Ready to create

After a busy 2 months of taking care of things and kids, I've got the bug to start sewing.  I made a few projects over Christmas, as my niece got a sewing machine and I taught her how to sew while she was in town.  We made pillow cases, pajama pants and owl skirts.  All I have been able to sew since then was an emergency letting out the waist of Noah's church pants Sunday morning, and a super easy school bag for Savanna.  I need a picture of that one, it is pretty cute.

But here is what I have planned to sew.

Curtains for the kitchen (10 years later....)
A dress using this tutorial, an old shirt from DownEast and a yard of cute fabric I just found at Joann.
Another dress--something red
A school bag for Aubrey to match Savanna's
A quilt for Zack's teacher's baby
Pillows for my couches
A cushion for the loooong bench we have in the basement.

I have been busy organizing cupboards and closets and getting rid of stuff this month so that I can have some space to create in.  Tomorrow I will get my sewing table all set up in the exercise room now that Noah's race car set from Christmas has been safely moved to another room and is not in the middle of the floor.  Also up tomorrow: assembling new bookcases to make a home for the 2,000 books that are all lined up across the loooong bench in the basement and stacked up in the back of my bedroom.  I love books. I am addicted to books.  But I have never been able to find bookcases I wanted in our house--and I have been looking for 10 years.  I finally found what I wanted, and now it's time to load the books onto shelves.

Today I took Zachary on some errands after I picked him up from school.  I parked in front of a used book store, which I never would have even noticed if Zack hadn't seen it and insisted that we go in because there was a snowman reading a book painted on their front window.  He was so excited about it.  We found the kids section, and I couldn't help but think that I had more kids books, and a much better collection, than this book store did.  The store was huge, but they sure had a bunch of dumb books.  We left the store empty-handed, and headed home to our own book collection.  As a mom of 7 and a school teacher in a former life, I have definitely amassed a very large collection of children's books.   Zachary found about 10 books in our basement to read with me, and we snuggled up on his beanbag chair and read for the rest of the afternoon.

This is why I have to get a lot done while he is at school--it is too much fun to snuggle up and read with that boy.  What is the most fun to read with Zachary?  The original Joel Chandler Harris "Tales of Uncle Remus."  Maybe not PC for some people, but I have always loved the stories, and so do my kids.  Luckily, my dad does an excellent Uncle Remus voice, so I know how to say all those fancy words that don't look like words when they are printed.  Zachary will often stop and compare something going on to an escapade from Br'er Rabbit or Br'er Fox.  One of the words his kindergarten class came across in a reading story last week was TAR.  Zack was the only kid who knew what tar was.  When he described what it was to the class, his teacher asked him how he knew that.  He said, "from the TAR baby!"  He was shocked that every kid did not know that story.  He talked about it all the way home.  But as much as the kids like it when I read those stories, they tell me that Grandpa tells them better.  I agree with that.  He is the master of storytelling.  That's how he earned his nickname from Zachary of "Story Grandpa."  And "Story Grandpa" is married to "Tickling Grandma."

My new workout buddy

To get things going back in the exercise groove, I bought a few Jillian Michaels workouts on DVD to do on my easy run days.  I have a few strength routines I have done over the past year, but they are kind of monotonous now, and I need someone yelling at me to keep going and give it my all.  Otherwise, I get bored and cut things short.

I started out pretty well with the Yoga Meltdown DVD.  That was fantastic.  I have been doing yoga for the past 2 years, but I liked the twist she put on things, and I felt like a champion when I finished the workout.  I was sweaty and tired, and then next day just a tiny bit sore.  Not sore where it hurt to move, but sore in the good way where you know you pushed yourself hard.

I decided to try 6 Week Six-Pack DVD on Wednesday.  It was a crazy workout, and my heart rate was through the roof for the entire time.  It was great.  Even for such an un-coordinated person it was pretty easy to follow, and I loved Jillian telling me to keep going.

However, I had forgotten about my unique ability to use the wrong muscles to accomplish basic movements.  I have been diagnosed by two physical therapists, my doctor and a trainer as the most unusual person they have ever seen.  I get things done, but my brain tells all the wrong muscles to move, and I make things harder than they should be, or work entirely different muscles than I should.  I even use the wrong muscles to breathe.  No wonder I sucked at every sport as a kid.  It's a wonder I can even walk.

Well, the whole time I was doing the Abs DVD, Jillian would say something about how "Your abs should be burning right now!"  And I would yell, "NO.  I don't feel anything in my abs at all!  What kind of workout is this?"  Still, lots of plank positions and such, so I knew something had to be happening in my abs, and at least my arms should be sore the next day.  But no.

When I woke up yesterday, I realized what kind of workout it was.  I had somehow torn up every muscle in my butt and inner thighs.  I can barely walk.  I have no idea how I did this.  How did an ab workout entirely leave my abs alone, and make my butt and legs so sore that I am walking like a 95-year-old lady?  The answer is simple.  I am Jill.

There is no way I can run tomorrow with how sore my butt and legs are from my "abs" workout, so I am going to try out Jillian's Killer Buns and Thighs DVD tomorrow to see if I might be able to get an abs workout after all.  The way my body works, it might just work.

A business deal

Noah is quite a business man.  When he got in the car after school today he pulled out $2 from his pocket.  The kids never take money to school, so I asked him where he got $2.  He very simply said, "Oh, I sold my snickerdoodle."

