Buddy Walk

This past weekend we went to our first big 'Down Syndrome' thing as a family.  The Buddy Walk. 

I was a bit nervous and almost came up with some excuses to skip it.  Found those big girl panties and we all went.  See how excited everyone is?

It was sweeter and less painful than I expected.  (I did cry a bit - but nothing that could be hidden behind sunglasses)  You see, some days I almost forget that Charlotte has Down Syndrome.  This is growth from seeing more Down Syndrome than Charlotte, a season I wasn't sure would come.  I knew at this event Down Syndrome would be a focus. 


I've decided now though that this is not a bad thing. 

Even Charlotte got into the water play and dancing that was going on.  It even helped her find her feet!!  She finally put weight on them!!

All around there were sweet babies snuggling and kids who were having a great time, hanging out, listening to music, enjoying goodies, and in general livin' it up.  People with Down Syndrome and people who love someone with Down Syndrome.  It was pretty awesome. 

This year our 'team' was 6 in total.  Next year, we'll get organized and have a bigger 'zoo crew' to share the fun with us.

Care to join in the fun?  Charlotte Joy is ready to party. 

Vicious Cycle

Catch 22 - whatever you want to call it. 

It looks a lot like Shock, Grief, Acceptance, Embracing, and Rejoycing.  It is perpetual.  Continual.  Onion layer -ish.  "Haven't I been here before?"  Vague recollections of these feelings but something I can't quite put my finger on. 

I hadn't expected that. 

Mostly - I figured it would be a 'one time visit' of each stage.  Where I got THAT idea, I'll never know.  Whatever.  It isn't.  It won't be.  Maybe there's some hope in knowing that. 

Geez - just the other day I was feeling okay about all things after surviving The Buddy Walk. 

October is Down Syndrome Awareness month.  Facts and posts everywhere.  Blue and Yellow everywhere (the colors of Down Syndrome awareness.  REALLY, God???  BLUE?????  The irony is super thick.  Along with the fact that Charlotte's birthday is in October, but I digress.) 

THIS blogpost was fabulous for me to read today.  Freeing really. 

Apparently it's Breast Cancer Awareness month as well.  HERE is a fabulous post about that. 

All this 'awareness'....yeesh.  I'm just not sure how I feel about all of it. 

One

Someone is going to have a birthday this week. 

Be still my heart.....

Upcycling

I've seen a few projects I've wanted to tackle and due to life - spending $$ on them is not an option so I'm scrounging around and working with what we have. 

I saw feed bags a few months ago and then found a tutorial on them.  Ha....I have bunches of those from our chicken feed.  One day I had a few hours and wrangled the girls into helping me.  (cooerced and bribed more like - they weren't digging this work thing)  It was educational. 

Janelle helped me quite a bit when the instructions just. weren't. making. any. sense. to me.  Natalie Faith was the picture taker extroadinarie and Charlotte Joy just kept grabbing at stuff being right in the middle of it.  Riley took a couple of random pics but was mostly enjoying his time before FRESHMAN year started in full force. 

Usually sewing is something I avoid like the plauge until I have a strike of 'this looks simple enough'.  About a fourth of the way in I remember why I hate sewing.  My girls heard a lot of "FOR THE LOVE...." and "ARE YOU KIDDING ME???"  I'm sure this will train them up in the way they should go. 

Whatever.

Anyhow - here we go.  A project.  In pictures.


Wash bags after cutting them to about 22" with the 'picture' centered how you want it.  *I* wasn't that exacting.  Shocker. 


Dry in sunshine - we had SUNSHINE!!!


Then - start sewing. 

Get excited because you're actually 'crafting'.  Baby's excited too.


And keep sewing.

 
She keeps laughing.  At me?  Hmmmm......

Then - pull it out and say, "WHAT the heck???"


And continue to say "WHhhhhhaaaaatttt?"  At some point, Janelle helped me visualize what the tutorial was trying to explain.  Yeesh - was I confused.

It's beginning to resemble a bag.  Charlotte is helping also known as yanking on mom's hair because it's right there.



Handles were scrounged from old curtain tie backs I wasn't using but couldn't bear to throw away because they were RED.  :)


Oooohhh - (this is inside out by the way....)

TADA!!!!  The big bag. 

And the shortie one - this is what you get when you screw up the first time around and keep wacking off the messed up bottom but want. to. get. it. right. before. you. give. up. entirely.  :)  Handles are brought to you by old car seat straps that we'd had to cut when we were in that accident to prove we weren't going to use the car seat anymore.  Nice and strong, just shorter.  Perfect fit for the short bag.  It's like I'd planned that. 


End result.  :)

One is now the libary book bag and the other is 'all the stuff I have to cart to the car from the house in remembering to take back to people or places.  Very handy. 

Here's the actual tutorial if you want more specific instructions.  Let me know if you get confused.  I'll send Janelle your way to help you. 

Faith

PS:  Yes, they are blue.  I have yellow bags in which I will make up the REAL, going to do a great job on them, bags.  These were practice bags and have worked well for a start up project. 

The Extremes

I'll be honest.  They are kind of kicking my butt lately. 

Here they are: 

15 year old boy becoming a man but still hating anything in 'the box'.

10 month old baby becoming...well...bigger. *sniff, sniff  - and THANK GOD all in the same breath.*

12 year old girl starting to notice clothing, makeup, and hair.  And care about those things.  A LOT.

10 year old girl who is still trying to figure out if she wants to play with farm animals, dress like she's color blind (LOVE IT now that I can appreciate it), chase butterflies, or care about the stuff that her big sister buddy is into now.

Everyone needing LOTS OF WORDS.  Ack. 

