AWANA Awards Night!

With another year of AWANA under their belts, the kids are ready for summer. All the same, it has been a fun year for them and they are sad the year went so fast.










Warmly,
A Patchwork Mommy

A Hodgepodge of Random Stuff

Thanks for tolerating my little rant yesterday. I just felt like I needed to write it,maybe more for myself if anything. My blog can be a bit fluffy with my talk of sewing and pictures of the kids or whatever but there is a lot I think about. When it actually makes it to my blog,you can be sure I felt I needed to write it,if only just for me.

I guess people have different ideas of what blogs are about. Some view blogs more like someone is inviting you into their home and all the guest politeness is an understood thing. Some view blogs more like a visit to a coffee shop with others. They view it as a time to chat,debate,discuss,and what-not. Some have the gift of teaching and view blogs as a sort of time to teach what they know. Whatever place a person is coming from, I suppose, is how they approach another person's blog as well. None are wrong but sometimes the different ways of thinking can come to a point and clash.

Enough of that.

I do have pictures for today. No more rambling for a while.

A sweet chocolate Lily face. How can I wipe this face off!? I would have wiped Elena the second she was messy. No,I should have let Elena stay messy longer. They grow up way too fast.



Big brother Alan steps in to pose with Lily. Ok, I kind of begged him to join the picture. I wanted the allusion of my older siblings adoring their younger siblings. Did it work? Actually, Alan likes Lily. I did not have to beg very hard,just a little.



Now this was a tasty snack!



Speaking of Alan I mean an anonymous child of mine,this pile of stuff that was not put away is now worth $3.00. The confiscation fine for each items not cleaned up in a timely manor is. 25 cents.Of course, this child spent his last bit of change buying a snack at the store the other day. So now,he is at the mercy of mom and her unpleasant, icky, disgusting, horrible, chore tasks that were waiting for an opportunity like this.

I am sure he will not work very fast to earn his school books back but a good cold snap and the need of pants will get him working pretty quickly.

Ok, I will be nice.I will have him was a few outside windows tomorrow...




Here are the kids AWANA Grand Prix cars!

L to r

Grant's car, Cyrus's car,and Joyce's car.



L to R

Dad's car, Nolan's car, Alan's car, and Josh's car.



Great job kids and dad!!!

Warmly,
A Patchwork Mommy

AWANA Grand Prix Time and A LOT of Rambling

Today was a busy day.

Some of the children's Sunday school classes sang during church this morning and then it was the AWANA Grand Prix racing time this afternoon.

Jeff and Elena brought the camera and took pictures for me because I was at home with some of our younger children.

Anya is somewhere in this group.



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The kids were all exited about the AWANA Grand Prix race today. Of course, there was a bit of late night rushing to finish up cars last night but everyone finished their cars in time.

Jeff,Grant,Alan,Joyce,Cyrus,Nolan, and Josh all had cars racing in either the leaders or T & T race.

All the cars turned out great.

How about a few highlights!

Here is Josh (in the blue tye-dye shirt)racing his AWANA car.




Cyrus ( in the blue shirt on the far left) won 2nd place in design for Truth and Training.



Grant ( in the green shorts) won 3rd place (or was it second?).No how wrong I am.He won 1st place for Design in the leaders group.He wanted me to clarify that. Grant helps out with the 3rd and 4th grade Truth and Training boys.



Joyce ( in the pink sweatshirt) won 3rd place in speed in the leaders race. Joyce is a helper with the Cubbies.



I realize I do not have pictures of their actual cars. I will take pictures after they get their cars back Wednesday night.

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Hm...what else...I had pretty lofty sewing goals this weekend but did not get anything done after I finished up the mini quilts.

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One of the girls wet her bed while she was sleeping Friday night so on Saturday morning I went to take her bedding off her bed and noticed how VERY messy her bed was. I had not noticed it before. She was saving all sorts of little scraps,wrappers,and empty (clean) containers of whatever. It is one of our Liberian girls. I was thinking whether or not I should be concerned that maybe she is displaying a hording issue or something.

When I asked her about it she explained that she actually plays with these things. She and her sisters play house and store and other games with the scraps. Her many sibling supported her explanation. I then checked in all the younger kids beds (Liberian or not) and sure enough they all play with scraps or what-not.

Tell me what use is a paper scrap the size of a penny,a washed out Doritos bag,a deck of 36 cards,a Polly Pocket missing a leg and a head,or a book missing all but two pages? Maybe we do not give them enough toys OR maybe I have kids with great imaginations! See what no TV in the house will do for the imagination,cause your kids to save every scrap they see. TV is a little less messy.

Anyway, I had the girls all throw away the trash and they came down with five trash bags worth of papers,broken toys,and old food wrappers that they claim they play with.Five trash bags!

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One last thing.

I decided to start up my Facebook page after a 15 month absence. I was using Jeff's Facebook the past little while and thought it was time to let him have his Facebook space back. Although,Jeff said he did not mind,I was kind of hogging it up.Facebook is neat but it does kind of depress me a little. I tend to feel lonely,like a miss fit,and maybe a little discontent reading what everyone else it up to. My life just kind of stays the same and others seem to have such exiting lives.

*Sigh*

I like blogging.It is kind of like talking to myself.I like talking to myself.Facebook is kind of like being in high school again...kind of a cliquey thing. But,here I am joining up again trying to be cool.

Ha!

Oh,who am I kidding...I'm just a dork at heart! I love being kind of dweebish.

Warmly,
A Patchwork Mommy.

A Very Messy Head and Looking Through a Little Lead

Tonight's theme at AWANA was Messy Hair Night so Joel decided he wanted a mohawk. Elena and I were happy to oblige him! Well,within reason that is.