I knew that kids sometimes traded things at lunch, and that if the kids have one of my cookies to trade they can usually get anything they want.  But this was the first time (that I am aware of) that one of the kids actually SOLD a cookie to a classmate.

I told Noah that he has to give the kid his money back tomorrow.

But it makes me wonder if opening a bakery some day could be a profitable venture for me.  If a 5th grader would pay $2 for a snickerdoodle, what would an adult with a job pay for one?

Catching up

December disappeared quickly.  And January is about to do the same thing.  Life has been so crazy between home, kids, church and the dental office, that I have not sat down at all to write a post in a month!

So, here's a bit of what has happened this month.

The two boys recovered miraculously from their surgeries.  They couldn't move their arms for a couple of weeks without intense pain, which meant that I had to feed them and help them do lots of other things I didn't ever really think I would help teenage boys do...  But they dealt with the pain quite well.  The surgery is excruciating to recover from, so at first I was waking myself up every 4 hours to make sure they kept the pain under control with their oxycodone.  But after about a week they were down to just a few a day, and then after 2 weeks I took the hard stuff away and left them with Tylenol and Advil.  They did really, really well with their recoveries.  When I told them we were done with the oxycodone, they kept teasing me about giving them arthritis medicine when they are teenagers, but they did great.  One funny thing is that during their recovery time we moved Joel's bed upstairs into Jacob's room to make it easier on them and on me.  Now that they are totally fine, they don't want to move!  Joel's stuff is still all downstairs in his room, but they like sharing a room.  Odd for teenage boys, but I'm not complaining.

Everything was pretty much back to normal by Christmas Eve when we had Mark's family all here for dinner and a party.  I started a tradition last year of feeding the kids and teenagers pizza for dinner, and then banishing them all to the basement while the adults sit down to a nice quiet meal.  This year I made London Broil, which is one of my very favorite meals.  Not quite traditional for Christmas Eve, but I was in charge, so that's what we had.  And every last bit of beef was gone, so it was a hit.

 The cousins did their traditional nativity play.

 Noah and Savanna played some pieces on the piano.

 And we all sat around our big tree and enjoyed the evening together with lots of noise and lots of cousins.

Christmas day in a house full of 9 people is always exciting, but when Christmas is on a Sunday and you need to get to church it makes things even more hectic.  Typically we get Christmas morning started at 7AM, but this year we moved it up to 6:00 to make it possible for us to get to church--especially because Mark was conducting the meeting!

Aubrey got a guitar for Christmas.  Secretly, this was my present to myself....I play it while she is at school.

 Three kids got big bean bag chairs.  Mark and I were a little worried when they arrived in these little boxes, but after prying the cardboard off of the vacuum-packed bags, which was not an easy job, the bags expanded to their full 4-foot size within minutes.

 Jacob got a video camera, and he and Joel are working on a production called "Teens in the Wild."  It's  a documentary about teens in their natural habitat....  In true "Jill" style, the first camera we bought Jacob was broken--something inside was loose and loud.  So we had to replace the camera after Christmas with a functional one.

 Joel was excited to get EPIC Perplexus to challenge his big brain.

Noah got the disco light of his dreams.

 Savanna learned what a Cricut was.  I found a deal on Black Friday I could not pass up.  I had a hunch that this would be the best present we could possibly give Savanna, so we threw her Christmas list in the trash and went with the Cricut.  Turns out I was exactly right.  She told me later that night that even though she didn't get any toys for Christmas, the Cricut was the best thing she could have ever imagined.  She has made lots of things for a lot of people, and pretty much every day comes up with some reason to cut something with the Cricut.

For the record, she did get a toy for Christmas--Fozzy Bear that she cannot sleep without.

Abram joined the Pillow Pet club with his new Wally the Big Green Monster Red Sox mascot.

 Zachary loved The Muppets so much that he has made us call him Walter ever since we saw the movie at Thanksgiving time.  I knew he would love to get this little Walter stuffed animal for Christmas.  He takes it everywhere.

Last, but not least, on Christmas day was the opening of the big mystery family present.  What kind of crazy idea did we have?

A marimba!  When you have a house full of piano playing kids, who also love to play music on anything they can get their hands on, why not add a marimba to the house?  Sure, it's huge, but the sound is really quite pretty.  I have been amazed to see the kids take songs they know from the piano and just walk right up to the marimba and play it on there.  Savanna made things easier by using her Cricut to cut out some vinyl letters for the names of the bars.  Mostly for me...I was getting lost and messing up the songs.

 We had a fun Christmas break, and had a lot of fun when my sister and her family came, and also the cousins from Connecticut came, for the week after Christmas.  We topped off the break by having a quick stomach flu run through every person in our house....Luckily it left as fast as it came and we were all back to full health again within 24 hours of falling ill.

And then school started again, and now the high schoolers are in the middle of finals week!  I have been busy fixing computers and training a new person at the dental office while the kids are at school, along with trying to get my groove back for running.  I sort of slacked off for November and December--I didn't stop altogether, I just didn't make it out as often as I should have.  Now it's time to kick it into gear because my race is 18 weeks away.  I can run about 5 miles easily now, but I've got to work my way back up to be able to run 13.1, and to do it in under 2 hours, so I have my work cut out for me.