I Could Just Throw Up

My plan was to come here today and post pictures of the past 24 hours of fun. Yesterday, we had our annual Spring Fling and the kids wore their raccoon t-shirts. I took over 400 pictures of the class to include in my end of year slide show and the teacher's scrapbook. Really, really, really good pictures. I spent about 10 hours yesterday finishing the lacrosse coaches' gifts and gifts for the kids on the team. I made each coach a large collage frame with pictures of all of the kids and team shots throughout the season. For each child, I made a cd with all of the pictures that I had taken of that child throughout the season. Each cd had a picture along with the child's name and number as the cover. I took pictures of all of the gifts so that I could post them here. Before I left for the game today, I took my card out of my camera and put it in my computer. I later grabbed it and stuck it back in my camera. When I got to the field, I erased the card so that I could take pictures during the game (because I got the card out of my computer which means I had transferred them, right? See where I am going with this?) I got on the computer to update and the pictures are not on my computer. OMG, I erased all of my pictures from yesterday! &***#$@#*

So, here is a picture of one of the wrapped coach's gifts. The back of the tag says, "Thanks Coach" and all of the kids signed each tag.
Presenting the coaches with their gifts. You can appreciate the size of each frame from this picture.

Everyone seeing the frames for the first time...you can get a general idea of what the frames looked like.
Shots from the game today. Kellen is the little guy in red. Ouch!
Getting ready to hit the biggest player on the other team...what the heck do they feed these kids?
Going in for contact.
Bouncing off the tank.
Kellen promptly landed on the ground after this picture. (We didn't manage to capture that)

I feel your pain buddy, I feel your pain!

I'm In T-shirt Hell

Several months ago, I found this project at Skip To My Lou and thought it was so fun to do that I volunteered to do the end of the year t-shirt for Kellen and Ammy's class. Their mascot is a raccoon so I thought I was going to do 24 raccoon stencils per shirt (one for each kid in the class) and the kids would each paint their shirts and then sign everyone else's shirt in the class. I quickly changed my mind the day before when I started to make the stencils and realized that I would have to make 576 stencils in less than 24 hours.

On to Plan B. I decided to make 24 large raccoon stencils and then have the kids paint their handprints on each shirt as raccoon tracks. Brilliant if I do say so myself!

That is until we started working and it took us FOREVER to do the fronts of the shirts.

Then is was on to Plan C. We decided to just do handprints on the front of the shirts. We couldn't leave the backs blank so I printed each child's name on iron on transfers and put them on the backs of the shirts.
Then we had the kids sign their names on the backs of each shirt.The finished product! We have our Spring Fling tomorrow and the entire class will wear their shirts.

Another One Bites The Dust

Positive. 5 for 5.
She still has it.

NEXT?

And yes, the doctor thought I was nuts for taking pictures of my kids getting strep tests!

Allie's First Show

Allie had her first art show outside of school on Saturday. We attended a reception to open the show at Ukazoo Books in Towson. The show will be hanging for the remainder of the month so if you have the opportunity to stop by, you will enjoy some amazing artwork. Ukazoo also has an unbelievable collection of new and used books available for purchase. Allie and her still life in charcoal.Allie's art teacher is awesome and I have loved the art work that Allie has done this year.

A shoe observation from earlier in the year.
Lilo and Stitch American Gothic style.Ravens Pop Art after Andy WarholI can't wait to get these framed and hung in my house.

The Dog Ate Tyler's Retainer

For real.
I can't wait to hear Tyler when he calls Uncle Jeff to tell him that he needs a new retainer. Good thing he likes babysitting.

Welcome to My Dining Room

Today's Show Us Where You Live room is the dining room. Here's mine. We use it for entertaining and any time that the extended family gets together.

This room sat empty for awhile when we moved in. It was known as the ball room and it was a great place for showing slide shows during team soccer parties. We found the furniture at Crate and Barrel. I love it, but it took me awhile to convince Tony that it was perfect for this room. I like furniture that is semi-distressed--with 5 kids, the furniture is going to be distressed in the end anyway so I figure I may as well go that route from the get-go. This room was painted green until we did the kitchen renovation. The builder had to move the doorway from the kitchen so we needed to repaint. I love the red and it looks nice with all of the other colors we have in the kitchen and the formal living room.

