Crafty Boys Strike Again!
Posted on | July 2, 2010 | 1 Comment
We bought our materials yesterday and worked on them today. They were fun! So what if they cost more than those at Old Navy or Target. These are one-of-a-kind beauties!
The stencil is made out of freezer paper. We printed the designs, cut out the parts where we wanted the paint to go, then ironed them on the tshirts (iron set to cotton, NO steam).
Paint on the design. We used Tulip “slick” paints, just red and blue. The shirts are cheapies from Target. For the stars, instead of painting them blue, I used cut outs and painted around them. NOTE: make sure you iron the shiny side down. They stick to the iron if you don’t get that part right. Don’t ask me how I know.
J working on his, very intent as you can see from his face:
NM can’t wait to peel off the stencil:
After it’s dry to the touch we peeled off the stencils (except for me, I pulled them off while they were still wet!). And here’s the result of their creative design and painting skills:
Hope you enjoyed it! Happy birthday, USA!
Barton Creek Greenbelt Hike
Posted on | June 30, 2010 | No Comments
Good thing we went yesterday instead of postponing it until today. It poured today and it looks like the plan is to pour for the rest of the week.
Let me share the fun with you…
How to read
Posted on | June 25, 2010 | 2 Comments
I wanted to share a portion of a book we have been going through at church. It was something of an eye-opener for me mainly because I never thought of taking notes while reading. Imagine that? I always took notes in class, but never thought to do that while learning from a book.
This is from “Spiritual Leadership – Principles of Excellence for Every Believer” by J. Oswald Sanders from the chapter entitled “The Leader and Reading”. Here goes:
Use the following proven strategies for making your reading worth-while and profitable:
- What you intend to quickly forget, spend little time reading. The habit of reading and forgetting only builds the habit of forgetting other important matters.
- Use the same discrimination in choosing books as in choosing friends.
- Read with pencil and notebook in hand. Unless your memory is unusually retentive, much gained from reading is lost in a day. Develop a system of note taking. It will greatly help the memory.
- Have a “commonplace book,” as they are called —a book oto record what is striking, interesting, and worthy of second thought. In that way, you will build a treasure trove of material for future use.
- Verify historical, scientific, and other data.
- Pass no word until its meaning is knows. Keep a dictionary at hand.
- Vary your reading to keep your mind out of a rut. Variety is as refreshing to the mind as it is to the body.
- Correlate your reading—history with poetry, biography with historical novel. For example, when reading the history of the American Civil War, take up also the biography of Lincoln or Grant and the poetry of Walt Whitman.
I tried
Posted on | June 19, 2010 | No Comments
Really, I did. I cajoled, I teased, I begged. In the end silly-ness won. Was that for the best?
The inevitable:
Ah, but the hand on the shoulder makes it for me!
Hornsby Bend Bird Observatory
Posted on | June 18, 2010 | No Comments
I know I have a backlog of posts to do, but today was fun so I have to start off with that.
Hornsby Bend Bird Observatory: whodathunk it? When I asked some moms if they’ve heard of bird observatory/water treatment plant in Austin they’d never heard of it. I’m not sure I remember where I heard of such a thing either. Thanks to Google, we found it and got directions to boot.
We brought our binoculars, a bag of Pirate’s Booty, bottles of water and our quiet voices. You’re supposed to whisper to keep the birds from flying off, they say. I think someone yelled before we got there, though. But that’s ok, it was fun anyhow and for several reasons.
1) The drive.
How can one not be tempted to take a dirt-ish road? Especially when one is in a truck. This is what the whole drive was like: literally one lane, narrow and at times bordered on either side by water. “Mom, don’t turn too much to the right!” was something heard often from J in the back when we were driving. It didn’t take long for them to realize that mom was driving something like 5 mph and it was fun to stand up and feel the bumps and dips as we went along. Actually, I could end the list with that. That was too much fun!
Wait, what, no hike? No hike. You’ll see later.
2) The scenery.
It’s not every day you get to drive through a water treatment facility. Well, unless you worked there, I suppose.
The water was pretty and bordered by lots of trees and pretty plants which is probably what attracts the birds in the first place.
