Summer Begins!

Yay! Summer vacation has finally arrived. I have been looking forward to this feeling of relief for months! I did go into work on Tuesday to turn in end of the year paperwork and tidy up a bit. Then I ran into my principal who informed me that, "oh, by the way, you are moving classrooms." My students had been beggging me for weeks to help me take everything off the walls and clean things up but I kept telling them no, I would use everything next year. I wish I had known a few days earlier about the room change becuase my students could have helped a great deal on those last few pointless days of school. So I ended up going in to work two days this week and am now nearly done moving. I rolled everything back and forth down the hall on a chair with the help of a coworker- bless her!

Anyway, even with that minor bit of chaos, I am feeling lighter and unburdened already! Stirling and I have a few things planned for the summer, including weekly story and craft time at the library. Stirling was bit of a wallflower at the first one this week. There were a ton of kids in the 2-5 age group and he sat on my lap and watched most of the singing, dancing and stories.

We also started a planting project on our patio with radishes, beans, zinnias, and sunflowers in pots. I ran out of dirt and pots before I ran out of seeds, so it is all pretty crowded. Stirling managed to sneak in a few extra seeds here and there, and kill a few more by pulling them out or smushing them with his ball. We still need to put up stakes for the beans, but it is already looking like a little garden on our front porch.










I am trying out some new crafts as well. The three of us made collage placemats which turned out very cute. I was really excited that Rj was interested in doing a craft with us- he was very into looking for just the right pictures from the magazines. I went a little overboard with glitter on my placemat. Stirling enjoyed sticking on smiley face stickers.











I had hoped to post some pictures of these events, but for whatever reason, I can't get them to load. I will try again in a few days- Did it!

Stirling's Birthday!

I can't believe Stirling turned two on the 24th! He is getting so big. He loves big trucks and construction equipment and looks for backhoes and excavators whenever we drive through construction. The other day when we were coloring he told me, "I make a backhoe;" the first time he has drawn an actual something. Stilring is a very social little boy. He loves talking and playing with his friends at daycare and around our neighborhood. He is growing up so fast!
For his birthday he opened presents, then we barbecued and ate on the patio in beautiful weather. RJ did a great job decorating, and Stirling had a blast with the balloons that RJ put up.

Time Warp

I found a website that allows you to put your face in old yearbook photos from 1950 to 2000. Here are a few of the ones I did. I think it is yearbookyourself.com or something similar.

Projects

Since I am blessed with an overabundance of free time (haha) I did a few quick projects recently. The first thing I took on was an entire flat of cherry tomatos. I don't really like cherry tomatos and RJ won't eat them, so I had to think of a way to use some of them so they didn't go to waste. I marinated some of them in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic and basil. Then I ate them on toasted bread and it was really pretty good. I also tried to pickle some in vinegar with garlic cloves, hot peppers, and cumin. I have only tried one so far, and it was just ok. Most of the tomatos ended up going to waste anyway.
















I also whipped up some curtains for Stirling's bedroom. I didn't use a pattern so they turned out with some crooked seams and crazy hems. It looks a bit like a 7th grade Home-Ec project, but I had fun doing it and they look pretty cute in Stirling's room. (Much better than the bed sheet we had tacked up over his window to keep the sunlight out!)

I am hoping to make some curtains for our bedroom this summer as well. We'll see what other projcts I can do now that I will be out of school for a couple months!

Turning 30!

I can't believe I am in my thirties! Yikes. We celebrated with Chinese food, presents and a homemade cake that RJ decorated with sprinkles. Stirling loved my balloons. I loved my new sewing machine. I can't wait to get started on some curtains for Stirling's bedroom. I'll post pictures when they are done.

Stirling and Mommy

I love hanging out with my little boy. We have so much fun together!

Easter

Ok, so I'm a little behind in posting. We hadn't planned on doing anything at all to celebrate Easter. Since we aren't church-goers, we didn't really feel like we needed to celebrate the day in the sense that it is meant to be celebrated, and hiding eggs for no reason didn't seem right. But... we have the cutest almost-two year old and I just thought it would be fun to watch him hunt for Easter eggs, especially after he enjoyed his Easter party and egg hunt at school so much! So I dyed eggs with Stirling the night before Easter. He had fun dipping the eggs in the cups and staining my counter tops! I found an old package of Smarties in the cupboard and divided it up among the few plastic eggs we had, and then hid the eggs in our front yard on Easter morning. We gave Stirling his basket and showed him the first egg. He got so excited! The excitement and the candy was enough to have Stirling shouting, "happy EE-sa" over and over when we skyped with his Grandpa and Grandma!



Not only did we have a really good morning with Easter festivities, we also went to the county fair that afternoon. It was Stirling's first time at the fair, and we discovered some parts of the fair that we hadn't known about before. They had a special area just for little kids that included a fake cow you could "milk," a couple of sand boxes that had corn instead of sand, musical instruments, blocks, pedal tractors, etc. That was way cool! Stirling also had a pony ride which he really enjoyed and went into the petting zoo where he hugged a donkey and saw a kangaroo. The only thing he didn't like was riding on the carosuel, but that was probably more due to the fact that I had just gotten sunscreen in his eyes and he couldn't see.
And to make the day even more exciting, there was a 7.2 earthquake while we were there. We actually didn't feel it, but thought it was strange that all the pigs went crazy all of a sudden and a calf broke loose.
So I guess it was a memorable Easter 2010!