For the past week, Greg has been away on a Men's Hiking Expedition. This was also the 1st week of school, so while I was very glad that Greg was able to have a great time in the outdoors, this meant that our week was going to be quite a challenge.
I was going to write of our adventures, day by day, but on the first night I stayed up waaaaay too late watching the season finale of Grey's Anatomy, and suddenly I wasn't feeling so brave anymore. I thought it might be a bit of a folly to mention that Greg had left us alone for a week, even though I wrote all through his deployment... I KNOW. I'm a little bit neurotic. And he's coming home tonight, so none of this matters anymore. ANYWAY.
Last week ended with Andrew's Kindergarten Graduation. I am proud to say that I didn't cry, but it made me choke up just a tiny bit to realize that he's starting grade school For Real next year. He's going into 1st grade. How can he be that old? How can I be that old? Oh dear.
Two short videos of some songs the Kindergarten class sang:
We couldn't find Jonah's shoes that morning (Greg nearly called a National Emergency), so he went barefoot. My siblings would be proud.
Elijah skipped out on class for the Big Event.
Andrew looked a little strange -- he was feeling pretty sad about the ending of the school year. He'll miss his wonderful teacher and some of his close friends so very much.
Afterwords, we went outside with Elijah's class for his end of the year Pizza Party, and Greg got a full body workout by racing up and down the line of 12 swinging children, and sending them to stratospheric heights.
Jonah started to get a little bit tired...
Two days later on Sunday morning, Greg left for his trip. On Sunday afternoon and all day Monday, the children and I worked on their teacher's gifts. (They had a long weekend which included Monday, and then went back for their last day of school on Tuesday -- kind of weird.) This is what we ended up with (not shown are loaves of honey wheat bread which I also included in each big paper bag of gifts):
Box bags, which all of the teachers decided was make-up bags (funny, because in the circles I run in, everyone decides they're sock-knitting project bags) :-)
Little treat boxes, housing a handful of miniature Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies (I'll put up the recipe soon -- it's from Baking: From My Home to Yours
)
Treat-box print outs were downloaded for free from Paper Glitter.
Bunny stationary for the thank-you-for-being-an-awesome-teacher notes:
(Also downloaded from Paper Glitter)
And the part that the boys did -- a set of personalized apple note flats for each teacher:
I loved that the boys were able to be involved, and that they were able to use something the teachers have taught them -- handwriting -- to give back at the end of the year.
Once we got the teacher's gifts all set, I started (finally!) sewing for myself. I stocked up on some t-shirts for some refashioning adventures (none of which have gone well yet!), and I sewed a dress, which I LOVE...but haven't manage to photograph yet. (Seriously: WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY TIME that I don't have a good half-hour to set up the camera on a tripod and take timed shots of myself dancing about the yard. Tell me, WHY AM I SO LAZY??!!!) Haha. OK, moving onward.
We got a nice sized splash-pool to put on our patio. Jonah has his doubts about it all.
(Lavella was napping at the time of these shots)
Lavella and I started new embroidery projects:
And Andrew completed his very first sewing project:
It's a snake that he drew with fabric markers on some white thrifted curtains. He helped me to sew it together with the sewing machine, and then we stuffed it firmly with wool. He's been carrying it around ever since, so I call that a success.
Elijah's project will probably be completed tomorrow -- he came down with a fever and some violent vomiting this morning, so he's been sleeping for most of the day, and I didn't want to work on his project without him.
As I'm sure EVERYONE knows, yesterday was National Doughnut Day, which we celebrated in due fashion:
Oh yes my friends, we're all about the baked doughnuts in this house. It's the recipe from 101 Cookbooks, which I've made many times before. I made them with half whole-wheat flour (that I ground myself), and coated them with cinnamon sugar (twice the cinnamon in Heidi's recipe). Paired with easy over eggs, tiny peas and baby corn, it was a rather happy way to end the day.
The recipe makes quite a lot, so Andrew and Elijah delivered plates of them to a few neighbors to share the wealth...just in case they'd missed out on doughnuts earlier in the day. 'Cause we wouldn't want anyone to miss out. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT DAY, PEOPLE! Oh man, someone remind me of this when I totally forget next year.
Anyway, if you also have forgotten (or ~gasp~ never knew!), I'm sure no one would mind if you whip up a batch of these tomorrow and call it National Doughnut Weekend.
Well! I think that I'm mostly caught up. Except for the fact that I'm just now remembering I never blogged Easter, Lavella's birthday party, or the Renesance Festival that we attended last Saturday. So everything except those things. Yup, I'll never be caught up. Hurrah!
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