pipe cleaner fun

The sick day also afforded me an hour to work on these pipe cleaner poinsettias. I stole the idea from a gift wrap article in Better Homes. The kids helped with cutting the pipe cleaners (I think they're called "bump chenille" or something like that) and bending the cut pieces in half. I hot-glued them to a small cardstock circle, and the kids helped with hot-gluing the silver beads in the middle. I'm kind of working on a tree with mostly white and silver ornaments, and I thought these poinsettias would look beautiful tied on with white ribbon.

how I spent my kid's sick day

We've had a strange on and off stomach bug in our house, mainly affecting Flash. It started the day before we were supposed to drive to Janette's house for Thanksgiving, and the nausea and vomiting have returned (pretty reliably) every 2 days. So Flash was home yesterday. After exceeding my limit of X-Box and TV, I took a deep breath and said, "Hey, why don't we decorate for Christmas?" Everyone cheered. So we decorated here and there, and the tree will come later. Super Q is so cute about it; wide-eyed and excited. He made a connection between every little thing we put up and Santa: "Santa will love this tiny bell, Mom!" It made the living room full of tissue paper, boxes, and sphaghnum moss worth it.

yeee-haw!

We had a super-fun cowboy weekend trip with the boys. Or more like a ranch-hand weekend. We stayed at the Quiet Hill Ranch (I bet the owners are glad they didn't go with "Silent Hill"; remember that horror movie a few years back?) where you sleep in a real log cabin (with hot showers and a/c, so not really real) and cook yer vittles in a lodge kitchen. We gathered eggs from the chickens, played horseshoes, and built a campfire. The next day we hiked-- what passes for a mountain in Texas--Enchanted Rock, a huge granite hill. It was super windy and we had a great time filling up our shirts with air-muscles. It was a much-needed break for all of us. I didn't know how much I needed it until Sunday arrived. It was my first Primary presentation and the whole day was a stressful blur. I'm told it was a great presentation. I wouldn't know as I divided my time between pulling a 5 year old out from under the organ, trying to find a super last-minute replacement for a non-participatory teacher, and getting the older brother of the above-mentioned 5 year old to put away the Barbie tic-tac-toe game right now!