What was your first childhood memory?

I remember looking at the uninhabited parsonage that my family was soon to inhabit. I was two, almost three. I can still remember it clearly. I remember lots of childhood playing around with my sister.

I wonder what will be my girls first memory?


I think this looks like a good one
























This is the "boat". You are looking at every pillow in our home.

We had fun and excitement in the 'hood over the last few days. Our neighbors had themselves a new baby boy and we had the fun of keeping big brother. Anna took him on as her own charge. Here she's explaining the finer points of tooth brushing.
























Here is little John making his first appearance, he's not even 2 days old yet! Our next door neighbor was having her 8th birthday party, a costume party- of course we all dressed up and let our little ones crawl in the street. Fun times.

































xo,

Lisa

Springtime

Virginia Bluebells

















Solomon's Seal

























Puddles








































I hope you are enjoying it!

Finally

I'm not touching it any more.

On to other projects...

she must have learned this at school

As a kid I was terrible about making faces for photos. There's lots of proof. Imagine my parents chagrin to pay for all that film development just to find that I'm ruining the photo with a ridiculous face or grimace or eye roll.

I guess I deserve all of this:






























Yeah, I'm keeping these. I might even print them out.

Lisa

But Mom, what if I don't want to grow up to be in the WWF?

This is a birthday present I made for Anna's favorite boy. It's a fun red cape with his initial on the back. The mask never turned out right so it was scraped. His party was a blast, no one wanted to leave. Anna ate 3 pieces of cake and still wanted dinner when she came home.

That's my girl.

xo,

Lisa

My 'hood rocks

Many of my loyal readers, all 8 of you, know that I loved my old neighborhood. I really didn't know if I could love the city of fountain like I loved HONK (historic old north Knoxville) well, I do love my neighborhood and I have the best neighbors. Just the other night we had a girls night out (Sushi!) which was closed out with a big birthday cake for moi. Red velvet from the bakery -yum.


My neighbor gave me a birthday gifty to match my new kitchen paint - to be discussed later - she gave me this awesome Orla Kiely mug. I saw these at the Target a few weeks ago and I tried to convince myself that I needed one. Since I contribute $0 to the family budget I try to buy only needs and not so much wants. you know? So this was particularly exciting to me. Here's the mug and also the bowl that I once made at the paint-your-own-pottery, you see I was going for a good knock-off of this Orla design.


















I was having a hard time getting a photo of all of this because of this naked elf asking for attention. To make this photo I had to squat down and bend over to get the angle right and she kept doing the exact same thing. What a cutie.

The painting? It's coming along. Really, tomorrow.

Recovery

As always, I was unprepared for this adventure in parenting.

Lucy had her tonsils and adenoids removed and tubes put in her ears last Tuesday. The surgery went fine, it took only about 20 minutes but we had to stay overnight because she's under 3 years old. That was not so fun. It was a shared post-surgery room. Thankfully, the our roommate was a wee baby that was oh so quiet. Unfortunately for them, Lucy was pretty whiny and insisted on "see de baby" around the curtained divider in our room. She has done well with her eating and drinking, she usually takes her medicines fine. Sleeping is not going so well. I don't know if her pain is worse at night or what but she wakes up every 4 hours... MAD. Last night I put her in the bed with us and she kicked and punched me and pulled my hair. She was so unbelievably wild. Today, she's our sweet, sweet girl. Maybe she's one of the immortal children... Yes, I just finished Breaking Dawn.


To keep everyone occupied and fed we made bread. The girls never get tired of this.






































This is a photo I made a last week. Doesn't it look like the tree is sprouting out of Anna's head? I'm afraid there might be a blog post devoted to that tree. I love it. It's a beech tree of some sort and it's amazing.

We have the best neighborhood. There are lots of kids Anna & Lucy's age on our street and right around the corner. This is pretty surprising because we live in an older (70 yrs) neighborhood with non cul de sac streets. You can see all the fun that can be had in a pile of leaves.























