Just an update...

I've been moderately busy... nothing out of the ordinary, just day-to-day life.

Last Thursday I did take the girls and we went down to the Seattle Asian Art Museum to see the "Garden and Cosmos" exhibit. It was beautiful and interesting and inspiring... everything that I love in art. The girls, hmm, not so interested. It is a large exhibit and while they did behave well they were more interested in the handsets to walk around and listen to the docent recording. Yes, that is educational, but it doesn't mean that they looked at the paintings for very long.

Victoria is doing a report on Mongolia for our homeschool World Geography Fair. It was originally supposed to be tonight but due to the snow is postponed until next month. She picked Mongolia, by the way. :)

Friday in the afternoon I drove down to Maple Valley to meet up with Denise, the wonder organizer, and pick up a van full of rubber stamps and craft stuff to list on eBay. I'm about 30% through. There's a lot of stamps!

I did get out on Sunday and plant more bulbs. I had two bags of fall bulbs that I put in the back yard. My plan last fall was to rip out the old weed block, remulch, split my hostas from the front yard and put some in the back, and add some evergreens along the fence. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to any of that - my yard was lucky it got any bulbs in the ground at all. So Sunday I went out and ripped out the old weed block, shoveled the mulch smooth again, and planted those last fall bulbs. I also had some new bulbs I bought at Costco on Saturday - giant canna lilies that went in the front yard so we'll see how those look. Should be fun!

Needlework stuff and more...

The new ANG catalogs came in yesterday's mail. "Fantasy Fish School" is in the March / April Needle Pointers. It is neat to see it in print! Along with that came the Milwaukee National Seminar offerings with my Folk Santa Spinner. Very exciting afternoon for me.

MTP update... Continuing onwards... I finished the "paper line drawing" of the new design and I'm quite pleased with how it came out. I pulled the threads and printed out the thread sample card and attached the threads. I was feeling quite industrious at that point so I pulled out the other design (a four-day class) and pulled threads for that, printed out the thread sample card and attached the thread. I worked out the legend with what stitches will be in each area and it's all done. :) Now I have to make color copies of the design and the thread charts and mail it all off to my proctor.



I have some other composing I need to do - outlines are done but it takes time for me to write out the papers. I also updated my resume; this one is more a functional design resume so I dropped the stuff that was not relevent to needlework and expanded on the areas that are relevent. I'm quite pleased with it.

In stitching news, I'm still working on Royal Santa. Almost done with the bag!

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This afternoon I'm taking the children to Lego club. We skipped Book Report Lunch yesterday (shhh!) and went to the park with some of the other parents. It was a lovely afternoon. I even managed to get to the gym beforehand - that's twice this week! I'm planning on going later this evening to swim. Did I mention I'm swimming again? And that I'm terrible at it? :) I have some movies to watch later so I'll get some great stitching time done this evening.

Last night I went to "Mom's Night Out" with some of the other homeschool moms. We went to one of those Japanese steakhouses where they cook in front of you. The food was really good and I had a glass of plum wine that tasted like syrup. Very sweet! We had eight moms there and it was a lot of fun. The chef kept making awful jokes about call 800-hot-chef and he'll come cook for us at home. Poor guy. ;)

MOHAI today...

This morning we headed down to the MOHAI in Seattle to meet up with some other homeschoolers for a field trip day. Most of the Seattle-area museums are free on the first Thursday of the month. It is a great opportunity to rotate through the museums and we usually time them so we catch the traveling exhibits. Unfortunately, they were changing over from one exhibit to another so it didn't take that long for us to go through the museum. I've read all the signs and the children like to play on the interactive exhibits. Brad did read signs and watched the movie about the Seattle fire.

We had lunch in the frigid lake air and then walked on the bridges through Marsh and Foster islands at the base of the 520 bridge. We made it over to the arboretum side but turned back rather than continue on - people were really cold!