I know they're all normal.  Maybe I'm the one who's slightly 'off'.  I'm needing to up the anty, so to speak, and I'm not remembering where the heck I stored my 'anty'.  Each of them needs me in a different way and I'm feeling rather pathetic in this multi-tasking realm. 

Charlotte's diaper bag is a funny visual for me.  I have diapers, wipes, baby toy, bottle, formula - then there's the book Love and Logic for Teens, hair stuff for the big girls, someone's ipod and headphones that they stashed in there so they wouldn't have to carry it themselves, and some school supplies. 

There's not the glorious flow from one color to the next like those pictures of crayons melting as gravity has it's affect and the color just seeps to something new, bright, and beautiful. 

It's more like that Jackson Pollack picture of splatters of paint colliding or crashing on and around the others.  I'm not fond of that one.  (Don't hate me, please.  I never said I was a great art aficionado.)  That picture has *always*, always reminded me of vomit.

Yikes. 

It's all artwork though right?  Somehow or another the picture that emerges will be amazing to look at.  I'm just hoping and a prayin' that it's not put in the 'What NOT To Do' or the 'WHAT THE HECK??" section of the museum of our family life. 



I just made myself snicker at something as I wrote that last paragraph.  I never did well in art class. Yeesh.  God does have a sense of humor. 

Here I raise my glass (okay, coffee cup and Charlotte's bottle) to a new learning curve in  'Art Appreciation Class', all of us crammed into the same 'boat'.  I hope we have some fun while doing it. 

Mud Room

I've always wanted one - a room specifically designated for all that 'enter the house' mess that comes with bodies entering. 

We don't have one - but a couple of weeks ago (yes, I'm behind) that is what my kitchen was.  I was taping and mudding.  Who knew how much fun that stuff is?  It's like making mud pies as a kid only with something you can actually use after the fact. 

Here's the blank canvas....so to speak. 













Ready. Set. Tape. 













These spots were slightly akward in that our celings are pretty high without those soffits in there and even with the step stool, I was having to be pretty careful and stretch to reach. 




















This picture I thought was funny. 

That would be my husband's shoe print.  On the ceiling.  He's uber talented, I tell ya.  You get fun surprises when you repurpose materials.  :) 

Playing in the mud....



Basically ready for paint.  This was about 3-4 coats of mud.  I can't remember how many days in.  OBVIOUSLY it's not gorgeous.  It was going to be behind cabinetry so I wasn't going for glamourous.  I *do* love that we chose to do a 'textured' look on the walls that you do see.  Imperfection at it's most perfect.  There WILL be a blog about that as soon as my thoughts become somewhat coherent on the subject.  Hasn't happened yet, though. 

It was one more step down the 'redone' kitchen yellow brick road.

Random bits: 

After waiting for that all to dry, I attacked it with paint one evening at about 10:30pm.  I don't recommend it.  Especially if you've been excited about breaking into that can of red paint you bought A YEAR AGO.  It may or may not come out looking like a giant Rasberry blew up on your wall and you will freak out slightly, apologize to your husband, and have nightmares. 

Yikers. 

It looks better now - 3 coats later and with a giant white cabinet in front of it- but wow...it was dicey there at first. 

Another sneak peek.  Here's the backsplash we're trying.  I love the look of it...just not sure if it's *too much*.  We both prefer simple and well...there's a lot going on there. 

I Hijacked My Husband's Saturday

One of many. 

This was two weeks ago.  As we were sitting there quietly enjoying our coffee in the sunroom on a Saturday morning, I said, 'Hmm....I bet it wouldn't take too long if we just....'.

Snort.

And we were off.....













Salmon colored cabinetry???  Guess what year. 

Amazingly, it seemed as though these wood cabinets were held on only by two screws and about 28 layers of paint.  Weird.

Cabinet out.  

"Do the soffit smash.....".

Yes, he's practically Atlas.  

No. More. Soffit.  WHOLE LOTTA MESS.  Dang.

SuperAlan - able to leap stoves and cabinetry in a single bound - and reach into long stretches of drywall to fish out the honkin' screws that were holding up the ginormous microwave. 



Here's a pic of the boys bonding over drywall installation.

And there went the whole weekend.   



"We don't do Art class in our home school."

These words actually came out of my mouth in speaking to a teacher who is giving some Art classes during the summer.  I had signed Natalie up so she could get some real instruction on how Art is done. 

Later that afternoon, she and I worked on finishing a project we started, oh, when we were moving in LAST year - the downstairs floor. 

It's concrete.  We ripped out the carpet as it was nasty in color (blue) and condition (water damage).  We knew we didn't want to put carpet down as it's right off the laundry area and with a daylight basement...well, we felt like doing that would be begging for some kind of flood.  (We've already had a few so we were right!)  Enter concrete stain!  GREAT idea and fun...although when we moved in there was a list 5,987,564 items long, I was hugely pregnant, and Alan was leaving for a two week trip to China.  Needless to say, we did the essentials and not much more.  We almost finished the floor. 

There's a learning curve to every new skill and that one was interesting.  Texture, product, technique, quantity.  We figured out how we liked it then wound up running out of stain.  Life got busy, crazy, and complicated so we didn't get back to it.  Those undone bits have been driving her nuts (and me...but I'm able to ignore it better) so I made it a personal goal to FINISH that floor this month. 

Enter a couple of sick big kids, no one available to help me rip out the soffit in the kitchen, Charlotte taking a really long nap, and Natalie and I available to GET IT DONE. 




As we were working away, those words I'd allowed out of my mouth that morning came back to me and she and I laughed pretty hard.  We don't do Art class......snort.  Apparently we're too busy doing BIG, artistic projects, we don't do a 'class'.