Goals. Everyone Needs Them, Right?

Since I failed miserably at my beginning of the year goal (Working out three times a week, totally didn't even make it two months), I decided I needed a new goal.

So about a month and a half ago I set one for myself.

Goal: To sew enough stuff to be able to actually fit all my fabrics into one tote, with my sewing machine and sewing box.

I feel like I have been sewing like mad and have made some progress, even if I still can't close the lid to the tote, at least all the fabric is in the tote minus the sewing machine and sewing box.

Either way, my goal is to be able to do this by the first week in August. Wish me luck!

Here is the progress I've made so far...



Here are my most recent sewing projects, that took some of the fabric out of the box.

My Hooter Hider or Nursing Cover (a little more PC).


Currently it's being used as my belly hider. :)



Another baby blanket.



A Witches Cape for Novalee. I love this fabric, I bought tons of it once at Walmart for like $2.00 a yard. I've made a quilt and a shower curtain in the past with it.





And of course Jared wanted one too which gave me a great opportunity to get rid of some green burlap material I had. So he got a Wizard's cape.



Eventually I will meet my goal. I'm determined. :)

Novalee's Swim Lessons

Novalee's First day. Seriously, she is so cute!





Jared was trying really hard to entertain himself while at Novalee's swim lesson. Which he was actually really really good.



It was kind of neat to hear from Novalee's swim coach a week early that she would definitely be ready to advance to Catfish 2. I was pretty proud of her.



Just some more fun pictures.


















And on the last day, they get to celebrate by going down the big kid slide. Novalee kept asking to go again. :)

Jared's First and Last Day of Preschool

Jared just graduated from preschool. I wanted to show everyone how much my little guy has grown up since he started preschool two years ago.

I can't believe how different he looks!

His first day.



And his last day (riding the bus anyways, he does go one more day tomorrow but then he really is finished. :) )



Since he has been in preschool his dreams for the future have changed several times. Some of the things that he has wanted to be when he grows up, have been, a paleontologist, a ninja, an astronaut, an eye doctor, a circus performer and on Wednesday during his preschool graduation he said he wanted to be a magician. I hope he reaches all his dreams!

Now that he is onto bigger and better things (Kindergarten)...

the number 1 thing that he is most excited about is...

Riding on a school bus with no seat belts! :)

Camping Out Memorial Day Weekend

At Rock Creek Reservoir for our Memorial Day Weekend.

We were all really excited for the adventure and the kids were especially excited for fishing!



Of course in less than 5 minutes of being there Miss Novalee had to fall down on a rock and sported this bump the rest of the time.



Before we even left to go camping Jared asked that if he found a frog that he would be able to keep it. We agreed that IF he found one he could keep it during the camping trip but he would need to return it before we headed home. And sure enough he found one the first day there.




He is kind of a cute little frog.



Grandma Christine bought the biggest marshmallows we had ever seen and they were SO GOOD too!

Here's Novalee showing everyone how it is done. She was kind of the Smores supervisor, making sure that we did them every night.



YUMMY!



Jared and Grandpa Scott took the boat out by themselves the first night, "To bring the boat over to our campsite," which really means "We're going fishing and will be back when it gets dark."

Sure enough...



Other great fishing moments:

Asking the kids if they wanted a worm on their hook and tossing them a tub of "night crawler" gummy worms.



I'm not sure Jared knew I was kidding. :)



The first catch of the day. Can I just say I totally forgot to look in a mirror that day. My hair's pretty out of control. :)



Novie's fish.



Wes'



Jared's



Happy Moments by the water...








Perhaps the reason the motor to our boat stopped working...





Saying goodbye is hard. Jared was very brave and after wiping away some tears gave a sweet goodbye to his dear froggie friend.



On the last day Jared caught the most fish. This picture was taken right after he declared he was "The Master Fisherman!" You can tell he's feeling good.



And to end the trip Novalee caught one more too!