This is the view from the formal entrance way into the dining room.

As you go into the dining room I have this mirror on the left side of the wall. I found it at Kohl's for $10. As an ex-teacher, I was drawn to it because of the letters and numbers.

On the other side of the wall leading into the dining room is this tree painting that my friend Kelli Nemer painted.

This is the view of my dining room from my kitchen. The painting is one of my favorites. When we were in St. Augustine two years ago, we walked by the painting in the window of a gallery. It caught my eye and I kept going back to look at it. We didn't buy it while we were there. I kept looking at it online and finally decided to buy it. I am not really into art (other than my kids' artwork) and I have to really love something to buy it. We were going to put it over our fireplace in the formal living room, but when it got here, we discovered that it was too big. Oops. Thankfully, it worked on the wall in the dining room.

This is a close up of the painting. When the twins were little, I told my husband that he could play as much golf as he wanted as long as each time that he went he took one of the twins with him. This painting reminds me of that time.

This is the view from my french doors that are along the back of my house. You will notice that there is kids' artwork on my table waiting to be framed. I can't stand the chandelier. it came with the house and is way too high. It's on the list of things that need to go, but we haven't gotten to that yet.

This is the view from the formal living room. I love my china cabinet.

My china pattern is Lenox Autumn. It's beautiful, but I only have 5 place settings. I believe that I have used it once.

This is my Christmas china and I HATE IT! Every Christmas, we host a dinner for the people who work directly with Tony and we needed something decent that we could get quickly and cheaply. Gotta love Amazon.com! I am just not into gold.

This Kate Spade Donner Road china is the pattern that I would love to have for Christmas. It's way too expensive and I would have to kill someone if they broke a plate...therefore, I will be stuck with my red and gold china.

Thanks for stopping by. Go here to check out other dining rooms.

Duct Tape Shoes

Look out Manolo Blahnik, here comes Ammy!

When You Play, You Have To Pay

Four of my five children are sick with strep throat. The twins had it yesterday and Tristan and Allie have it today. Oh and the dog tested positive for lymes disease. Yeah. You should see the prescription bottles all over my kitchen!

Lest you think we have no fun when kids are home sick, check out the photos below. Ammy keeps me running to Michaels for all of the things she wants to make/build. This is her latest creation... a guitar. And she put together this lovely hippy outfit. (When I was looking at these pictures, I realized that she stole her brother's white t-shirt and drew peace signs all over it! If nothing else, she's resourceful!)

She changed shortly after these pictures and came back as a gangsta...I didn't get any pictures of the outfit that she put together for that.

On another note, I've been spray painting everything in sight. The kids need to go back to school or who knows, what will be painted next. I am in search of black and white cushions so if anyone has an idea where I can find them, please let me know.

I'm Back

I didn't participate this week because the topic was guest bedrooms and I don't happen to have any of those! Go here, to see other people's rooms. This Friday, come back to view my dining room.

This past weekend, I went to the beach for a girls' weekend. It was great fun!

Now, it's back to black eyes

and bubbles.

77

Yesterday, Tristan played in the MIAA Individual Championships and placed 3rd overall with a score of 77. Tony went and captured some of the action.

Tee shot on 14.

Getting out of the sand.

In the fairway

Putting

Tristan and his teammates placed 1st, 3rd and 5th. 1st-3rd received medals.
Last week their team won the MIAA Team Championships for the third year in a row. (Tyler plays on this team too.) The top 3 golfers from each team went on to the Individual Championships. Way to go Eagles!

A Day At The Farm

We went to Philadelphia to celebrate Mother's Day and spent the afternoon out at the farm. As you can see, the cow rain boots were a hit! He's been wearing them ever since he opened the present!

We had a good 'ole fashion baseball game...

Jamison up at bat

Tyler with a swing and a short hit
Tristan diving for the ball

Tony was the all-time pitcher

Riley swinging for the fence

Brody waiting for his pitch

Tristan rounding the bases

Kellen after his slide into second

Chris waiting for someone to hit him the ball

Ammy and Allie playing volleyball with Uncle Denny

Gram playing ladder ball

Jamison

Grandmom waiting her turn to play

Riley

Asleep on the way home after a fun day playing. Isn't it great to have a big brother to fall asleep on in the car?