This happened

on Monday. I was downstairs, the kids were upstairs, I heard Luke screaming and went up and saw this.

It reminded me of this. Avery at exactly the same age fell and hit her face on the corner of the coffee table. Good heavens she's cute.

It also reminded me a little of this. Ok I wasn't exactly the same age, I was fourteen. Brienne Burkinshaw hit me with her shoulder and almost broke my nose, this was the souvenir. We were practicing a lift at a dance competition when it happened. There was blood everywhere and I had to sit out the competition. It made me look tough for 4.3 seconds in my life. On a side note, Roger likes to say I looked sickly skinny in this picture. For the record, I've never been sickly skinny, I was 5'8" already and weighed about 145 lbs. I've always been an ogre, but thanks for the thought Rog.

I'm off next year

This year on and around Easter we:

Wore new garb to church,

dyed and glittered eggs,

hunted for eggs at Avery's school and

at Brackenridge Park.

Did you notice the girls' haircuts? Have I ever mentioned how much their hair vexes me? I've finally come to the conclusion that since it's a little curly it will never look polished, it refuses to be tamed. They both wanted their hair short and I've never been so grateful. It's easy to comb and looks OK too.

Not pictured was Ashby's First Grade Easter Party. Turned out the room mother was out of town and the ONE other mother that will volunteer had to work. I was all alone on this one and it caused me a large amount of mental distress. It was this party that I'm blaming not one, but two forgotten Visiting Teaching appointments. Straight to Hades for me, but at least the first graders had fun. (I think, I didn't do an egg hunt for them and many of them voiced their displeasure, but they got to squirt water out of big syringes, that's got to count for something right?) This level of activity for a holiday that isn't Christmas is very much an over achievement for me and is unlikely to happen again. Good thing I have the pictures to prove it to the Future Therapists of America!

On another fun note we celebrated Roger's birthday

and went to Buck night at the Bucs game. Even though your $1 tickets are at the very top, we still enjoyed ourselves and the Pirates won!

Look, I was there too!

P.S. Would anyone be interested in me sharing the games and crafts I've done for school parties? I always have a hard time coming up with stuff, even on the internet. Let me know.

Freezer Paper Stencil Tutorial

Degree of difficulty: Easy
Time from start to completion: about 1 hour, that includes drying time (and cleaning faces and getting snacks and laying babies down for a nap)

First, you will need: Freezer paper that is located by the foil in most grocery stores, paint I'm using acrylic paint because I haven't been to the store to get fabric paint, iron, ironing board, x-acto knife, paint brush, the image to stencil and something to stencil on, I'm using a onesie.
Trace the image onto the freezer paper. Freezer paper has two sides, one shiny, one not. The shiny side is what fuses to the fabric, so trace your image with the shiny side down, matte side up.

Cut the image out to create the stencil. I'm using three colors for this image, but I only needed two different stencils.

One for the body and the letters. The body will be yellow and the letters black, you just have to be careful. Another stencil for the legs and beak which will both be orange. For the letter P's, I cut out a tiny square of paper that will fit in the circle of the P so it won't be painted on and it will look like a letter p, not a stick figure with a big nose.

Next, turn your shirt inside out and iron a piece of freezer paper on that is big enough to easily cover the part of the shirt you will be painting on from the front. This prevents any bleeding through the front onto the back.

Turn the shirt back to the right side and iron on the first image. I am doing the body and letters first.

Immediately call your five year old in to do the painting. Paint the body yellow

and the letters black. Just be careful not to get black on the yellow.

Let dry. While waiting read and marvel at The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

Peel the stencil off and yipee, it's starting to look like a chick.

Iron on the second stencil. I traced the body of the chick so that I could line it up with what is painted underneath.

Paint orange.

Let dry and peel off.

Almost done, it's not perfect, but I like it that way.

I used the head of a pin to paint an eye.

Now the chick can see properly. Peel off the paper from the inside (I save this paper to iron on the inside of another shirt.)

All finished and waiting for a new baby!

Have fun and beware, once you start it's very difficult to not imagine things to stencil!

Here are the directions again for easier printing.

You will need: Freezer paper that is located by the foil in most grocery stores, paint, iron, ironing board, x-acto knife, paint brush, the image to stencil and something to stencil on.

