Picture Catch Up

I’m going to catch up on the last month or so in one fell swoop.

First, let me just say, I'm Over-Freaking-Joyed that school starts again tomorrow. These kids are B.O.R.E.D! In fact, they are so bored and so upset about the idea of a longer time off at summer that they've decided to talk to the school director about looking into making the school year-round. That would be cool.

Second, I'll ask you to be kind and recognize that it's late at night as I write this post and I'm having trouble remembering how to post pictures from my sister's flickr account to my posts. I actually don't think I can, so some of the pics below will be links instead of actual photographs. Click on them or not, it's up to you.

Now, are you ready for the rest of it? Ok, here we go.

Emily's birthday (the week before Christmas) ended up being a larger affair than anticipated. She had one of the little girls from across the street over to play. Whenever they play, if the girl comes here, her mom ends up running "just a few errands" and more often than not we end up including her for dinner. So of course that's what happened. We had also already invited our other across-the-street neighbor (and her daughter, of course), then her boyfriend and his daughter "happened by" as well. Whew! Full house—thank goodness we had plenty of birthday cake. Here's a Picture of Emily on her Birthday

A couple days later, there was the funniest version of the Nutcracker I've ever seen presented at the kids' school. For example, in one of the scenes (I think it was the part with the Russian dancers), instead of dancing, the kids played with hula hoops. I don't remember many other specifics, but it was hilarious and a ton of fun for everyone.

The next day, my younger sister Teri arrived early in the morning, so she was able to join us (everyone except my mom and Jeff) at the skating rink, which the school had rented for a couple hours that afternoon—no one but us; it was awesome. It turns out only Teri is the only one of us who can skate worth a shit Even Em isn’t a natural, which kind of surprised me because she's so balanced and agile usually, but once she took her skates off she had a blast running around the rink in her stocking feet and pulling people. Here she is with Teri, trying to get the hang of these wheeled feet.

The day after that, Saturday, Emily went to her dad's and I set up camp in the studio. I sewed more over that three day period than I had in the previous six months! But I'm thrilled to say I got ALL my Christmas sewing completed by Monday night. Yeah, yeah. Whatever. You’ve already seen most of those pictures, but here are the girls in their new pajamas (I know you haven't seen that yet): Em's PJs, Storey's Nightgown.

Christmas was small but wonderful. I’ve already written about it, but I’ll reiterate the best parts: No griping, no tears, no bemoaning things that weren't received, and as soon as we finished opening presents, we noticed that it was snowing. It only snowed for about 2 hours and it didn't stick on the ground, but it was so beautiful and such great timing! When we went out to exclaim, all our neighbors were out on their porches too, so everyone ended up yelling Merry Christmas to each other over the hedges and across the street. It was very cool. I love this neighborhood.

Unfortunately, Teri was mostly sick most of the time she was here, so we didn't do a whole lot of out-of-the-house stuff. She went home on the Friday following Christmas and Emily came back from her dad's the next day. New Year's Eve was supremely anti-climactic. I think we were all asleep by about 10:00. For the last few days, we've all been busy with picking up the remains of the holidays. Thursday night we took down the tree. Friday & Saturday we piddled around with other stuff, and today we finished packing up the last of the dishes. It happened, as always, in fits and starts, and then suddenly Christmas was gone. I’m ok with that; I'm ready to get back to real life.

I finished the Knit Picks sweater around Em's b-day and got it mailed off to them just before Christmas. I got my check in yesterday’s mail, so I’m that much closer to our January mortgage. Whew. (I can’t show you the whole thing, but I can give you this teaser.)


On Friday the 20th I got another email asking if I was interested in making a skirt for them, due the first week of February. Of course I jumped at it--it's just stockinette all the way down, and since it's done on circulars, that means I never have to purl. Yay!

I haven't been able to start it yet though. I got the yarn a number of days ago, but I'm still waiting for clarifications on the pattern from the designer. So in the mean time, I'm knitting baby hats. Lots and lots and lots of baby hats for a craft table we're setting up at "Crafty Wonderland" in February (http://www.craftywonderland.com/index.htm).




But that's just in the evenings. In the daytime, we’ve been moving furniture around in our house again and painting rooms. Here’s an example of what our kitchen looked like on Friday morning:

Ugly, huh?

By Saturday afternoon, that same wall looked like this:




THANKS KATE! (She's going to finish it this week.)

I’m working on the office and hope to have it completed by the end of the week. I’ll post before and after pictures of that when ready.

I'm still job hunting (duh), but there's not much out there for me right now. I'm applying to law school for this fall. I don’t know what I’ll do until then, but I’m not feeling all that worried yet.

So far, this year is shaping up nicely. Happy Monday!