Birthday Stop Motion

My Mother-in-law’s birthday was today.  For some reason Guy likes to get chicken stuff for her.  We bought chicken napkin rings and saved them until she came for her birthday.  In the mean time Guy “commissioned” Nolan to create a stop motion video using the napkin rings.  This is what he came up with.

Chickens for Grandma (finished).wmv

I’m trying to load the videos on my Webshots account. Which I can do, but can’t embed here. You will need to click the link above. Or I added a Vpod widget on my side bar (you won’t be able to see it if you are reading this from a blog reader). From there the video can be watched right here on this page. It is only a few seconds long.

Don’t Tell Jesse

The heat broke today and we are having a very pleasant day.  Which means even though the boys are being typical teens (is there such a thing) and sleeping in we still managed to go on a bike ride.  (OK, I admit it, I’ve been staying up too late and managed to sleep in until after 8 this morning.) 

Jesse was lobbying for a 3-6 mile ride, but Nolan had a book come in at the library and wanted to ride there.  Jesse does not have good memories of a similar ride last summer.  I told them we would ride that direction and see how it went.  We made it all the way to the library and Nolan picked up the second James Bond book. 

A new little shop opened in the library shopping center called Squeak.  We had spotted it the last time we were at the library, but didn’t know if it was open.  It is a soda shop.  I have to assume it is along the same lines as a drug store soda shop in the 50s — I’m not old enough to know for sure.  We went in to check it out.  I believe they said there were 57 flavors of soda, there were little vials to smell before you buy.  The also offered candy by the pound, ice cream, shakes, malts, floats, grilled cheese and coffee.  I’m sure there was more.  It appears to be an independent store and I hope they do well.  The next time I go to the library, I’ll try to get a picture to add to this post.  For those of you that are local and are reading this — they are in the shopping center at the corner of Rockrimmon and Vindicator.

(edited to add picture)(another edit — I found this video that shows the inside of the shop)

We took an alternate route home.  Good thing because the last mile getting to the library is a fairly steep downgrade and I don’t want to go back up it or hear Jesse whine.  We figured out where the bike path connects to the road and came home that way.  Let’s not tell Jesse, but the trip was about 12-1/2 miles.  That is the longest ride he has done this summer and he did pretty well!  Way better than he was doing last summer.

Our afternoon storm clouds are rolling in so we made it just in time.  I’m off to see how much quilting I can get in before I shut down as a precaution against lightening strikes.

Enough Already

The boys have been out of school for five weeks, but I wouldn’t even know they were home most of the time.  They have been glued to the computer.  I’ve been talking to them about self regulating, but it didn’t seem to sink in.  Finally enough was enough.  Guy booted them off the computers this evening and they now have certain hours they cannot use any screens — computers, TV, ipod, DS etc. 

Jesse pulled out the dominos and I thought he was pretty creative when I saw this sitting on the table.

I guessed a piano, but was immediately corrected.  It is a keyboard.  The amount of his creativity came into serious question when he said he needed a blue shirt for the cat.  The question then was where had he seen this.  His response, “If I could use a computer, I could show you.”  Nice try kid.

It turns out there is a YouTube video that has been used frequently at the end of “fail” videos.  He modeled his little scene after that.  It is a real cat and keyboard in the video, so I still give him points for creativity.  Here’s the video.  I am amazed by what they find hilarious, but they are boys.

Yes Sir, That’s My Baby!

Last night Nolan graduated from 8th grade.  The class didn’t want a formal graduation, instead they chose to have a dinner in their teacher’s backyard and spend the night at her house.  She did ask them to dress up.  Nolan has a dress shirt, but he was talking about a jacket.  He is still growing faster than we can keep up with so we raided Dad’s closet.  The funny thing is Guy’s clothes fit perfectly.  The pants and notice the shoes are Nolan’s, the rest belongs to Guy.

This is a picture of the 8th grade class.  About half of them were in Kindergarten together.

