Somebody

Somebody (cough...cough...Knut)

Has been playing with my new camera.

 

Instead of taking out the dead amaryllis plant.

At least I'm guessing it was him.  This doesn't look like David's handiwork.

Future Therapy

There are times when I do something as a mother, and mentally put some money aside for my kids' future therapy fund.  Although usually it's because of a mistake I made.  However, although this may put my younger kids in therapy, I've made a decision.

I'm not getting a baby book for Solveig.  I know.  Awful.

I got a baby book for Silje.  I filled out a lot of it, in fact.  She reminds me constantly that I have yet to complete her birthday pages up to age 5.

I got a book for David.  The year he was born was really crazy because Silje was still a baby herself, and he was not an easy baby.  So I made a valiant effort, but it isn't as filled in as Silje's.

I bought a book for Elias.  However, there's not much in it.  Maybe his name.  Maybe not even his whole name.  I probably just put "Eli" and got distracted.

So I'm throwing away all pretense that just because I buy a book for Solveig, that I will actually do something with it.  I'm saving my money and being real.  It's not going to happen.  If I let myself get into scrapbooking, maybe I'd have one of those.  Maybe someday I will.  Maybe.  Right now I have no more space for another craft in my house.  When all of my kids are gone and I take over a room bigger than my laundry room and outfit it with whatever crafting accessory I want, I will probably get into scrap booking.  Right now, if I start getting into it, I'd have to give up some sewing or fabric space.  That's just not going to happen.

For now, my kids' baby books will come in the form of this blog.  When they ask where their baby book is, I'm going to press the print button, wait about 3 days for it to finish printing, and then hand the book to them.  (Actually, I'd probably get one of those companies who turn blogs into books do it for me.  They'll be grown.  I'll have the money for that then, right?)

So future adult children: I'm sorry.  You will have no baby book.  It doesn't mean I love Silje the most.  It means I got real.  Please inquire about a payment plan from your therapist.

Yarn Along

I'd like to thank Ginny at Small Things once again for hosting the Yarn Along.  I've really enjoyed meeting so many new people who love to read and knit each week!  If you'd like to "meet" some as well, head on over (when you're done here of course) to her blog.

 

This week I've picked up once again a project that was nearly forgotten.  It's a sweater for me.  Imagine that. If I remember right, I abandoned it before because I got to the point of dividing for the armholes and I realized it was actually too short for me.  Since I'm so short, I wasn't expecting that, but I had to undo a lot of work if I wanted it to look nice, and at the time, I didn't feel like undoing a lot of work.  So it got stashed in my unfinished pile.  Now it's out, and I've fixed the problem and am currently working on lengthening it.  I may even make this little cropped sweater go to my waist.  I don't know yet.  We'll see.

For reading, I put one of our homeschool books in.  Silje just started studying Greek Myths and let me tell you, she's so so so in love with them.  I wasn't sure how she'd react to them, but she won't put this book down, and even rereads sections over and over again.  As a literature major, I'm excited that she'll have this base for studying classical literature in the future.  (I'm of the belief that knowing both the Bible and Greek Mythology are both essential for studying higher literature.  Why schools these days have cut  these two out, I'll never figure out.)

So far her favorite story is Pandora's Box.  There's one other that she loves, but I can't think of the name just now.   

The other book that I put in the picture is one sent to us this week all the way from Norway!  One of my dear friends, Lise, who lives there thought that if Silje is studying geography, she should have an excellent book on the most beautiful city in Norway.  Silje hasn't put that down either and even brought it to town yesterday so she could look at the pictures in the car.

That wasn't the only thing in the package from Lise.  She sent the most gorgeous little dress for Solveig.

How can I not show a picture of it?  She also sent a Norwegian chocolate bar.  That however...

did not make it to this post.

Back to School

We're back!  Yeah!  Yeah!  Yeah!

I'm posting today and Friday since there's so much going on this week.  If I don't post today, the one on Friday will be 10 pages long.  Just spreading out the love.

