Rambling Saturday

We had a fabulous low-cost family day that included culture, fine cuisine, exercise, and a little fun.

We had never visited our Wichita art museum until today; it was great for several reasons:

1. Saturdays are FREE ADMISSION day (We saved $16)


2. This was the only art museum I've visited that had whole areas dedicated to children including a studio where they could design their own folk art (that was the focus today)


3. It really was a beautiful place


4. There truly was something for all of us to enjoy - in fact, we had the hardest time convincing Grace it was time to leave to go eat lunch

THEN we went to our favorite ever restaurant to frequent as a family...

Ode to Jason's Deli

O Jason's, your food is delicious

There's something each one of us craves

Your sweet tea is truly outstanding

And it's okay if a child misbehaves.

Free muffins and garlic bread we love

For free ice cream, we cheer and holler

Lollipops and huge potatoes bring joy

Cost for family of five: 17 dollars!

That has been a long time coming; well done, Jason's.

After coming home, the girls played outside in 50 degrees, and Greg and I went for a run. Today was an oasis of excellent spring weather invading the bitterly cold temperatures much of the midwest has been enduring.

Then Greg baked yet another batch of his amazing 100% whole wheat bread using wheat we grind in our grinder that is organically grown by a family in our church. It is something else; I go seriously weak in the knees while it's baking.

This same inspiring organic wheat family (who hosted the New Year's Eve Costume party mentioned in another post) also includes our sewing teacher, Jenny. She is our VERY HIP sewer and quilter friend and is now teaching us to piece a quilt. I AM LOVING IT! I've always had a thing for fabric. I've told Greg I want a studio with shelves just to stack bolts and piles of wonderful fabric, even though I would have NO CLUE what to actually do with the fabric. I just like it. He didn't go for it. I feel like I'm living out my fabric dream.

Now purchasing the fat quarters (I like that term, makes me feel terribly "in the know") was a little terrifying. I went to this more upscale quilting fabric shop and checked out the sale room. I had no problem picking out fat quarters I liked, but I had no idea how they would actually go together in a quilt. I sort of hovered over my fabric covering it as much as possible while I looked around, because I KNEW women were formulating opinions about my choices. They were looking at me and thinking that I had no idea what I was doing, thinking I was a total novice. They were all very confident and probably snobby. And of course, when I purchased my fat quarters, there was a line behind me. Every single piece was picked up and looked at for the right price as if it was show and tell. I felt a little queasy, so I put on my most confident and snobby face and counted every long minute.

Abby, Emma, and I are all working on the quilt, and as it turns out, we are thrilled at how it's looking. We had our piecing lesson yesterday and finished our blocks today. Thanks, Jenny!

The Big Day

We had a big day around here...

At the dentist's office, Paula, our orthodontics spacer and elastics putter onner lady (I've got to check on her official title) looked in Abby's mouth and guessed her age "Let's see, 13 right?"

"WHAT, NO! She's not 13; she's only 11."

Apparently her teeth make her appear older than she is. Wow, am I ready for this?

Ready or not, about 45 minutes later, Abby had brackets on her teeth, blue and red alternating elastics on her brackets (Abby gets to choose the colors each month), and spacers in.

Our friend Ellen (wife of John, our student ministries pastor) also happens to be the daughter of our dentist, Dr. Tippin. She is a hygienist there and paid us a visit in the midst of the excitement. Thank you, Ellen for your moral support. The picture includes Ellen and sweet Paula, who I bet we'll get to know pretty well in the months to come.

On the way home, Abby took a preventative ibuprofen, and we stopped at Sonic for a cream slush. This is bringing back vivid memories. Well, here we go...

Abby, you look 13.

Winter Nature Walk

The high temperature today was somewhere around 21 degrees, I think. We've been getting a little cabin fever around here, so undaunted by the frigid air, we bundled up and went for a winter nature walk (okay, maybe not undaunted, more like bribed with promises of hot cocoa afterwards).

A group of fellow home school families in Wichita had planned a field trip to the Great Plains Nature Center. We had a great time. The guide handed everybody "expensive" binoculars to bird watch with, and there were quite a few male and female cardinals, house finches, and others to see. We, of course, made pine cone bird feeders which we've noticed are the creme de la creme of bird feeders according to the birds in our area. They love these things! And we came home with our free full-color pocket guide to Kansas Raptors (that's always my favorite part).