This plant looks almost like that wild plant that grows in the Philippines that people would cook and eat:
3) The birds.
Well, we didn’t get to see the endangered black-capped vireo. We did manage to see a few of these guys which are new to us:
Grackles, but female ones only (not sure why):
They seem to be yelling at each other (yes, shot through a window, I’ll explain later):
A few sparrows (didn’t catch on camera) and lots and lots and lots of swallows!
The swallows (I think that’s what they are) were all over the place, swooping across the little lane we were driving/bouncing around on.
They made sure there were lots of homes for birds…
…and bats!
It didn’t take long for us to get to a structure that was built for bird observation. My youngest noted right away that it was seldom used owing to the fact that there were spider webs all over the place.
There was no way that I was going to stick my finger near this orb weaver so you could get a good sense of scale. While I know they’re not aggressive, believe me when I say this thing was huge and so apparently well fed.
There was no shortage of predatory insects at all.
This guy wanted to hitch a ride. I think he knew the yellow jackets and giant spiders were waiting to get him.
Incidentally, this was Joshua’s door and I didn’t flick it away for him (he used his brother’s door instead). I used to be a lot less afraid of bugs but the bug-fearing people in my life have rubbed off on me. I mean, I know these spiders rarely get people but when you see them having a family reuinion it’s hard not to shake the camera as you snap. It’s a symptom of the heebie jeebies.
So. Why no hike?
1.) Snakes. Alright, admittedly just one snake. But this was a water treatment facility and as soon as I see a snake skitter into the water across our little driving path, my first thought was “water moccasin” and “aggressive” and “no more hike for me today.”
2.) Bugs, bugs, bugs.
No, these weren’t biting bugs at all. The shot above was taken just a couple of minutes after we got back in the car when we realized we didn’t feel like sitting in the bird observation structure with the nasty bugs (and possibly snake but I didn’t want to draw the boys’ attention to the big hole in the ground). We rather liked sitting in the truck and bouncing at 5 mph.
But we opened the window at some point and a whole bunch of these bugs flew in. It quickly became obvious why the insect-loving swallows, grackles, bats and dragon flies were hanging out in major population numbers. This place was a massive buffet! They just had to fly around with their mouths open and they were guaranteed a full belly. As soon as our windows opened, those bugs saw their ticket to living a full life expectancy (probably a matter of just days, though).
The boys didn’t enjoy that part much at all. I did obligingly open the windows once more to “let the bugs out” only to let in their extended family. What’s on our truck interior fabric is no fancy pattern, those are bug guts.
That being said, we did have a good time. The boys got a tiny thrill when they realized that we would have to back up a long way if we ever met oncoming traffic. We even ran into a group of homeschoolers we knew while we were there. I’m sure we’ll head back there just for kicks since it’s really close to the airport and it’s free.
Oh, here’s stuff we wanted to see but certainly didn’t get to:
Maybe next time 
Spiderssss
Posted on | June 17, 2010 | 2 Comments
Ewwww.
Taken while on a walk at Circle C park (pics later). The boys are calling for me to hurry; they see a way to cross the creek and I better hurry. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice movement and see the inside of this tree hollow just moving.
Fredricksburg
Posted on | June 12, 2010 | 2 Comments
So two weekends ago we headed out to Fredricksburg to see if we could find some peaches to bring home. It would have been a waste of a few good hours to stay at home and sit in front of the computer, know what I mean?
Texas Hill Country is just awash with wildflowers right now.
You just have to deal with this when you wade through the wildflowers and grasses:
We stopped for a moment at this place and found it’s very dog-friendly.
The Wild West isn’t complete without a prairie schooner, is it?
They had several fields of wildflowers being cultivated. But if you cultivate them are they really still “wild”?
We drove into Fredricksburg, grabbed a lunch to go then headed back out. We found a spot where we could eat outside but Sprocket found something…
She has good reason to look worried. The picnic area was crawling with these guys:
They are HUGE. I wasn’t about to put my hand or toes near them so you could get a sense of scale. They were all over the place and had even worn a path in the dirt with their comings and goings. There was also this, which I got by judiciously avoiding the ants:
And I finally remembered to get a picture of these guys, drive-by-shooting style:
After lunch, we hunted for peaches in earnest. We were trying to find a certain peach stand. We couldn’t find the right one, but there was no shortage of peach stands this year. We even had the bonus of ice cream!
