All they want for Christmas...

We made this video of the kids telling Santa what they want for Christmas. It seemed like a good idea. It took us 5 tries to get this final product. It isn't perfect, but it is perfectly Zak and Corie. BTW - I've never uploaded a video, so if anyone has any problems viewing this just pop me an email.

It's beginning to look a lil' bit like Christmas!

When I was young (insert joke here) December crawled by. Do you remember those days? I am reminded because my kids ask me every single day, "How long 'til Christmas?" We both agonize over the answer... it's too far for them and too close for me. We have just about finished our shopping. We did almost all of it on the internet this year, and I LOVED it. In fact I actually prefer ishopping to actual shopping. No pushing crowds, no whining kids, and the shops actually have what they are advertising. I do have some homemade gifts to complete though. Well, complete is not accurate, because I haven't actually started my sewing projects yet. The kids have finished their homemade gifts though. Here's a picture of them rolling up their lemon soap balls... Grandparents, look surprised when you open them!

We did have some non-holiday activities planned this weekend. Saturday morning we went to a model train show in Winooski. Zakary was the most excited, but we all enjoyed it.After the train show we brought Corie to her first basketball practice. She was actually pretty good, but in the middle of practicing passes she ran off the court in tears. We calmed her down, and she agreed to go back on court and finish the session. Luckily she wasn't the only one that cried, and by the time practice came to an end she was enjoying herself again. Whew!
We put the tree up on Saturday night and then commenced decorating it. Zakary would pick up an ornament and circle the tree several times before finding the perfect branch to hang it on. Apparently we only have two perfect branches on the tree, and they now house about 15 ornaments a piece. Corie spent most of the night telling Zakary not to hang all the ornaments on the same two branches, and when he ignored her she would tell me that Zakary was hanging all the ornaments on the same two branches. Eric would then comment on how all my elves looked demonic and then return to watching television. So basically it was same ol' same ol'.

Demonic?! I don't know what he is talking about.

To late to be early for Christmas

We really tried to start our Christmas shopping early this year, but now it looks like the best we can hope for is to be on time. We finally got the call that our name has reached the top of the Harman pellet stove waiting list, and we are expecting to have one delivered within the next two weeks. We had to move the living room around to accommodate the upcoming addition, and as with everything in life it turned out to be a bigger project than anticipated. You see there is only one spot in our living room that meets the specs for the pellet stove and our two 7-foot bookshelves were there and... there was only one place in the living room where we could fit those two 7-foot bookshelves and... our computer desk was there and... there was only one place to put the computer desk and... we had two 4-foot bookshelves holding two aquariums on top of them, so I guess you know how we spent the last two weekends. We did it right though and went through everything instead of just moving it all. Oh, the things I found on that desk. Three blank wedding cards, several blank birthday cards, a blank Mother's day card, the receipt for Bimbo (my cat who died over 6 years ago and who I acquired almost 18 years ago), and the post office receipt for the package that Amber never received (don't worry, Amber, I'm on it).
We got the Wall-e dvd, and Zakary hasn't wanted to watch anything else (not even Toy Trains). Corie enjoyed it also, but after Zak put it in for the third time she decided to retreat to her room to make things out of our garbage. You should see the lovely Mother's day present that she made out of an old tampon box. The first thing she does when her dad drops her off is go into our recycle bin to see what she can salvage. Oh, the things that girl can do with an egg carton!
Our Saturn has been deposited at the junkyard, and fearing that he would only have two cars to work on every weekend Eric has been on the look out for another car. He and his father, Bob, went to a junk car auction. They actually called it a used car auction, but if you saw what Eric (tried) to bring home you would agree with me. I say tried because it died on it's maiden voyage and will be towed to our mechanics before actually seeing it's new home. You know you are in trouble when the title labels it as an "abandoned" car. I'm sure between Eric & Randy, our mechanic, the new Saturn will be up and running which is good because our Taurus needs to go back to the shop... and now you know why we always need 3 cars!