Trace the image onto the freezer paper. Freezer paper has two sides, one shiny, one not. The shiny side is what fuses to the fabric, so trace your image with the shiny side down, matte side up.

Cut the image out to create the stencil.

Next, turn your shirt inside out and iron a piece of freezer paper on that is big enough to easily cover the part of the shirt you will be painting on from the front.

Turn the shirt back to the right side and iron on the first image.

Immediately call your five year old in to do the painting.

Let dry. Peel the freezer paper off and throw away.

Iron on the second stencil.

Let dry and peel off.

Peel off the paper from the inside of the shirt. Set the paint with an iron or by putting in the dryer.

yipee

I'm so pleased that so many of you haven't done freezer paper stenciling... because I get to share it with you! I've never done a tutorial, but I want to for this. I'll try to get it up in the next day or two. Yipee!

Snow and try it, you'll like it.

I'm so happy to report that for once, we had the mother of all storms where I actually lived. It was great. We measured snow in our backyard after the storm, 22 inches. The kids were home from school for a whole week. I loved it. Here's Ashby getting ready to make the plunge. Can you see the car? Yeah me either.
Our poor BBQ. It doesn't think summer will ever come, can you blame it?

Have you tried freezer paper stenciling? It's awesome and I'm obsessed. Every time I find cheap solid colored shirts, I snatch up couple so we can make them our own. Avery wanted a flower on hers.

I wanted these guys on Luke's. Can you name them? Without cheating...

And last, I sent these to Baby J. I hadn't ever made bibs before and it was fun. There's also some freezer paper business here too. Try it, you'll like it.

Dear Blog,

I have not forgotten about you. Please forgive my lack of attention. See the thing is, it's cold and dark and boring and January runs right into February and I swear spring will never come. I know it's not your fault. Please accept this post as a token of my gratitude for your willingness to stick around. Thanks, Chelsea

This is Luke. This is the day he dressed himself. He insisted on swim trunks and jacket, I insisted on the shirt. This is Luke being mad because I was taking the pictures, he was not. More about his anger issues later. I took him to the doctor this week and he's tall and skinny 31 3/4 inches high and 22.5 pounds heavy. He was mad there too.

This is some stuff I sent to new baby E. We are happy to have him in the family. Unhappy he is so far away. I liked how these things turned out, burp clothes, pants and onesies. Pants are folded because they were weird, but I sent them anyway.

This is the bench that Roger built. We knew we wanted a bench when we removed the closet. Yes, it doesn't have a top yet, but baby steps people, baby steps. I had to talk Roger into believing he could construct this. I swear that man can build anything, it's awesome. Total cost up to now: $4.28. Still needs a top, hopefully it will have one soon.

Close up. I'll post before, during and after pictures after it's not topless anymore.

Luke has serious anger issues. I guess it's difficult to be 16 months old. He hates to be told no, he gets mad when he can't figure something out. We laugh. We are excellent parents. Here he is in action trying to conquer a gallon of distilled water. Note his dismay at not being able to open it or lift it. Note his glee when he notices I've got the camera. Is it too early for some anger management? Maybe I could go with him, I blow my top sometimes too.

The Holiday Fun

I can't believe our glorious Christmas break is almost over. I get depressed just thinking about it. We have had so much fun. The girls were so excited for Christmas. I think Roger may have been even more excited.

The kids got new pajamas on Christmas Eve. This is pretty typical of our attempts to get Luke to do anything other than what he wants to do.

Luke got a new bike for Christmas. He's holding some bouncy balls in his left hand. The balls and a snack container were the big hits with Luke (note to self, don't spend more than $2 on the kid)

The girls both got Wii controllers and nun chucks. However there was no Wii. We opened all the presents under the tree and no Wii system. Ashby being the very kind heart she is commented a few times that maybe we should ask Santa to bring it next Christmas. After all presents were opened we found a suspicious note in the tree. In it Santa explained that he had dropped something in the toy room on his way over the house. Lo and behold it was the Wii. Ashby's never been so excited. She's done nothing but play the Wii since.

If you're in the neighborhood come on over and the girls would love to challenge you to a game of bowling, both girls consistently do better than Roger and I. I can't believe it's back to the grind in two days. I already can't wait for next year. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a very happy new year. We love you all and thanks for all your love and friendship over the years. Happy 2010.