(I made the cake.  It is much simpler than my original plan.   I made cream cheese frosting and it refused to hold much of any definition.  It tasted good.)

Finally here is Nolan receiving his diploma — he said, “I’m going to use it to get a job.”   We wished him luck with that!

The class came dragging into school at about 10:30 this morning.  Most of them never went to bed.  We left for a road trip the minute school was out at noon and the boys slept the whole 8 hours we drove and dropped into bed again.  Apparently fun was had by all.   Perhaps we are half finished with Nolan’s school bills — the less expensive half!

Does the Proboscis Matter?

I’m going to an ornament/gift exchange on Sunday.  I could have purchased something, but I always prefer handmade items so out came the embroidery machine again.

The designs for these fellows came from the Machine Embroidery Snowmen set by The Stitch Connection.  They are made from scraps of batting.  Is it possible a longarm quilter has batting scraps?  I couldn’t find exactly the buttons I wanted and settled on these for the noses.  They are a little large and my boys have told me they look more like penguins than snowmen.  So in this case the proboscis does matter, and I made snow penguins.  Both boys also asked why I gave them a crown of thorns.  They aren’t buying that they are holly and fir halos or wreaths.   I guess that is what comes from living with a house full of males!

Still Playing

I think it is about time to go to bed, but I’m still playing with Photoshop.  We had a challenge on Wednesday that I hadn’t done yet, so I goofed around with it.  Here are the results –

The parts for the layout were KPertiet_PaperRevealNo2_2, and trishjones_distresseddiva_distressededge both of which were part of the class materials. The brushes are from http://myphotoshopbrushes.com/brushes/id/154. I created my own “Lego” paper using a pattern overlay I downloaded from http://myphotoshopbrushes.com/patterns/id/1022.

Expensive Week

It has been an expensive week here in our household.  On Wednesday morning Jesse had the rest of his baby teeth pulled to speed things up at the orthodontist.  I wasn’t quite expecting the total bill for four baby teeth.

Wednesday was really the first day I was out for any length of time after my bicycle accident.  (Still have a knot in my leg and am limping.)  We didn’t take many side trips on the way home.  Later in the day our refrigerator finally burned itself out.  We knew it was going to go someday, but were hoping to limp it along for awhile.  So I made another trip out with Guy Wednesday night and picked out a new refrigerator, which will not arrive until Monday.  We are living out of a small freezer and and ice chest.  That was an even bigger bill.

Thursday saw us at the orthodontist getting Nolan fully fitted with braces.  Gasp, now we are paying orthodontist bills for two.  Do you hear the hyperventilating yet?  That would be Guy.

We had a challenge in the Photoshop class I’m taking.  We were supposed to take a picture today and digitally create a scrapbook page in less than 30 minutes.  I didn’t make it in 30 minutes, but it was less than an hour.  So here you can see part of that money at work.

The paper was a download we received in class from www.sweetshoppedesigns.com and the brushes are from 227 HQ Ornaments at www.brusheezy.com

More Pictures of Sabbath

Imagine my delight this morning when I opened my email and found pictures of Nolan taken by his teacher on Sabbath.  She got much higher resolution and better shots than I.  I’m putting the pictures here more for family who read what I write than anyone else.

 

Double Happy Birthday Nolan

Fourteen years ago today, Nolan arrived on the scene as our first born.  On that day, I could finally breathe again and get excited about having a baby.  Just a little over a year before that date my first pregnancy ended at 20 weeks when the sonogram revealed the baby had died.  In late October I realized I was pregnant again and we waited much longer this time to tell anyone.  Even after letting people know, I still did my best to avoid getting excited.  I didn’t count on actually having this baby until he was in my arms.  It was far from a smooth pregnancy.  At 32 weeks I was put on bed rest for the duration because of my blood pressure.  At 35 weeks I was sent to the hospital to stay,  again because of high blood pressure. At 36 weeks the doctor forced the issue and induced labor.   It took Nolan’s birth to heal the grief from the first loss and he more than did the job.

