A Glimpse of Days to Come

I'm afraid the past 3 days have been a taste of what is to come.
I've spent the better part of the last 3 days without children around.
Yes we had an extra sleep over last night, but when I came home from dropping the kidos off at Sunday School I looked at my shoe rack and saw this:

Empty of shoes, but aren't the kittens cute!
When the boys were little they were always with me. We ate, cleaned up, ran errands, went to the library, you name it we were together.
Then they grew up - a little.
Still with me the majority of the time, they began to sleep over at friends, go on day trips with others; but still they needed me for eating and cleaning and daily activities.
Now, ankle deep in the teen years and I find them gone more and while at home in less of a need for me. They eat and cook and clean-up by themselves. They wake and get dressed and even find their own ride home from outside activities- all by themselves.
So when for the 3 morning in a row I opened myfront door to quiet, it hit me- one day it will be this way every day.
It makes my heart sad and rejoice all at once.



I hope your Sunday is peaceful and relaxing.
Michelle

7 Degrees of Blogging

Kind of like the 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon.
I find myself in the neatest places sometimes by linking to blogs from other blogs I enjoy.

It was this post by In the Midst of It that lead me to this blog where I found the directions to make this Patchwork Kitchen Mat.

So I spent my day off putting this together. Mine isn't patchwork and I made it much larger, about 3 feet by 3.5 feet, to cover most of the area that seems to get dripped on regularly.

Close-up. I got the fabric on sale at JoAnn last weekend.

Two things came together to create the following.

First a friend of mine showed up with 3 bar stools for me last weekend.

Second I had a bunch of denim fabric leftover from kitchen mat.

The chairs are in great shape except for the yucky purple covers.

Here's the before picture, I tried and tried this pic just would not post straight.

I took the old cover off and cut the remaining denim fabric to cover the base.

Ta, da!

Here's the finished product!


Now I plan to move on to something Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas, depends on what time allows. I hope to try this gingerbread ornament and these ornaments.

Michelle

Petrified Randomess

We've been in a cleaning mode lately. Purging and cleaning. After the summer the house seems to be ready for it. Boys and shoes. Kids and shoes really. I'm amazed at how quickly they either grow out of them or destroy them. Here's the latest from Justin:

Now onto the boys room.
I don't clean their room much, on a day to day or week to week I leave that responsibility to them. Well this weekend after a mandatory sweep: that's when everything except the bed and dressers come out of their room, anyway during this bi-annual sweep we found this; tucked nicely on top of a rubbermaid drawer set and under Vaughan's stack of Halloween masks.
Yes it is a lizard.
A dead one.
A petrified one.
Nice isn't it.
We're calling it home school Science- I feel better about my parenting /housekeeping skills that way.

Side note: it helps to label anything crazy in the house as a home school experiment, mold, illness, leftovers no one want to throw out, weird smells, snakes in cages and an odd collection of bugs gathered in one place with hopes they'll fight, all things that fall under "home school experiment" you don't even have to technically home school to use this term either, so please use it freely.

For a kid who is particular about his stuff-Vaughan sure missed this one!
Please look no further than the lizard, the pet hair is what makes me want to move out.


Now onto nicer things like kittens.
My sister-in-law and my nephews were over this weekend and my nephew, the one who I helped birth!!!!!!!! was here as well.
They are taking 2 of our kittens and Andrew just loves them. He's always loved kittens and here he is with 2 of them.


He's holding the one kitten I think we're keeping, shhh don't tell Steve. Her name is Injy Miry. She was stepped on by Vaughan one morning last week and we thought she was going to die, in comes the name Injy short for injury. Really she was lifeless and limp for several hours, he had stepped on her, while running, with his heel and saw her swish, eyes bulging and tongue out of the mouth. We kept her body temp up with blankets and when Momma Cat was sleeping we scooted Injy to her side. After about 8 hours she began to look better. She ate and threw up. She slept, and slept and slept. 24 hours from the squishing and she was walking around and in 48 hours it looked like a full recovery. It's been a week now and we simply call it a miracle, adding Miry to her name.
We prayed and God anwered, I tell her every day she has a Creator that loves and cares even for her. Encouraging for me to hear as well, how much more valuable are we than kittens in His sight.
Then of course who couldn't resist putting one into Steve's pocket.


One more picture to round out this post. Here's Justin and Scott on our way to or from lunch on Sunday. I really like the color swap feature on our camera. 2 years and I just now found this.


I hope you enjoyed this edition of my randomness.
Michelle

How I Got My Groove back

So I may be getting my groove back.
Or not?
But who really cares anyway.

I know, I know, you're lost; thinking, what groove? and how'd she get out of it? and once again who cares?

Well I know the answers to all those questions... I've just been in a bad funk of a mindset. Ever get that way, when you just can't shake certain thoughts and things seem to go downhill for you day after day?

Well that's been my last few weeks, maybe even stretching on a month.

I've combated this funk with everything possible and just recently came to a place where God brought be back to the basics. The simple. Mainly I've been brought back to prayer.
Prayer.

So I'm back. For now.
~Michelle