Lucy's already crying again.

My next post WILL have a finished painting to show.

Lisa

The good and the bad

Well friends, it's been interesting here.

Let's start with the trip to the ER. Sunday morning Lucy put a raisin up her nose. I could see it, and Iprobably could have snagged it with some tweezers. I also could have shoved it up even farther just as well. I left it for the professionals at Children's hospital to deal with. Thankfully it fell out of it's own accord in the exam room. Whew!

Next, Anna fell and completely busted her lip. Can you see? It was swollen and is obviously bruised today.

I'm not winning the mother of the year award am I?

But wait! Lucy pooped on the potty, does that get me some points?

Her comment to me when I walked into the bathroom to see the poop?

"Smell it Mommy."

















Project update: 1 nap = a bunch of new napkins. We go through lots since we are PTF (paper towel free).

















I even made some headway on the painting! Here's a little taste:


















I'll leave you with a photo of our little raisin-sniffin' gal. Look how chubby she has become since she's been well. Think of her tomorrow with her surgery!


















xo,

Lisa

The dead kitchen

When Karen came to visit a few weeks ago I was asking her suggestions for paint for my kitchen and sun room. She looked around and said "yeah, this paint is dead'. See, that's all I think when I look at the paint now - dead. These are the only rooms we didn't paint when we moved in and as you can see from my posts, where we spend 90% of our waking hours. Remember this? I have been thinking green, like a stem or apple green. Then I found this fabric:
















I love it. doesn't it just scream spring time? So I have some ideas for some green and pink (hello preppy). Amazingly, Jonathan is on board!


Didn't I say I wasn't posting again until the projects were done? I'm getting right on that.

Things I swore I woud never do. Part Two

I don't think I completely swore that my children would never eat Froot Loops. Somewhere in my brain I think that it's better to not introduce these things till later, like after they have had them at a friend's house and come home thinking that the other kid's mom is the coolest. My parents took the girls to McDonalds for a happy meal. I think it was the second or third one in Anna's life. When I asked her where she ate she said "old Macdonald's farm".

She's the one who shunned Froot Loops for Uncle Sam and Fiber one, with blueberries of course. No wonder she's so regular!

















Lucy finger painting. She just wants more, more, more paint to squish between her finger and wipe up her arm.

















Well, for those of you who are wondering, my little talk went just fine. The fellas loved the jokes about the prostate and prostrate. It only took a few minutes to get back in my groove. As I suspected, at the end of the talk all these men came up to tell thier prostate stories.
My PSA is 3!
I had the robotic surgery!
I had mine removed!

They were cute.

This weekend I am finishing some UFOs. I'm going to post Sunday night with my completed projects. Aren't you excited???

xo,

Lisa

honey, have you done what I asked?

Isn't it funny when you hear your own words out of your child's mouth?

I promised Anna that I would make this baby a diaper a few days ago and she has been hounding me ever since. So I made this. I put the snail on the front to help Anna get it on without my help. (let's hope)

The baby is very cute and doesn't actually have soul-less black eyes as it would appear!

coming out of retirement... for an hour

On Tuesday I have to give a lecture for the Sertoma club. I thought I would talk about cancer, but something specific for 65+ year old men. Why prostate cancer of course!

Suddenly I'm all squeamish about the diagrams of prostates. I googled images of prostates and let me just tell you this : DON'T. Trust me. I found this text bookish diagram that I feel pretty comfortable with because it doesn't show the full Monty ifyouknowwhatImean. To break the ice I also have a photo of a person lying prostrate. Get it? Prostate. Prostrate? It always drove me crazy when people would confuse the two words. Kinda like how my boss would always use ideal when she meant idea. As in "I have a great ideal".

I looked over some old notes to get ready for my foray back into the world of nutrition and I cam e across these notes. It's like someone else wrote them. Where in my brain is all of this information stored? Apparently I knew it all at one time, but reads like new information.

















I'll let you know how it goes!

Lisa