat.

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On the second day, we drove a couple of hours to Santa Monica and did the Pier and the beach. If you ever have a chance to visit there, I highly recommend it. We didn’t do the full-on amusement park (there are seasonal carnivals and amusement parks around here – we wanted the focus to be things we can’t experience at home), but we did spend the $20 for all of us to ride the world-famous Ferris wheel. We also did the carousel because it was inexpensive.

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On the Pier, there was a small statue thing for kids to climb on. Actually, it was two statues – a sea dragon and a pirate ship.

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There was a button in the pirate ship that makes “steam” come out of the dragon’s nostrils. It’s just a water mister, which was a nice treat from the hot weather of So Cal.

Playing in the warm waters of the Pacific was one of the biggest highlights of the trip. Until this trip, I never got why people always want to go to the beach. I live less than two hours from the coast, so I went to the beach often as a kid. But the Oregon coast is cold and drizzly most of the year. Even in the hottest part of the summer, the ocean is too cold to venture into more than ankle deep for more than a minute or two. But at Santa Monica – oh my! Definitely the best beach experience of my life. It was worth getting all sandy for that beach.

After we left Santa Monica, we drove a couple of hours inland to where Hubby’s grandma lives. The kids and I ystayed with her for the 4 days Hubby was at Comic Con. We spent most of those days in the pool.

Hubby’s time at Comic Con was pretty amazing. He met a lot of comic artists (Matt Groening, The Simpsons; Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott, Baby Blues; Berkeley Breathed, Bloom County; Greg Evans, LuAnn to name just a few) as well as Lou Ferigno (who played The Hulk in the 70’s TV show. He saw part of The Vampire Diaries panel, among others. And most importantly, built an even stronger relationship with his colleague from Canada (this was the first time they’d met in person).

The way home was the “real” vacation. We left Grandma’s house Monday morning and spent the first half of the day in LA seeing some of the sites we missed on the way down.

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That’s me and Seahawk in front of the Hollywood sign! It took us a long time to find, even with GPS.

Hollywood had the most famous landmarks of what we saw. Even silly things like famous streets were exciting.

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After leaving Hollywood, we got some lunch and then went to the La Brea Tar Pits. That was really fascinating.

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After leaving the tar pits, we all wanted to go back to the beach before we headed north again, so we went back to Santa Monica, but did just the beach this time, not the Pier. It was even better the second time! Between La Brea and Santa Monica, I saw the most expensive gas station in my life – $5.09 for regular! My camera app didn’t start quickly enough to get a picture of it.

We spent the late afternoon and into the evening driving north.

Tuesday morning was spent in San Francisco. We did the Golden Gate Bridge and the old military fort underneath the bridge. I think it’s called Fort Point, but I don’t remember right this second.

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We could see Alcatraz from our parking spot.

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Crossing the Golden Gate:

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We wanted to take the kids to Fisherman’s Wharf to get clam chowder in a bread bowl for lunch, but traffic around the bridge was a nightmare and we weren’t able to get back down there after we crossed it.

We busted our tails Tuesday afternoon/evening and made it home around midnight after having left San Francisco around noon.

I hope you guys had an awesome week, too!

–Wendy

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Posted in: Other | Tagged: family, hollywood, la brea tar pits, los angeles, san francisci, santa monica, vacation

Picture of the Week: The Lion Kids

Posted by Wendy on June 7, 2013 4 Comments

I walk to the store with the kids nearly every day. It’s not the most efficient use of time (or money) as opposed to buying big and freezing, but I don’t like not leaving the house at all on a day, especially as the weather gets nicer. I also don’t like walking without a destination in mind, so this is the system that works for us.

On the edge of the store property, there are two rocks that look just like those in The Lion King, and every time we walk by, the boys ask if they can climb on them. About every third time, I let them. Last night was one such time.

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I hope your weekend is full of God’s wonder.

–Wendy

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Posted in: picture of the week | Tagged: family, kids, playing, walking

The Best Things in Life Aren’t Things

Posted by Wendy on May 14, 2013 2 Comments

I hope all you mothers had a wonderful Mother’s Day with your children and mothers! My kids were super excited to wake up early and give me the gifts that our neighbor helped them make: little clay magnets

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And they each painted a terra cotta pot and planted a flower.

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Then, at church, their teacher had all the kids make paper flower bouquets for their moms.

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Mine are now proudly hanging the sewing room :).

After church, hubby took us all out for lunch and then to JoAnn’s where he bought me a new sewing machine :D. Mine quit working about a month ago, and since there are no Singer authorized repair shops in my state, our only real option was replacement (which accomplishes one of my May goals). The no-waste side of me hates that it came to that, but on the other hand, it was only $100 and lasted through pretty heavy use for over 4 years. I’ll donate it to someone who can fix it if I’m amble to find such a person.

Anyway, here’s the new one:

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The excitement of my kids and hubby in blessing me in such huge ways was worth way more than the things themselves. They (my family) are truly the best things in my life…

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…even when they (*ahem* Small Fry *ahem*) aren’t totally happy.

–Wendy

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Posted in: Other, parenting | Tagged: family, mother's day

Picture of the Week

Posted by Wendy on April 26, 2013 2 Comments

I actually have 2 for you guys today, both featuring Small Fry.

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This was only his second time in a swing. Because he was born in July, he was too little to play in one last year, and then it got cold and rainy. It’s finally nice enough that we can go to the park again :).

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Last night, we had my brother and sister-in-law over for dinner, along with their two sons. The two babies (Small Fry is 9 months old, and his cousin – though bigger than him – is 7 months old) played together too beautifully not to document photographically :).

Have a wonderful weekend!

–Wendy

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Posted in: picture of the week | Tagged: babies, cousins, family, park, picture of the week

Welcome!

Welcome to Ladybug Daydreams! My name is Wendy, and I’m glad you’re here. I am a homeschooling mom to 5 boys. I write about homeschooling, homeschool curriculum, yarn (both knitting and crochet), and more! I hope you enjoy what you read.

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