family pics and crafts

I added pictures to Mary's B-day post--published last night.  Here are more pics of the family.  Baby was napping for most of this photo shoot.  We'll have to post more of her later.  She has unusual coloring.  I have only a few outfits that seem to flatter her (reds, hot pinks, black--she has brown eyes, light brown hair, and a pale face.  Her hand-me-downs from Mary don't work too well (too many lavenders and pale pinks).  Mary has medium-blue eyes that have a yellowish ring in the center, blond hair, and less pale skin.

I find it very hard to look at pictures of me with my kids.  At 43, I could easily be mistaken for their grandma. How I wish I had been a Christian in my twenties, so that God could have blessed me with a husband then!  Twice I was engaged in my twenties, and got cold feet before the planning commenced.  I have spiritual tools now to make a marriage last--definitely didn't then.  In this, as in all things, we have to accept God's will.  Hard to swallow sometimes.

My husband is 8 years older than me.  You can see that the Pennsylvania and Delaware weather, and his genetics, were kinder.  He looks about my age here.  I lived in San Diego, Central CA, Guam, Sicily, England, and was born in Germany.  Both my dad and step-dad were in the military.  We stayed put in San Diego during my 8th grade through high school years.  Then I went to college at UCSD, in La Jolla, Ca, which is in San Diego County.

A few weeks before Christmas Paul said to me, "Mommy, all I want for Christmas is that gingerbread house from Walmart.  The one for ten dollars.  That's all I want."

A week later, when I had ten dollars, I went to Walmart looking for the gingerbread house.  After searching for thirty minutes in all the places we'd seen it over the last month, I started to panic--they were obviously sold out.  Just as I decided on a homemade, graham-cracker gingerbread house, I spotted the coveted house at the check-out stand, on sale for $7.

Now the boys were so excited, that they couldn't wait until we were available to help.  I am not one to insist that every craft project be teacher led.  I rarely lead projects, as a matter of fact.

This is what they were able to do without help.  Possibly, they didn't knead the frosting for a whole minute, as the directions indicated.  Hard to say, but the sides wouldn't stay up, and without a frosting tip set (I have to get one of those!) the frosting was out of control.

Paul was in tears over this fiasco.  I felt terrible for him, but it was a lesson for both of them--patience pays off.  My heart isn't so hard that I didn't buy and wrap up for Christmas, some graham crackers and some candies. In a few days, after I recover from our other projects, we'll try again.

My boys and I love snowman crafts!  We do a lot of them--sometimes even the same ones every year.  They used felt for scarves, black construction paper for hats, and more paint for snow drops falling down, and for some snow around the bottom.  Finished ones are hanging in the playroom.  I'm a hurried, lazy blogger.  I'll take them down and get photos later.

This wasn't glued down yet (use tacky glue).  Use a jumbo stick for the middle, and cut the regular-sized sticks in varying lengths, to make the shape of an evergreen.  Paint with green acrylic paint, and decorate with sequins.  Use a hot glue gun to put a loop at the top for hanging on the tree, or put a magnet strip on the back to use it as a fridge magnet.  The AWANA teacher did this same craft, but she used foam cut into tree shapes.

My boys love crafts!  This is what they do to my dining room, when they're in a crafty mood.  They name "crafts" as their second favorite subject in school.  I only pretend to know anything about crafts.  God help me!  Thank God for crafty moms, whose ideas I steal from the Internet, and from magazines.  The stick tree was featured in Parents magazine--ran across it at a doctor's office.