From the day Nolan was born, he did not want to sleep alone.  The books say let the baby cry, they will eventually give up and accept their crib.  Hah!  Nolan would cry for hours if he had to be alone.  He really didn’t want to sleep.  When he was a few months older, he didn’t want to nap.  I had to lie down with him, and hold him there until he fell asleep.  Other than not wanting to sleep he was a pure joy.  He was a happy baby and he would sit and let me read to him for hours.  He always wanted to be where the action was taking place.  At six months old he stayed up on New Year’s Eve to see the old year out and the new in.  He was absolutely slap happy by the time he went to bed.

I can’t believe 14 years have passed.  He is turning into an exceptional young man.  We couldn’t be prouder of him.

Today he made public the most important decision of his life.  He chose to be baptized symbolizing his decision to follow Jesus.  So today is doubly his birthday — his physical birth and his spiritual rebirth.  Not the best picture, but from the pews of the church it was the best I could get.

Nolan, I pray that you stand by the decision you made today for the rest of your life.  We love you!

 

– Elements for Scrapbook page are from the following sources  http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com ; and Jen Caputo (http://jencaputo.typepad.com) available at Scrapbook Graphics.  It is possible I don’t have the source for all of the papers.  I was organizing the papers and thought I had added the designer to the file information, but some are missing.

School’s Out for Summer!!!

The boys got out of school for the summer today at noon.  We have been counting down days almost the whole last quarter.  They didn’t use their snow days this year, so they got out a few days earlier than scheduled.  Not only have we been counting school days, this last week we have been counting hours remaining.  I noticed on the white board this morning it was minutes!

The boys go to a very small private school which means there are multiple grades in one class room.  When they first started school, I wasn’t excited by that idea, but it has turned out to be beneficial.  Nolan was in a class with 7th, 8th and 9th grade this year.  Typically the 8th grade raises money for a class trip of some sort.  The 7th graders also raised  money.  There were only three 8th graders and they didn’t raise much money.  Rather than a formal graduation they had a gathering at a local Pizza parlor, ate, received diplomas and played games.  Nolan was in 7th grade and has apparently reached the age where he no longer wants his parents crashing his parties.  We dropped him off on Wednesday night and when we picked him up the teacher had agreed to have her whole class to her house on Thursday night.  The plan was for the girls to spend the night and the boys to come home at some point in time.  Yesterday morning, Nolan called from school and gave me a list of things to bring in the afternoon, including a sleeping bag.  They worked it out so the boys pitched a tent in the back yard and spent the night as well.

The class played laser tag yesterday afternoon, and when I stopped by to drop Nolan’s stuff off they were headed to Walmart to buy food for the evening.

When I got to school at noon today, I asked Nolan what time he went to bed.  1:00? – Later, 2:00? — Later, 3:00? Later — I don’t want to know.  I went in and talked to his teacher.  Apparently, they ate like normal teenagers, and she let them have junk for their party.  She bought four cases of soda pop, baked cookies, was making cucumber swiss sandwiches that were being eaten faster than she could prepare them.  I don’t remember what all they had, but I’m sure I would have loved it at their age.   She made them come out of the hot tub at 10:30 in consideration of the neighbors.  Apparently, they watched movies and talked until 4:00am.  Then she got them up again at 8:00 for school.  Since she had the whole class they came in late.

Nolan was absolutely zonked!  On the way home I told him to take a nap as soon as we got home.  He was concerned about his Friday chores (Friday is the day we clean house!)  I told him the chores could wait until he woke up.  He went straight to bed and he is out.  I even vacuumed in his room and he didn’t stir.  I couldn’t even do that when he was a baby.

As payment for his “wild” partying, I snapped a picture of him after I vacuumed.  Poor tired kid.  I guess he had fun.