Brotherly Love
Posted on | May 21, 2010 | 1 Comment
No, it’s hardly the most technically accomplished photograph but the emotion speaks volumes to me. I’m kind of partial to these boys, you know. I hope they remember times like this when they’re older and we’re having hummus and chips at a family reunion. I hope they still like hummus and chips when they’re older.
“Remember when mom would make me hug you so she could take pictures?”
“Oh yeah! That was annoying because it was so hot and boring.”
The Unexpected
Posted on | May 14, 2010 | 1 Comment
The Lord often protects me from some of the more difficult facts of life because He knows how weak I really am. Weak? More like wimpy, wimpy, wimpy!
Last Thursday, I was helping to set up and decorate for our church’s women’s retreat. This was my third in a row with CSA, second year helping and each year it is a huge blessing.
Normally, I call the boys at home so I can say good night, but that night I had called pretty late so when I got hubby’s voice mail I was a little disappointed but not surprised that I didn’t get a hold of him.
The next day, I did notice at some point that there was a voice mail waiting for me, but it wasn’t a convenient time to call back. Later on in the day, I tried to call but my phone either couldn’t find a connection or needed the SIM card re-installed. Oh well.
Turns out that on Thursday night, they were all at the ER! NM and J were riding their bikes on our street while hubby was doing some DIY work inside the house. A boy from our neighborhood had thrown his scooter in front of NM’s bike causing him to flip over the handle bars and “face plant” as he puts it. His lip had split, he had a huge bump on his head, a tooth was chipped and he thought he’d done something to his leg. We don’t know if that throw was intentional or who did it, but no doubt that poor boy didn’t expect what resulted!
From what I was told, the ER staff at the hospital were wonderful to him. They checked his leg for a break and for a concussion but he didn’t have either, praise God. The doctor took his time and carefully stitched him up. When I got home on Saturday afternoon, hubby prepared me by telling me “it’s not as bad as it was” which of course made no sense to me but he proceeded to explain what happened. I had to mentally prepare myself so I kept unloading my friend M’s car. When I did see him, his face was so swollen and his lips were even worse.
I’ll spare you from photos that hubby did take…I have a hard time looking at them!
But, thanks to answered prayer, his healing was so rapid. On Sunday, he and I stayed home from church. NM, Sprocket and I snuggled in his bed and I read to him from Psalms then he requested Deuteronomy 1 because “Abba read that to us” and I guess he was struck by it and wanted to hear it again. So I also read the next chapter for good measure. But the swelling in his face was practically gone by the end of that day.
This past Wednesday, we headed to the doctor to get the stitches removed (that smarts!) and then to the dentist to get the tooth capped. Stitches? Not so much a problem but the dentist was another story. I’d forgotten how long that process takes and if you’re sensitive, it can really hurt when the local anesthesia wears off. Poor baby!
It was hard to wait and sit, sit, sit.
The dental technician was very gentle and careful when she made the molds. They had made a total of three of them, I think.
I wish I could remember what he was telling me. He was SO good and so patient waiting with me for his brother to be done.
It got cold in there and he finally accepted a blanket that was offered to him. He got really good at handling this suction thingie.
J found ways to keep occupied. Hehe.
So NM now has a temporary cap for his tooth and in three weeks we go back for a more permanent one. The doctor hopes it will last him at least 10 years, but says he can guarantee that he’ll need a root canal for that tooth one day, probably when he’s around 20. I am so grateful to live in a time when we have the technology to even fix his tooth!
A New Thing
Posted on | May 5, 2010 | No Comments
Just so you know, this is what I’ve been up to for the last couple of weeks: http://www.mercedesmorgan.com/
But this weekend? Ahhhh…this weekend I will be at our women’s retreat, enjoying studies on intimacy with God and fellowship with my sisters. I love having a big family!
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