Life after summer

It was a beautiful autumn. All the leaves have fallen to the ground by now, but most of them retain their lovely colors. They make the woods behind our house look like one of those quaint pictures that you see on the cover of a 1940s "Better Homes & Gardens". The weather has been unseasonably warm. Our high temps for the Halloween weekend were in the lower 60s. The whole family was busy outside with our usual fall activities. Eric worked on our cars (as always) and cleared out more of the scrubby trees from the edge of our woods. Zakary worked on covering every square inch of our yard with some sort of toy construction vehicle, and Corie spent her day continually reminding Zakary that he was going to have to "pick up every one of his toys before he went in". I was cutting back the perennials and pulling up the remainder of our garden. While doing my gardening I started to notice that my arms were getting sore, and I was sweaty and out of breath. Eric told me that it was the result of "exercise", and I have decided that I don't like it.

Halloween night was great. The kids came home loaded with candy. I let them eat as much as they wanted whenever they wanted for the weekend, and they still have a pile left. Of course Monday’s sugar crash wasn’t much fun, but I think the kids would agree it was worth it. The costumes met all the required criteria… they were warm, comfortable, and finished on time! BTW - they were tarantulas.

I am looking forward to winter for the first time since becoming an adult. I had just started sewing last spring and was really enjoying it. Summer is too short to spend indoors though, so my new hobby was pushed aside for the season. I took my birthday off, and decided to sew something for my sister. It came out funny looking, so I had to make her something else to compensate. I’m going to post the picture even though I’m not sure the package has arrived.The doll is from a free pattern I found on Martha Stewart’s web site. Here’s the link: Black Apple Doll pattern. I enjoyed making these guys so much that I made these next.

The pillows were copied from pictures that I found on the web.

The kids are doing great. Zakary still loves school. He is starting to get bossy with the other kids though (something he learned from his sister), and we are having a lot of talks about the Golden Rule. His favorite DVD, “I Love Toy Trains” Vol. 1-13, has temporarily been replaced by “Twenty Trucks”. Corie is doing much better in school, but her attention has started to turn to boys lately. I know she is only 9, but she is a Sprague. She has started writing scary stories, maybe I’ll post one. She never finishes them, but they start out pretty good. Eric has been busy with work, school, and fixing on our cars. The Blazer has been put up for the winter, and the Saturn is officially dead. Now he only has to work on the Taurus and Rav4 every weekend.

When life hands you 144 lemons...

Our neighbors own and run a food stand that they set up all over the northeast at various fairs and festivals. As the season ended they had lots of lemons & limes left over, so they gave us a box of each. Pretty nice, huh? Mom lent us her juicer, and I spent several hours making and freezing lemon and lime juice. I hadn't realized how long the process was going to end up taking, but when it was over the house smelled great and we had around a gallon of juice in the freezer.

We are slowly trudging through our Get-ready-for-winter-checklist. Eric worked on the boiler this weekend. There was a lot of muttering coming up from the basement, but when it was all over we had heat. He spent the rest of the weekend working on the cars. If I understand him correctly my whole car is being held together by spray foam or something like that. The Saturn isn't even that lucky. Apparently it is on it's death bed... it's been given only 2 months tops.

My weekend was filled with laundry, yardsale fodder and tarantulas. We are planning a yardsale with our neighbors this weekend. I've been prying old toys away from the kids along and collecting things from their hiding places for a month now. I'm about half way through pricing everything. When we are finished with this fiasco we will probably come out with a $20 profit for weeks of work, however think of all the junk we will get rid of. The tarantula costumes should be done by the end of the week. They are coming out so cute. I'm adding red stripes to the legs and that made them look so much cooler.

Has it really been that long since my last post?!

Corie swimming in September

We are in the middle of a beautiful Fall, and as much as I don't like Winter I am looking forward to it's slower pace. We have had a couple of new additions since the last post. Our washing machine died after 15 years of faithful service. It has been replaced by a Whirlpool Duet Sport, and yes it is a front loader. Eric has put several of these in "green" houses, and said that he has never had to service one. It is amazing how much cleaner our clothes are. Our second new addition is a female Betta for Corie. Now let me tell you something about Betta's... We got Zakary's Betta because they breath air, so you don't need a pump. You can put them in cheap glass fish bowls and they are relatively low maintenance. Right? Wrong! They need to be kept at a water temp in the high 70s, and that means they need a heater. Heaters don't fit in glass fish bowls, so we had to update to an aquarium. When we took Corie pick out the fish she had earned we steered her towards a female Betta. I knew males couldn't share a tank, but I'd been told that a female tank mate would be okay. Wrong! Of course we didn't find this out until after Corie fell in love with her fish, and I had already paid for it. So... I found this great tank divider for only $10, but we needed to sort of block their view of each other. So... Here I picked up a great set of aquarium plants for only $14, but despite their weighted bottom they kept floating up. So... We got two bags of gravel for $4 each and placed it on the floor of the tank and on the base of the plants. Of course now the tank was so complicated there was no way we were going to be able to keep the water clean. So... We picked up a new pump and filter. Of course all these purchases were separately, because we learned everything the hard way. You should see how cute our tank is though!

