Last Day of School and summer break

Tuesday was Jared's last day of school. It was Messy Day. This is what he looked like when he left for school Tuesday. those same close will never look the same, in fact, they are all now in the rags pile in the garage. Messy Day included shaving cream, pink paint, chocolate and vanilla pudding, spaghetti and sauce and chocolate syrup, mixed in with some mud and a sprinkler contraption. I was only able to stay to capture the shaving cream experience, they all had so much fun. It was definitely organized chaos, can you imagine about 45 5 year olds all running around in a confined space dirty as all get-out. Oh and here is a picture of Jared's teachers, Pam and Cheri and his really great friends Kiersten and Sophia.





Since school has let out, I have kept the boys running around, we have thoroughly enjoyed getting to play with daddy in the morning before he leaves for work, but once he is out the door, we are searching out bodies of water around the valley and at friends' houses. Nathan has been truly fighting naptime lately, he feels he is missing out on something now that Jared is home all day long. Of course about 20 minutes of whining later in his room and he is fast asleep. Yesterday was an amazing nap day, Jared, Nathan and I all slept for 3 hours, of course that also meant that bedtime got moved back a few hours. I got them in bed around 9pm last night. That just seems so late, but it all worked out.

Today we are going to try to go to Tempe Beach Park for their splashpark. I'm waiting to hear from Elisabet and then we are off.

I have been doing some knitting lately though, got this little felted purse done, nice and super quick project. Got it done in one afternoon, used up a skein of Noro Kureyon in the process.




Of course I have been working on the Lace Leaf shawl but this doesn't lend itself well to pictures, it just doesn't look like much. I counted and there are approx. 123 stitches on the needles now. I'll end up somewhere around 300 when it is done, but I may just keep going until I ran out of yarn. I have six skeins of Koigu to use for this shawl.

Also got one two pager done that has been sitting out on my art table for a while. Really like this one.

A sweater is finished, 5 months too late

for whatever reason, this sweater took me forever to finish. I just finished weaving in the ends last night. I totally love it though, will definitely wear it when the temperature drops below "hell".

Here it is: Not your standard issue sweatershirt, v. 2. About 12 skeins of Knitpicks Mainline, I haven't sewn the hood on yet (plenty of time), photo courtesy of Jared.

Practicing for Crazy hair day and a goodbye

I picked up some Got2b Glued screaming hold hair creme today in prep for Jared's crazy hair day at school on Tuesday. He was so excited when he got home from school today so that we could try it out. We have two future rock stars. Jared wanted spikes and Nathan wanted a mohawk. Ahhh, the good ole days on my highschool punk/skater moments. Here are the two of them:





My friend Andrea is moving to Denver this weekend to take a new job at Schwab. We worked together in the email dept. when we started there in 2000 and we have stayed friends through job moves and me leaving the company. She is such a Suns fan, she was talking it up with everyone at Julio G's where we had dinner last week. She also scrapbooked with me on a large number of occassions, sometimes we would go to a store or other times just to each others houses. We always inspired each other. Now maybe I will have an excuse to get out of the valley and go somewhere cooler. Have a great move, Andrea.

Scenes from the garden

Our garden is going so good right now. Of course I can't imagine that it will stay like that for long. It is really hot today (high of 102) and not expecting it to cool off anytime soon (until like November). In this smallish patch of greenery we have eggplant, two zucchini plants, two grape tomatoes and a watermelon. The zucchini and tomatoes have taken over. The eggplant is barely visible. I planted it too close to the zucchini. Over the last few years I have found that grape tomatoes have done the best, the big beefstakes take too long to ripen and usually crack before they ripen. We actually have already eaten our first tomato. Of course this is Jared's little hand all too eager to gobble it up. That kid has the best eating habits, prefers fruit over french fries. I only wish that Nathan will grow into those same habits, but I think he has my sweet tooth.

Ooh and the little pot in front of the garden has a strawberry plant in it. I made it mobile so that it doesn't fry in the superheated afternoons.

National Scrapbook Day

Was Saturday, May 5th. Cinco de Mayo for the rest of us. Very Important Scrapbooking Day. This year Recollections was offering a 12 hour crop on Friday and Saturday. I signed up for the Saturday crop. Nick and I called it my Mother's Day gift. He took the day off and spent it with the kids while I got away and scrapped the day away. Last year Nick had sent me away to a spa day and overnight in a hotel by myself. This year funds did not allow for that extravagance, but a scrapbooking day fit the bill. It was an amazing day. I had organized beforehand (as much as I can organize), left around breakfast time to meet Elisabet for coffee and a snack and then we went up to Scrapbooks ETC for a little preshopping shopping. It was good, they had some new things there that we don't have at Recollections. One store can't have it all, wish it could, but it just doesn't happen. There was a group of 7 of us that were scrapping together at one table. Our studio can hold 34 people, so we had a pretty big group. Since it was Cinco de Mayo, we decided to head out for a margarita. No mexican restaurants were directly closeby so we chose Black Angus, it is in the same shopping center, we walked there in two minutes. It was hilarious, we pounded our margaritas in less than 10 minutes and back scrapping real quick. I'm a total lightweight, barely finished my small margarita, the rest of the ladies all had the 25oz Motherlode. By the time we got back to the store everyone was feeling pretty good and we had such a good night.

I still haven't taken pictures of my layouts, but I did get 10 done during the night. Felt really good to be creative like that again. Sunday came along though and I ended up getting some stomach bug, so here I am sitting in bed typing this and knitting the day away. I'm going to finish the sweater hood today and hopefully get some seaming done. Of course knowing that 100 degree weather is coming up the sweater could be sitting around until October. I've quasi started working on the lace leaf shawl and I may start another pair of socks soon also.