Thanks for all the advice, comments, and sharing your own stories in my last post about Eli’s wisdom tooth surgery. We’re still a little reeling from the whole thing, and even though it seems to be more common than I ever imagined, I hate that this happened to him. He wanted to see a therapist (he is quite traumatized) and has an appointment today. Other than that, fortunately his mouth is recovering well after surgery.
It’s been almost a month since my last photo/update post. These photos are all over the place in what I’ve been doing, but here goes…
My mom and I went to Brian’s house to help him set up his Christmas tree and (as always) he was 3D printing something. He makes a lot of really cool things and these impressed me: they are HUGE Lego people! (Side note: I know that Lego should be capitalized and then “Legos” is incorrect; the plural of LEGO is LEGO and is capitalized, but I can’t accept saying LEGO BRICKS (which is what LEGO marks). says is the correct term and capitalization. I grew up saying Legos and I don’t mind continuing with that).
These are some of the things I also had on the mantelpiece. I love everything Super Mario Bros. related and these mushrooms he made are adorable:
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| The little Lego is there for size reference. |
I didn’t realize this until now, but yesterday I was looking for that little Lego character for a long time! While I was at Brian’s house, I picked up all of our old Legos that were in Brian’s basement and brought them home with me. Becky and the kids had sorted most of them by color and I want to put them back into kits to build again. All the instruction books are still there; I just need to go through and put all the parts in each kit.
One of them I put together yesterday was a fairly large Star Wars kit and for the life of me, I couldn’t find the particular type of Lego that went with it. And now, zooming in on Brian’s large Legos, I can see that the small one he has there for size reference is the one that goes with the kit, haha.
Lately I’ve been really into getting organized. This usually happens in late winter and early spring when clutter has built up. I have a LOT of craft supplies and have been trying to condense them into fewer containers to make it easier to store. Check out these sewing things in my living room! I took it all out to organize/condense it.
And this brings me to some shocking news Noah broke… he’s moving out. He and his girlfriend are getting an apartment together and plan to move in on Friday. Jerry and I were stunned because he had NOT mentioned this; He said he was worried about telling us. He’ll only be about 15 or 20 minutes away, so at least he won’t be moving across the country or something!
I really wish he would wait, but he’s 19 and really wants to be alone. He’s super responsible, so I’m not worried about that aspect, but I feel like it would be much smarter to stay here until he finishes school. You can save money (we don’t charge you rent or anything) and in a couple of years you could have enough for a down payment on a house.
However, I understand that he wants to go out on his own, because he didn’t go down the dorm/college route. I moved into a dorm when I was 18 and loved being alone (well, with roommates). Anyway, I accepted it and I’m glad you did all the research to make sure you could afford it. She made a list of all her living expenses, including going to the grocery store to figure out the price of all the food she likes to buy!
I’m only mentioning all of this here because when Noah moves out, I’ll be able to put my craft stuff in his room. In the spring, I think I’ll build some shelves and a long table for my sewing stuff; It will be very nice to not have to drag everything around and then save it every time you use it. But I told Noah that he can come back and get his room back whenever he wants. He feels a little bad that I’m already thinking about converting his bedroom, hahaha.
If you don’t solve the NY Times Connections puzzles, then this will not make sense to you. But one day I got really irritated when I realized I had made a mistake and I wasted a lot of time working on it. My puzzle included “GARTH” as a word and I spent way too much time trying to figure out the last two categories. I was thinking out loud and Jerry said, “Did you say GARTH was one of your words?” I said yes and then he showed me his puzzle: instead of GARTH, Hobbes appeared.
When I finally discovered the category and tried it (with Garth), he told me I was wrong. And instead of GARTH’s square being blue in my results (like HOBBES was for Jerry), mine was black! That had never happened to me before. Anyway, it was strange.
Jeanie sent me this photo and asked if she could have me make these horse heads for a girls’ weekend. It’s an annual thing and they do a theme every year. Next year’s theme is the Kentucky Derby and she thought they would be a fun accessory. I finished sewing the heads and now I’m just working on the hair, which is taking forever. But it was a good project!
I’ve mentioned before that Duck is obsessed with spaghetti, even to the point of running to the kitchen when he sees me take out the colander to drain the pasta. And if I don’t watch him carefully, he’ll jump on the counter to try to get noodles out of the sink strainer. One day I made spicy peanut noodle bowls and Duck WOULD NOT stop trying to grab Jerry’s while he ate.
This was my delicious (vegan) Thanksgiving dinner. We went to my parents’ house, but I would prepare Jerry’s and my food at home and then take it there to eat with everyone else. (What’s on top that looks like some kind of bun is actually just the end of the seitan roast I made. I *love* the ends because of all the seasoning on the outside.) I thought about making a vegan version of sweet potato casserole, but it has SO much sugar and fat that I opted for a simple (mashed) sweet potato casserole. See? I’m really making better decisions! 😉
We took Joey with us to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving. He loves going there because my mom pays a lot of attention to him. His face in this photo is so funny!
I didn’t start Spanish lessons on Duolingo until May or June, but I received this “year in review” in my email and I was so surprised at how much time I spent on Spanish lessons! The total was 2188 minutes, which is 36 and a half hours (I do at least one lesson a day). I’m actually really impressed with the Duolingo app; I use the free version and have learned *a lot* a lot.
I saw a “Couples Challenge” that someone had shared on Pinterest and thought it would be really fun for my family to do for Christmas. The original couples challenge said to pick any store, but that could get really expensive, so I specified that we shop at the dollar store. Jerry, Noah, Eli and I are going to do this for each other and I think shopping at the dollar store will make it even more fun; we will have to be creative. And have a sense of humor, of course! Basically, we are going to purchase each of the eight items against each other. It will be interesting to see what everyone chooses!
My nephew Hunter and my niece Shelby, aren’t they so cute? And her hair is so blonde. It’s funny how both of my nephews and nieces have blonder hair. I love Shelby’s smile.
And this is Shelby’s school photo – it couldn’t be cuter!
Well, I’m going to work a little more on organizing the Legos. Hopefully everything will be quick now that I have all the colors sorted into different containers. I’ll be interested to see how many kits I can put back together; There are about 15 different instruction books.