Just an out-of-focus goofy photo of Lily and myself looking into the mirror of our built-in dinning room hutch today. I think the mirror is very old. Maybe as old as the house itself (1917).Of course, the piles of school books and such does not compliment the beauty of the buffet.

Lily just loves watching herself laugh. She cracks me up with her goofiness.




Warmly,
A Patchwork Mommy

Something Went Horribly Wrong...Or Did It?!

One of my sweet sons needed to make some Friendship bread for his AWANA Trek class.

No problem. This son has gotten ribbons at the Waseca County fair for his baking efforts. Easy as pie...or was it?

His AWANA Trek book was nice in including a friendship bread recipe right in the book so that made the bread baking task that much easier!

Off he went to make his four loaves of bread. One for him and three to give away to his friends.

What came out of the oven was more like four friendship crackers than four nice loaves of bread. Maybe the Trek Bible study purpose for this week was to determine who your real friends were by giving them each a loaf of friendship cracker?Wouldn't your real friends love you regardless as to what your bread looked like?



Well,we thought we would just find a better recipe and off he was back in the kitchen measuring and mixing. Out of the oven the second time looked much better. Friends would be coming out of the woodwork to eat this bread.



Friendship cracker or friendship bread...would you be my son's friend either way?

Already Behind!

It is only our second day of school and I am behind.


It started with me waking up late. Some of you who know me personally know I am very much a night owl. I do not do mornings well. OK, waking up late is still workable. But oh no! Tonight is the first night of AWANA and I have three heads of hair to wash and braid and One head of long hair to wash and comb through. I should not have procrastinated last week about doing this. I'm not very quick with hair braiding so I opted for two natural looks and a cute little puff 'do. The long haired child just went unwashed but as long as nobody stood too close things would be ok. Tomorrow is a new day. I will start over.


Here are my younger six all ready for dad to come home from work and head over to AWANA. It is Joel's first year in Cubbies. I will sure miss him here at home with me. A group of my older kids decided to walk to AWANA early instead of waiting for their dad. And yet another group of my children..young adults I meant to say...walked to the near by Lutheran church to participate in something called The Amazing Race with a bunch of local church youth groups here in Waseca. What a whirl wind of activity around here today.



To pay for our schooling this year I used mostly my earnings from my Etsy shops or earning from Ebay selling. It has taken a while but here is my pile so far. It will get me a partly through the year. Thank you to all my customers!

AWANA Awards Party

Wednesday night was the last AWANA meeting until fall. The kids are going to miss it!

Joel,Lily and I missed the actual awards ceremony but were hard at work at home getting our AWANA Awards pizza and ice cream party ready for our troops when the got home.

Jeff picked up all the ice cream sundae fixings and the kids went crazy with excitement.

I forgot to send the camera to church with Jeff but I was able to snap a few of the kids fixing up their ice cream sundaes.

I love that Grace was so in aw over all the ice cream topping choices!



Alan's reaction when he spied yet one more thing to top his ice cream with. My guess is he is looking at the bananas.

You can also see big sister Elena making sure no one was overlooked



Joel's cute delighted face over his huge bowl

A Little Wednesday This and That

It was a very nice day out today. Nolan is finishing up a little math on the front porch before the kids all head to AWANA.



Tonight is the second to the last AWANA meeting. The kids are sad that the AWANA year is coming to a close. Tonight the kids were able to spend their hard earned AWANA shares (kind of like points) at the AWANA store. Here is a sampling of all the goodies they came home with.

Odell



Anya



Josh



Naomi, Ekie, and Nolan

Here They Are!!!

I finally figured out how to work around my HP Photosmart not working. I figured out I do not know how to blog well without visual aids.

Here are pictures of our Dragonfrye 2009 AWANA Grand Prix cars!

Jeff and the kids worked very hard on them. You will be impressed. As far as I can remember about the details of the races this past Wednesday evening all the cars made it down the tracks.


This attractive green van won first place for speed among the AWANA T&T leader cars!

Way to go Jeff!!!

This reflects real life for you would try to get where you need to go as fast as you can with 14 children in the back seats,too.






Grant's Air Craft Carrier won third place in design among the AWANA T&T leaders!

Hurray Grant! Great Job!!!



Elena's VERY cute lady bug car.



Alan's Model T. He thought it turned out looking more like an Army Jeep.




Nolan's Stag Beetle.



Cyrus's racing car.



Joyce's canoe. You might not be able to tell in the picture but she sanded it so very smooth.

Busy Day!

Tonight was AWANA Grand Prix, Jeff and the kids were looking forward to this for a long time!

My HP Photosmart was acting all weird so I could not get pictures of the kids' cars on the blog to show you but I will try again tomorrow.

A few hints... # 16 the The Frye Mobile left the rest in the dust and sped home with 1st place. A beautifully made aircraft carrier flew home with 3rd place for design!

Wait 'till you see all the Frye cars!


While the rest had a grand time at AWANA watching the races, a cute Joel,a precious Lily,and I had a fun time walking to McDonald for a special treat. Joel was so exited. He was so cute beyond description. It just warmed my heart. Lily delighted in the wheelie McDonald's highchair but brought along a little baby attitude.I like baby attitude...

When Joel,Lily, and I arrived back home from our special walk we found three pans of warm from the oven hot dishes on our front porch.Very nice! Thank you secret hot dish givers! We ate very well tonight.

Moustache Anyone?

Tonight was moustache night at AWANA.

Joel joined in on the fun as well but wanted tiger ears to go along with his moustache.



Anya opted out



Silly baby joined in on the fun



Jeff who shaved very well this morning needed a little whisker touch up



Now, there is my rugged mountain man!