We went to Harvest Fest with Dad and Pat again this year. It's kind of a family tradition. The forcasted "torrential downpour" never occurred, and we had a great time. We did miss our Amber though. She is away at college, SUNY Brockport, where I hope she is having a great time. The following day we went up to Bob & Cheryl's for a visit. Aunt Karen was up visiting from Maryland, and we hadn't seen her since they moved away from Vermont. The sun was out, the air was brisk, the company was great, and the trees were at peak color. It was a perfect Fall day, and we did what any self-respecting New Englander should do under those circumstances... we drank (lots of) wine. We talked about important things like how your body starts falling apart after 40, the size of our butts, healthy recipes that don't taste like cardboard, and how cute my kids are. At least that's what we girls did. The boys did testosterony-things. I saw them holding their beer bottles, looking at tractors and cars, and talking a lot. I couldn't hear the conversation, but I'll bet it covered topics like gas mileage, property taxes, engines, the pros and cons of different heating systems, and the cost of oil this winter. It's no wonder women live longer! Men bore themselves to death. Speaking of the greatness of women... Cheryl gave me my birthday presents early!

They are great! Of course people are starting to expect me to sew now, but that is something that I am looking forward to doing. The "Simply Sublime Bags" is actually a no-sew/low-sew project book, and it has the coolest bags in it! The "Making Vintage Bags" has bag patterns from the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, and I already have requests from it.

We had a great harvest from our garden this year. We put up lots of tomatoes, green beans and peppers. We still have carrots and squash that need to be put up, but there are also 2 Halloween costumes that aren't going to make themselves! The kids are going up to their Grandparents house this weekend, so Eric and I will try to make the most of it by knocking things off the things-to-do-before-winter list. Poor Eric has to repair the Saturn (again), and work on the boiler. I have two tarantula costumes to make, a fish tank to filterize, and a house to clean. Remember Bette Midlers apartment in "Outrageous Fortune"? That's what our house looks like... and if you don't remember or haven't seen that movie then you really need to.

Here's a short, but interesting commentary. Just click "listen": Pundits

It's not all bad

No. That is not Venus, goddess of love and beauty, laying on that clam shell. Although I can see how you could make that mistake. We went up for a visit with Eric's parents last weekend, and had a great time. The day was a perfect blend of sun and breeze, and Bob & Cheryl spoiled us into relaxation. Although the day wasn't exactly warm enough for a swim Cheryl, Zaky and I ventured into the pond, because it will most likely be the last chance to do so before the cold weather sets in. Poor Corie couldn't swim due to her toe injury, but after a bit of sulking even our moody little preteen couldn't maintain a pout on such a beautiful day. Eric spent most of his day trying not to share his toys with the kids, but they would have none of that! They were hot on his trail touching his stuff until he finally gave up and put his toys away. Bob, Cheryl and I enjoyed the show while it lasted. I have added some new pictures to our Family album on Google. I am trying not to post to many pictures in this blog so that dial up people won't have trouble loading the page. It wasn't until we tried to look something up online at my Dad's house that we realized how spoiled we were with our cable hookup. As we were waiting for our pages to load I kept picturing a little emaciated gerbil on a rusty wheel running round and round. Poor Amber. It's no wonder why she was never on Facebook.

Our kids are growing up. Wednesday morning Corie couldn't decide what to wear to school. Everything I held up got a scrunchy face. Finally she said "I want something black. I want tops with skulls on them. I want to dress like Amber...in black". I said, "you mean goth?" She said "Yes. I want my Dad to take me to my favorite store, Hot Topic". Okay. She's a Sprague, so I knew it was going to happen, but I thought she'd make it past nine years old before we got to this point. On the other hand we have Zakary who went into the kitchen and made himself a peanut butter sandwich without assistance for the first time. Now if I can just get them to clean their rooms... ha-ha.