And as promised we capped it all off with a trip to Starbucks (purely for the children).

Me and Sherwin Williams

The following is a true story (mostly true anyway, occasionally we all get hyperbolic):

I am painting our dressers, because they need to get along better with our new beautiful walnut bed that Greg built. The process involved me taking off the current hardware, sanding the current finish, priming, and then painting the dressers our chosen "Creamy Ivory", and of course, adding new hip and wonderful hardware. Piece of cake; I've seen HGTV.

The first step in this process meant the buying of our chosen "Creamy Ivory" and primer. Greg thought Sherwin Williams would be a nice place to go, although we don't normally buy paint there due to the high prices of said paint. BUT, we figured, IT'S JUST ONE GALLON OF PAINT AND ONE GALLON OF PRIMER; HOW BAD COULD THAT BE? Besides, these dressers get high usage; quality would be nice.

So, in the midst of EXTREME NAIVETY, I walked unawares into SHERWIN WILLIAMS.

"I need one gallon of your classic latex paint in "Creamy Ivory," I said VERY CONFIDENTLY. "O, and I'll need one gallon of primer also. What would you recommend?" I asked, still in a VERY CONFIDENT sort of way.

I explained the project I was working on, feeling like she probably thought I was just like the design ladies on HGTV, you know doing this sort of thing a lot.

She smiled at me in a way that looked a little too excited for someone who sold paint and primer all the time. At the edges of her sweetly excited smile, there was a little hint of something, but I wasn't sure what. She explained her choice of primer, and I told her that sounded fine.

"Okay, that'll be $93.75."

"I'm sorry?"

"$93.75"

"That's for the ONE gallon of primer and the ONE gallon of paint?" I asked not so confidently.

"Right."

I handed her my Discover card in utter disbelief. Did Greg know how much this would cost? I figured he must've, and in my shock didn't really know what to do. So, I bought them, silently fuming and thankful for my 1% back (Discover Card, the card that pays you back).

Greg did not realize it would cost that much, so after discussions I took the $38 primer back and replaced it with good old Kilz for $16. The paint was ours to keep since it was already our chosen "Creamy Ivory." O well, it'll be really good quality, of course.

I felt VERY HIP and PROFESSIONAL using the belt sander. I'm including a picture to make my father-in-law proud...

After all of my unscrewing, sanding, and priming (which all went quite well), I am now trying to figure out how to get the terrible drips of exceptional, high quality Creamy Ivory that are running all down the sides of my dressers off. I made very sure there were no drips after I painted, but apparently this magical paint keeps trying to paint itself, even hours after the painter is done. They are very durable and stuck paint drips.

My own HGTV show may not happen, I'm thinking, and Sherwin Williams is absolutely fired by me. For the price I paid, my paint should have come with a professional painter in there.

Driving Bananas

Today I took on the task of deleting the majority of my close to 1,000 messages in my email inbox. YUCK! This is not a housekeeping task that is normally on my radar (obviously, kind of like dusting). Finally when I had to locate one particular message with VITALLY IMPORTANT INFORMATION and had no clue where to find it within the 997 messages, I knew the time had come.

I didn't enjoy it. At one point when I had just checked a whole bunch of messages and then pushed my delete button, my computer froze and gave up on me. I was sitting at our kitchen island while Grace was behind me at the kitchen table drawing with markers when this occurred. I closed down the Internet knowing I would have to go through all of those messages again, growled loudly, and said, "This is absolutely DRIVING ME BANANAS!!!!!"

Grace, without hesitating, calmly said, "Mommy, this is driving me bananas too!"

I looked at her and said, "Is your picture driving you bananas, Grace?"

"Yes, Mommy. (dramatic pause) What means DRIVING BANANAS?"

Abby and I then both broke out into uncontrollable giggles as I tried to explain the odd phrase (really is odd, think about it).

And yes, I did get it done. Maybe I'll dust tomorrow.

Costume Ball

Our family went to a New Year's Eve party last night hosted by a seriously fun family in our church. It was a DRESS UP PARTY. Abby went in the outfit my sister brought back to me from India. Emma went as Caroline (Laura Ingalls Wilder's mom - as a girl), and Grace, of course, went as a woodland forest fairy.

And Greg and I? Well, we went as Ty Pennington and a librarian...

Happy New Year Officially!