It was such a fun weekend, it would have been great to stay a couple days longer. :)

More Crafts

Craft 1: About a month ago, I noticed that my kids were getting too warm in their flannel PJs. I really didn't want to go to the store and spend money on summer PJs so I thought I would look online for ideas. I came across this really easy pattern online, http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Sew-Your-Own-Pajama-Pants/

The cool thing was I already had the elastic, wrapping paper and fabric, so they were totally free to make! I love free!





Novie in her PJ pants. I also had extra fabric so I was able to make her PJ shorts too.



Jared and Novie's PJs.

Craft 2: Just another baby blanket. Even though this one is totally boring, I'm kind of proud that the top fabric is actually fabric from old window curtains I had in Jared's room and the bottom fabric was given to me. So I only had to pay for the batting which I bought in bulk and on-sale, so it cost me less than two dollars to make this.



Craft 3: Burp Rags. This was another thing that I didn't want to buy so I decided to look and see if I could find a website that showed how to make burp rags and I came across a blog that I think is so great. http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/2008/01/burp-cloth-tutorial.html

I really like how these turned out. They were super fast to make too. I was done in no time.





That's it for now.

Choices

I think my kids are a lucky bunch. When I was a little girl, I considered myself very lucky if we had more than one choice of cereal for breakfast.

A couple of weeks ago, these were their choices. With all these choices, which one do you think my kids picked?



It's kind of a trick question because they had actually already grabbed the oatmeal so it wasn't in the picture. :) It was a little surprising but it's nice to see they like to eat healthy!

Speechless

For those that know me well, they probably know that me being speechless doesn't really happen. Ever.

To illustrate this point, my mother would refer to people that were talking endlessly (in perhaps not the most PC way) as suffering from "Diarrhea of the Mouth."

Out of all of her children, I seemed to suffer from this particular condition most frequently and unfortunately have never fully recovered. In fact, it may have even gotten worse over the years.

However, about a week ago my dear optometry student of a husband created a moment in time when I was actually speechless. Since this is such a rarity, I felt it was note worthy even if it is a rather uneventful story. :)

At this point I would like to mention that Wesley is amazing. He also happens to be amazingly fascinated with the eye and all the things that comes with it.

The Story:

Once upon a week ago, I walked into our bathroom which requires walking through our bedroom where Wesley was watching television with the kids. (It was probably OPB or the news, his favorite things to watch).

Anyways, I opened up the medicine cabinet and was very surprised at what I found.

The conversation (as I remember it).

Me: Wesley you are in big trouble! (I feel pretty confident that I used a tone that shows I was trying to be playful rather than serious).

Which Novalee caught onto right away.

Novalee: Ya, you are in big BIG Mommy trouble! (She's adorable).

Wesley: What did I do?

Me: You're in big Big trouble. (Once again, trying to be funny)

Well as it turns out, the kids were able to read my tone but Wes obviously wasn't because later when I was again in the bathroom, Wes came in and apologized for watching TV. :) Which totally made me laugh out loud.

Me: Seriously, I wasn't being serious. And seriously that wasn't it, let me show you something...



(Please note that in this photo, there are, count them, five contact lens cases, two bottles of contact lens cleaner and two cases of glasses).

Me: Seriously do we really need to keep all of those empty contact lens cases? Can't we throw some of them out?

His response...

I think that all of them have contact lenses in them.

Me: (Surprised and baffled) What, why?

Then this following statement which created the moment of speechlessness.

Wesley: Well, because they are all different types of lenses and I'm trying out which ones I like the best.

What? I have never heard of such a thing. I had nothing to say and could only muster out nervous laughter as I left the bathroom.

What was I supposed to say? The only thing that came to my mind was, "That is crazy, who has five pairs of contact lenses in use as one time." But you can't say that, and you can't ask him to throw a few pairs away, not only would that be wasteful but the eye and contact lenses are kind of a hobby of his. And so speechless I was. :)