Up-Cycled T-shirt dress!

Round these parts we have a 2nd hand kid store called Kid 2 Kid. Same idea as Children's Orchard. Well, I took a decent sized box to my local store to get store credit or cash. well, sadly they didn't like/need a bunch of the stuff I had brought in. I thought I'd donate it to another kid in the ward until I came across this fantastic idea!

Cheri, over at I am Momma Hear Me Roar, stepped away from creating awesome-ness for boys and shared her creativity for "Up-cycling" clothing into something far better, and much cooler than it's original form. She even gives a step by step tutorial on her blog.

http://iammommahearmeroar.blogspot.com/2010/11/upcycled-t-shirt-dress.html

So I decided to take those unwanted shirts and make them in to some t-shirt dresses! I was able to make 3 within an hour! Look out DI...here I come!

Take a look!

Reese was excited to wear a "brand new dress that mom made" to school today!

So much for buying new stuff, I serisouly am going to hit up the DI for some quiality up-cycle-able pieces!

Layne Baby!

Today this girl 18months old and officially in nursery! Not surprisingly the goes quite easily. She gets a little nervous on account of the 3 other kids her age with some seperation anxiety. So she tears up when the others cry. and gets her "concerned" look on her face....you know her look!

She is so animated and happy all the time. By far she has been the easiest and most fun baby, now toddler, yet! It's amazing to me that my girls start out with such little hair and it takes nearly the first 2 years of life before I can get anything resembling a pony-tail in their hair. Here's Layne rockin' the piggies! Whenever the camera comes out she says "eeeesh, " translation: cheese. She only speaks a few words: mommy, dada, reese, cheese, oosh (shoes), baby, ball, book, mine, hi and bye....to name a few! But she is by far my best signer of all the girls. She seems to pick it up quickly and uses them more than words: water, milk, food, cheese, cat, dad, ball, book, shoes, socks, cookie, cracker, baby, help, please, thank you...there may be more but I can't think of them!

This girl LOVES her sisters. She loves giving hugs and kisses to them. And is great at greeting people at the door when they come home. She is so fun to have in our family. It makes me a bit sad to think that she won'e be the baby for much longer.

Today she climbed up and snuggled with me while I had some tv shows on. She snuck her arm up around my neck to feel my skin and quickly drifted off to sleep. It was so nice to snuggle with her. And have a rest with my baby. I love this girls and know that I surly was blessed when she came to be a part of my family! I love you baby girl!!!!

Kids

It's great that we live in such a family friendly neighborhood. My girls have ample grass to run in and pavement to ride and scoot around on. There's even some kids right in our little place. But here's the problem....

there's one kid I just DON'T LIKE.

Do I sound like a bad person? Their family is in our ward and I get along splendidly with the mom. It's the kid....even her little brother...that I don't like.

This one girl, we'll call her "A", will come over to invite my girls over to play outside while "A" is already playing with another friend. At first I really appreciated her outgoing attitude and willingness to include my girls. However, "A" would on purpose NOT include Blake after inviting her to come out to play.

"No this is just our worm box."
Saying to another child: "Do you want to come in my house, but just you."
"Come over and play Wii Princesses, it's a one player game so you can watch me."

Blake, upon being invited out to play, willingly turns her down. And has expressed to me that she doesn't like playing with "A" because she's not nice.

The younger brother, barely 3, has even scowled at Reese saying things like, "You're not nice." While Reese was just digging in the dirt completely by herself. Reese looked up at him totally perplexed.

Now you have to know that I NEVER let my kids play outside unsupervised. These kids are often outside all alone. No parent in sight. So it leaves me being a having to call out the kids on their behavior.

So do I? Call her "A" and her brother out on their behavior.

I was even grabbing the mail today while my big girls were running around for a minute and "A" was outside with another friend asking of my girls could come out and play. Blake decided to just do her own thing and practice running/jumping the sidewalks, and when she stopped for a moment I looked up to see the back of "A" with her hand on tilted hip, chin pointing towards Blake, hair tossing about. It looked like she was sticking her tongue out at Blake. So I called her out on it....saying "Hey, are we sticking our tongues out at our friends?" All children were stunned. Blake stood there with a mad look on her face. It ended out not being a tongue sticking out but sassy voiceless lips....same thing right!?

I'm trying to teach my girls to stand up for themselves and tell other kids how they feel when they are being bullied, left out, or not included. I can't be the one refereeing other kids' behavior. I'm only in charge of my own kids.

So, anyone else ever find themselves in the same situation? Any advice? Should I just keep letting my kids use me, their tired and pregnant mom, for not coming out to play. Or do I teach them how to say nicely, "You are really nice to me when we play, so when you decide to be nice let me know!"

Little update!

i am hungry pretty much all the time and oddly enough have had the most recent craving of hot dogs....i've detested hot dogs most of my life!
i'm feeling really tired and dont sleep well. so that's not cool.
i'm pretty done feeling large and uncomfortable only 9 weeks or so left! may 20th! yay!
i'm still amazed that it's a boy!!

we're doing pretty well for the most part! the girls are loving school when they go and aren't sick. i tell ya we've had pretty much every illness in our home in the past 3 months...ENOUGH already! today reese is home with a sore throat and cough that sometimes makes her throw up! blake enjoys school. its a nice long day and i look forward to having them go to the same school! less traveling around town and a nice quiet house for me!

man, today i'm just soooo tired! i know it will go away eventually....but it just makes for a grumpy mom!

oh and fantastic news about dan! he has 3 classes to take next semester, 1 on campus and 2 online, they all transfer to berklee which leaves that one conducting class. he was able to contact the dept chair and find out that he can do independent study and test with the professor and then be done. bada bing bada boom he'll have his bachelor's degree by the end of summer!!!!! yay! it gets even better! he wants to get a degree in information systems from byu, as it turns out the masters program is one of the few that does NOT require that he have a bachelor's in information systems. sooooo we plan on him taking all the pre-recs for the masters program over the next few semesters and begin the masters program fall 2012. it's less than a year in length!!! we really hope it all goes according to plan! and then we'll see what 2013 will bring us...that is if the world hasn't ended!

thanks for checking in on us!

This is my view from the front door!

Our winter!

So winters around here are a bit different from what we've grown used to. Overnight it snowed and snowed and snowed! Oh it was so pretty to see all the fluffly white snow all around in the morning! We got to scoop some fresh snow and eat it, shoveling the fluffly white goodness was a breeze....it was like powder moving it. This was LAST friday. I went to a Dr's appointment in the morning and ran a few errands. When I cam home around 11:30a someone had made a 3 foot tall snowman in the yard. Well, around 3p when I was off to pick up Blake from school, the sky was clear, the streets were clear, and there wasn't ANY snow on the ground anywhere....ANYWHERE! In fact as I drove I wondered to myself if it was in fact last night that it had dumped so much snow. It was. And this is winter. Plenty of snow that falls and falls, but is likely NOT to stick for long.....but probably warm up a good 10-20 degrees throughout the day. So if you think "Ugh, I could never move to Utah with all that snow!" Think again!