The history fair is coming up and Victoria picked "Mongolia" as the country she wants to do a report on. We stopped at the library and she picked out a few books, a DVD, and two cookbooks all about Mongolia. I was really impressed with the selection there without having to reserve (and bring in) any books. Right now she's watching the Ghengis Khan movie.

I picked up the The Fine Art of Kimono Embroidery that had come in on interlibrary loan. What a gorgeous book! So many times they just show the kimono with no explanation and it's hard to see the detail because it's so far away. This one shows the kimono, then on most there is a close up detailing so you can see her detailed stitching. At the very end there is a key that lists the techniques used in each piece. It's very grand.

Most of the pieces in the Kimono Embroidery book were inspired by The Tale of Genji, a Japanese novel written hundreds of years ago. I'll confess I'd never heard of this book, but after seeing the pieces inspired by it I'll be reading the book!

Ok, Ghengis Khan movie is over so we're off to the post office to mail tax information to the accountant!

The sun is shining! The sun is shining!

So I should probably go out and rake leaves. Instead I'm going to do the dishes, go to the gym, do homeschool lessons with the kids, and work on some needlework finishing. Maybe the weather will hold...

I finished the stitching on my Christmas stocking. I'll finish it into a stocking in the next couple of weeks. This week was busy. We went up to Vancouver on Monday and saw the Aquarium there in Stanley park. Then we drove over and saw Brad's grandmother inthe nursing home. She looked really lovely and healthy. The girls were well behaved and Travis behaved like a small child in a nursing home. (Lots of running, spilling water, loud talking.)

Wednesday our homeschool group went to a glass studio. The older children did glass blowing and the younger children made a tile with glass to be fused. Both Victoria and Madeline made a fused tile. Victoria's art is incredibly unique. She considers herself an artist and truly, her work stands out. I can look at a dozen (or 30) pieces and spot Victoria's work. This held true at the glass fusing!

After the studio we went up to Madame Fifi's teahouse and had lunch. All the kids were very well behaved and the girls enjoyed having their own table with their friends.

We then drove down to Bellevue for ballet. I stopped on the way to buy Victoria a pair of pants (three is not enough for winter) and then to ballet. After ballet a quick stop for dinner at the grocery store deli and then on to swimming. They did great at swimming - Madeline has finally crossed the hump she's been stuck at and is now improving again. I talked to the swim team coach and we've scheduled a try-out for Victoria for swim team. She would start in January if she gets on.

After we got home the kids bathed and I photographed a bunch more ebay auctions. I sent out invoices for sold things (which I'll mail tomorrow). We watched a show (Chuck) and then went to bed and read (Angela Knight book) and fell asleep around 1 a.m. I was totally wiped out. TOO busy of a day.

So, from this I've learned that ballet, dinner, and swimming on every Wednesday are fine, because we do that every week and it's ok. But tacking on the extra stuff ahead was just too much. It was a one-time thing, and was a great deal of fun, but just too much. It's the same reason I don't like to travel with kids... they just can't go and go and go, and if you're there visiting you want to see everything anyway, right?

Anyway, time to head to the gym! :)

I'm still here...

Winter has settled in over the Seattle area. Rain, rain, more rain. This has been a very wet summer, fall, and hey, winter is looking like a lot of rain!

I've been busy listing stuff on eBay:

http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/burgundyelephant

There is a professional organizer in the area. She calls me when she has needlework to sell for her clients and usually I swing by and pick it up. This last batch, she had to deliver, as it wouldn't have fit in my van. So, some is listed and more is coming.

The children are doing very well, albeit Travis is coming down with something. He started sounding wheezy on Wednesday afternoon, that night wasn't the best, last night was pretty bad, so tonight will probably be terrible. The third night of croup is always the worst but then they get better. He's such a healthy child aside from RSV as a baby and the yearly croup.

Victoria is keeping up with her lessons and both girls have settled into ballet. Madeline has a new swim teacher and she's wonderful - hopefully she'll pass trout sometime this year! She's been in level three for over a year now.

