Scram!

This was the view today at 9am outside my office building. At that point, Fay was still off the coast of Ormond Beach, having been there since yesterday evening. It's been raining here.

Just went out front. Still is. At a 30 degree angle. The kids are back at school today, after having Tuesday and Wednesday off. (Make up days are Oct 23 and Nov 24. They do not build "hurricane days" into the school calendar.) I'm back in the office. Hopefully the dog is doing OK at home.

Kindergarten: Day One.

Today was the big day. We dropped El off at daycare, got her situated. Then we went to La's school. Took the ream of copy paper out of her backpack (that I forgot to bring when we went to Meet the Teacher). In the activity center, we found where her class lines up. Then we checked to see if the cafeteria was serving breakfast. Got her through the line, found out her lunch room code number and that she really did have money in her account. Found a spot to sit, she opened up her cheerios and said, "Bye Mom."

The monkey's first day of high school is today. His bus is scheduled to come at 6:35 am. I did not get up and take a picture before he left.

Dinner should be interesting tonight. Lots of stories. We'll see how tomorrow is.

97% more disco

Have I showed this off with the buttons yet? It's the sweater for El. Buttoned, washed, and stashed away in the drawer of clothes that are still too big. Good stuff. La picked out the buttons. The picture doesn't quite convey the disco quality of the buttons.

Sick Day.

Turns out it's my turn for strep. Call me 3 of 5. While I'm home waiting for the antibiotics to do their magic...here's what kind of projects we've been up to. Fair warning - some have had more success than others.

1. This one is good so far. Apparently, according to the resident 5 year old, jewelry boxes are decorated with jewels. Who knew? This revelation required a second trip to the craft store. And the project took a totally different turn that I had expected. Technically this one is still a work in progress - I need to line the inside with fabric. So far, though, it's good.



2. This one, not so good. It's a t-shirt and iron-on from the fabric store. I swear to you that I read the directions. I even followed them, until there was no progress, then I struck out on my own and acheived what I'm calling partial success but my daughter, the recipient and Hannah Montana fan, is calling failure. This turned out a little too....um.... "rock and roll" for her. Will try again soon.


3. Found object crafts. (Again. Who knew?) La and her friend found a not so gently used football at the park this weekend. The bladder was oozing out of a broken seam. They decided that it looked like a baby and named it Isabella. Before lunch was over, she had googly eyes. Not long after, she had hair, then a mouth and nose. She's a cutie. Ended up making a nice bed for her out of a box courtesy of target.com, recieving blankets and a doll quilt. She's wearing a Winnie the Pooh onesie that El outgrew. Definitely a success.



4. A new sun hat for El. I'm not as happy with this, and it's my own fault for the mods I made to the pattern. It's too wide (and I made the main part of the hat on about 30% too many stitches compared to the pattern). The crown decreases are dorky (because I tried to do something cool but couldn't figure it out and didn't follow the pattern's nice swirly decreases.) Sometimes that happens. I would knit the pattern again, though. It's a cutie.