I'm not sure who was more excited to get back into school: the kids or me.  We took a month off as Christmas vacation/maternity leave and it was more than enough.  I don't know how we'll survive all summer without school, and I'm thinking I may not try.  Of course, the kids will play outside more then.

Yesterday morning started quickly.  I got up at 9am because Solveig had a bad night and Knut had the morning off.  So on my way to get coffee I started telling the kids to get dressed for school.  To my surprise, both Silje and David eagerly got dressed and showed up quickly without any argument to the dining room table to get work.  (I hit the floor running since the day was so late, and didn't get a chance to change until much,much later.)

David actually sat nicely for the morning devotional, and then asked what he was going to do.

I didn't have anything really planned for David, but I have work-boxes of things for him that I pulled out.  First I brought out his level 1 (kindergarten) reading program that he zipped through at the beginning of the year.  I had him read all the little books in there, which he did with great enthusiasm.  Next I had him do some Mighty Mind puzzles.

(I know David looks like he's dressed as a Christmas elf.  I sort of let them pick out their own clothes when we're just chillin' at home.  You know, since no one sees us.  Just the people on this blog. ;) )

Finally, I brought out Uno.  I saw it on clearance at Walmart for only $1, so I bought 2 decks.  I figure it's a game with colors, numbers, and a few sight words.  Perfect for school!  He was eager, so even though it took him a few minutes to catch on, and he needed a bunch of help, he ended up beating me in the end.

He also did some jigsaw puzzles, practiced writing his name (gasp!  That's a huge goal for this year!) and he completed a total of 13 pre-handwriting worksheets (dot-to-dots and mazes mostly).  This from a kid who normally hates worksheets and I have to bribe to hold a crayon.

Elias had no interest in playing in the playroom, or watching t.v.  He did so well playing upstairs around us.  I just couldn't believe what a great start back it was.

Our schoolgirl did well as well.  I'm adding some more handwriting drills to her days this week because I'm convinced she is getting sloppier lately.  So after she had written her memory verse and her spelling words, I gave her another blank handwriting sheet and had her fill the front with capital "A's" and the back with lowercase.  After the second and third lines of lowercase letters began to look more like the letter "u" I gave her one more sheet to do.  I did get an eye roll for that, but she did it, and much more carefully.

Today we have our homeschool group this afternoon, piano lessons and choir practice.  On Friday, Knut and I are hosting a homeschool group field trip to go cross country skiing.  So far 3 families are signed up so we're pretty excited about that.  I'm still in my 6 weeks of no exercise, so I won't be skiing.  I'll be looking after Solveig and Elias and helping out getting skis on and off at the "lodge."  It should be fun!

What Do You Think?

OK, I finally finished redesigning the blog.  Hopefully there won't be a new look everyday anymore.  I've been wanting to do it for awhile, and I was actually getting to the point of getting someone to do it for me, but I finally got it mostly how I want it.  I'll hopefully add some new pictures as they come along.  I also got a new widget for my store...so it's kinda having an ad on here.  It's for my store, though, so I think it's relevant.  I'd rather advertise something to do with our family than, say, Toyota or whatever random ad that blogger would assign me if I put up ads.  We don't even drive a Toyota. Not that I have anything against Toyota.  Shoot...now I feel like I'm making a political statement.

I moved the pictures/descriptions of family members to "About Us" near the top right of the page.  There are a few reasons for doing that, but if you want to see it, there it is.  It didn't disappear, just moved.

And since you've been so nice as to read that, I'll treat you to some pictures of Elias.  He's really into saying "CHEESE!" these days.

 

 

Bye!

Growing Up

We are blessed to live in a lovely home.  My dream home, actually.  I don't think I've ever lived in a place so nice.  Our house was built in 1900 and it has the details of a home built at that time.  However, it has more closet space than most homes I've seen from that time, which makes me even happier.

However, our house is old.  Obviously.  It doesn't need a lot of work, as in it's unlivable.  It's just that it needs a lot more work than a new house.  There's always something going on.  We're trying to get through each room of the house one by one.  However, our project doesn't just include tearing down wallpaper and adding shelves.