I have gotten some stuff done around the house. I fixed the patch on the back wall and Brad hung the curtains. I bought a new hook rack for the red bathroom and Brad hung it. We don't have a towel rack in there now but we never used it - this way they can hang their robes and it will look nice. I also painted all the baseboards and touched up the paint but it already needs to be touched up again.

We've been listening to Alice in Wonderland and now Through the Looking Glass. We just finished Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. It was very cute and OH MY it actually taught Victoria why she shouldn't talk back. I was amazed, as that wasn't my intention behind reading the book! Victoria finished reading the Harry Potter series last night. She was thrilled and was laughing out loud at the ending. Up next for her "fun reading" is Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time series, which I'd picked up at Costco. I've been reading voraciously the last few weeks to get away from the weather. I read the Sookie Stackhouse Dead Until Dark series, Twilight and Breaking Dawn, a bunch of romance novels (whoo whoo) and am now reading The Root of Wild Madder, which is about the persian rug industry. There are rug dealers in downtown Seattle so after I finish that one I'm going to take Victoria down there and look at them closely now that I know more about them.

Yesterday we went to the Burke Museum at University of Washington. The girls had a great time and it was a lot of fun. Lots of homeschoolers there. Since Travis is ill he stayed home with Brad. The girls helped work on a button blanket and put together wildlife puzzles, aside from looking at all the exhibits.

I haven't been stitching lately - I need to finish my stocking and I have a few things that need finishing. Off I go!

Book Report Lunch...

Thursday was book report lunch for our homeschool group. Victoria did her report on Susan B. Anthony and Madeline did hers on Grover Cleveland.

Now, keep in mind Victoria is almost eight, so her report was a collection of sentences like "Lots of Susan's speeches were written by her friend, Elizabeth Stanton." and "Susan fought to free the slaves." and "She was a teacher and noticed that men were paid more money."

Madeline is almost five, so her report was basically "These are the Presidents of the United States. Grover Cleveland was President when he was young and here he is when he was old." Of course, then she wanted to show everyone every single picture, which is very common when they're a young presenter.

They both enjoyed getting applause.

Me? I'm feeling bleh. I'm not dealing well with the end to our summer season here (what summer?) and I feel like I need to lose 15 pounds. I've been having insomnia. Which would be fine if I was getting stuff done, but laying in bed wide awake isn't helping anyone. :-(

School's Starting...

Most of the school districts here start up school again on Wednesday. I am looking forward to it very much! All of the museums and parks will go back to being calm and peaceful. ;-) We have some fun things planned for this upcoming year. Victoria is continuing with her ballet and Madeline will be starting ballet at the same time and location. They are also both continuing with swimming and gymnastics. Our homeschool group has park days planned through September, and in October will start back up with book report lunch and Lego club. There are also the monthly free museum days that are always very interesting. We saw a great Lincoln exhibit this last year. I’m looking forward to wandering through museums and having a relaxing picnic before browsing the used bookstores…

I read the Harry Potter series, by the way. Victoria finished up the Lemony Snicket books and told me she wanted to read Harry Potter next. I bought them all at Half Priced Books and read them in about two weeks. They were pretty fun and although some of the volumes were dark (the teacher torturing Harry with the horrid quill was painful to even read) I think since it all turns out in the end it will be fine. Light at the end of the tunnel and all that. Victoria is now on the third one and other than needing help with the names the first time, she’s doing great. I will probably wait until she is done with the series, and maybe for when the last movie is about to come out, before we watch the movies. We saw a bumbersticker at gymnastics the other day that said “Republicans for Voldemort”. What a timely opportunity to explain parody, pop culture, and politics in one fell swoop!

Kidlets are fighting so alas, I must go. Today is the last day of summer swim classes (5x a week in two week sets for a total of 30 lessons) and then regular 2x a week lessons start in two weeks. Whee!