Meet the parents and stencil

The week in review...

Monday, Maddy's boyfriend, Matthew, arrived late afternoon and we promptly headed out to an ISU basketball game where Meri's high school pep band was playing.  The band director asked Maddy to play along and occassionally she would abandon us all and go play the xylophone with her peeps.  Meri was in the clarinet section, so it was pretty cool to have two of my kids in the band at the same time!

Leon went to use the bathroom ten times, ran all the way around the stadium hallways, in an attempt BY ME to wear him out so he'd sit still for a little bit.  

Didn't work.  But he is a HUGE Cy fan now...

Ryan, Leon, Maddy & Meri entertained Matthew during the days and Robb and I did our best to entertain him, against Maddy's wishes, in the evenings.

Tuesday evening, made homemade pizza and hung out.

Wednesday evening, had Dublin Coddle (in the crock pot since noon) for a quick supper before heading out to an early evening church service to celebrate the new year.  Meri had a friend along for the evening too.  After church, Meri, Linz and I did a little grocery shopping before heading home and picked up 9 bottles of various flavors of sparkling grape juice.  You can't have a party without a ton of that stuff!!!  I only bought 3.  Those two bought the rest and weren't planning on sharing.

We all played games into the night.  Matthew found out that Maddy is VERY competitive and wouldn't let him use a proper noun in scrabble, so he phoned a friend.  His dad at 10:30pm...  He was pretty certain he'd be up.  Apparently you can't use UR as anything BUT a proper noun...  So Maddy got to win that battle.  She still lost to us all.

We also played Bible Mad Gab, which was a hoot!  Maddy and I held up the cards and made everyone else guess, so it wasn't a true game, just stuff to do until midnight.  I had been paged twice the previous night so I was getting a little silly from lack of sleep.  

I don't have the actual card handy, but the verse was from Psalms 33:3, "Play skillfully"  They were yelling out lots of things and Meri screamed out her answer of "Please Kill Me!"  lol!  Robb picked up on that and said that David was in a pretty dark place writing those songs in Psalms and he thinks that's actually what Selah means.  lol!  That had us cracking up most of the rest of the night and I'm pretty sure Matthew thinks we're weird.  

I'm not a pretty laugher...

Robb played the bagpipes at midnight and it was cold.  So we were outside for about 15 seconds.  No neighbors came out and that's ok!  We then ran back inside and cracked open the cranberry sparkling cider and toasted in the new year.  

Thursday, everyone slept in.  Even Leon who was sleeping on our floor since Matthew had his room for the week.  Matthew took off just after a lunch of leftovers and headed back to the cold Minnesota because Iowa is just too darn warm.  Before he left, Maddy took him out to see an Iowan corn field so he can say that he stood in one.

That afternoon, I cracked out my stencils that I'd made for Maddy's bag and got to work.  Leon was getting too "helpful" so I found a recipe online on how to make fingerpaints and he, Ryan and Jen got to work on their own projects, leaving me alone.    I save all the old Playdoh containers and it worked perfectly for little pots of finger paints.  Click HERE to get the recipe.  EASY!

Here's what I painted.   The first attempt had Mr. Darcy in light blue sparkles paint and after showing it to Maddy, we decided it needs to be full black.  

 I'll see if Meri wants the first one and then will make her a bag out of that.

Here is the inside/reversible option in case she's feeling more Emma'ishly Jane Austin.

I'll plan to sew them all up this weekend.  Was going to tomorrow morning but just got word that my dad broke his leg falling from a train.  He works on trains...  So I might be doing a road trip instead.

Not sure...  

Have a great weekend and a wonderful New Year!