Besides working on our house, we're trying to work on the things inside our house too.  As in furniture.  Right now, every last piece of furniture in our house comes from either a friend's house, garage, or attic, or from a garage sale or craigslist.  I would really like to go out and get some grown up furniture, and get rid of some of the pieces that Knut and I got dumpster diving in college.

For the past 2 years, Knut and I have put away a little, tiny sum every month towards a new living room set.  It's the room that is closest to being finished with the fireplace Knut installed.  After looking at some couches when we were saving, we realized our taste was more expensive that I thought, and when our 2 year savings plan had matured, we may only be able to afford a couch and not a whole room set.

We reached our savings goal in December, and waited until this month to pick one out, because I've read that the best furniture sales are in January.  Plus, we were pretty busy in December!  You know, new baby and all!

We went to several stores this last weekend, and found the perfect sofa in our price range at the second store.  We were both in love with it.  Since we had several more stores to go, we took the saleswoman's card, and moved on, though convinced that we had found the one.

After going to several more stores and not finding anything we liked even close to the other one, Knut talked me into going into just one more store.  Wouldn't you know, we found another sofa we liked.  Still great quality, although half the price of the previous one we had looked at.  With that price, Knut could get a leather chair to go in the living room that he was gawking at in one of the other stores.

We measured so carefully because our antique house has little doorways.  I measured the doorway into the living room before we left, and found it to be 33" wide and just a hair over 77"tall.  The half-the-price sofa was exactly 33" at the smallest point with legs removed and pillows squished, and for some reason, Knut didn't trust my measurements.  Since it was so close, and so tight, Knut wanted to go home and measure the doorway for himself before we ordered it.  I picked out fabric for it and the pillows.  I wanted a red sofa.  Bold, I know, but I've always wanted one, and I think it would be perfect for this room.  If we're buying a brand spankin' new piece of furniture, I wanted it to be exactly what we wanted.  No compromising.

So after taking down every measurement of the sofa, and the fabric swatch numbers, we headed back to the store with the leather chair and bought it, although it was back ordered and it will be ready when the couch was at the other store.  It was so perfect.

When we got home, Knut went right to measuring the doorway.  I was right.  33".  However, he then looked around and measured the other doors in the house.  The doorway to the front door, back door, porch door.  The biggest doorway into the house was only 29".  We realized we had small doors when my parents gave us their old sofa.  They drove it all the way up from Arizona, and when they got it here we realized that we never measured and it was seriously a miracle that the thing got into the house.  It only fit through the doorway into the den, which was fortunate because that's where we planned for it to go.

Knut measured the height of the doorway.  He got 78" inches from it.  He then looked at the measurements of the sofa and saw it was 80" long.  It couldn't go through upright either.  As we both stomped and fumed around the house, we then both sulked that we had spent a whole day furniture shopping, picked out the perfect sofa and even put money down on a leather chair, and we'd have to go back and start from scratch.  Not only a whole day wasted, but we wouldn't be able to figure out babysitting, and time off and all those other stars that need to align for Knut and I to go shopping together.

The next day, Knut called his friend in the "big city" where we went furniture shopping and asked if he could run by the store for us and measure the sofa one more time and try to see if there was any possible way to get it into our house.  Since we were ordering it with a special color, it would be unreturnable, so we had to be sure.  As Knut was on the phone with his friend, he did a double check of the measurements he had taken in the store.  When he got off the phone, he told me that the first sofa we liked was 80" long.  He was looking at the wrong set of measurements.  The one we were going to get in the end he had marked as only 76" long.  Plenty of room for it to go through the doorway upright.  I was so excited I cannot even tell you.

He wanted to have his friend double check that it would work, but at the end of today, we get to call in the order.  I'm so excited.  It's funny.  I've graduated from college, paid off that college debt, gotten married, had 4 children, am living in the second house that we have owned, have been called "ma'am" more times than I can count at the grocery store and somehow, buying a little couch makes me finally feel like a grown up.

Too Much Fun

A spoon and a flat diaper were somehow left in the living room. I'm not sure why. However, my camera loves them.  (Somebody stop me...)