Riley and Avery

The guinea pigs went to Riley and Avery's school today to be the new classroom pets. Riley is, of course, heartbroken. This leads me to a vent...

I really wish pet "experts" would stop advocating getting more than one animal. I kept hearing "guinea pigs are heard animals, and having two is the minimum, blah, blah, blah" and I fell for it. We could have handled one guinea pig, but not two. Same thing with the rabbits. I wonder if the original owners would have been able to keep the rabbits if there had been only one, or if they would be easier to adopt out if there had been one, rather than an inseparable pair. Or if we would have been able to keep them if there were only one. I think that suggesting pairs of pets is a really bad idea, and it sucks...I know many guinea pigs and rabbits that are perfectly spoiled and happy single pets.

Riley has really gotten attached to Rosie over the past few weeks, playing with her every day, and so this all really sucks and I'm kinda mad about it. But they'll have an excellent home with dozens of kids giving them attention.

Our art bins have always been a disaster. No matter how organized they start out, there's always lidless markers mixed with crayons and colored pencils and Avery saying "Mom! I need a red! Find one for me?" Ugh. So I had the brilliant idea of getting the girls each their own art bins. And voila! They are neat and clean and organized and the markers are always put back, without me even asking. Nice! The little things...

I am finishing the dollhouse that I started, like, a year ago. I stopped working on it when my wallpaper job went awry and I didn't feel like messing with it. Now, I'm back at it! Ace Hardware opened up a new store right near us, so I hopped over there to look at whether I could paint the interior walls rather than papering them. Turns out, they have these interior paint samples, 2 ounces worth, in hundreds of colors, for $3 each. Score! I picked out one color for each room and went to town. When I first started this dollhouse, you would basically have to buy a pint of any given color, but these little tester pods are awesome!

And since it was been so long since I worked on it, the Gorilla glue dried up, the shingle glue dried up, the white paint dried up, and the shingle stain dried up. Yay. The only thing I haven't replaced yet is the shingle stain since I have no idea where I bought it originally and the stores I've gone to don't have it. I really hope I can find it since I stained the roof way back when and now need to stain the porch roof. Dude, I even put in baseboards! (well, almost done with the baseboards, I ran out and have to get more) Rudi thinks I am absolutely insane!

Which reminds me, I went to Hobby Lobby to get shingle glue and after wandering around in the dollhouse aisle for some time, wandered over to the glue aisle. A man walks up to me and asks me if I need any help finding anything. I ask for suggestions on glue for shingles, so that they don't warp when glued. We get into a looooooong conversation about dollhouses, he asks me which one I am making, if I'm going to put electricity in it (yeah, right!), and so on. He suggests ways of dyeing the shingles, and a ton of other things. He tells me that building dollhouses is his hobby and when they're finished he donates them to a charity to auction off. Then he says "These dollhouse kits hardly ever go on sale, so the best thing to do is wait until they have a 40% off coupon." And I'm thinking, they? Why didn't he say we? Then I notice that he has no name tag or anything to suggest that we works there and I come to the realization that this is just some random guy wandering around Hobby Lobby! I guess it can be seen as either creepy or kinda nice. This isn't the first time that a random customer helped me out in that store. When I was buying a model airplane for Rudi a while ago, a customer helped me find everything I needed. Ah, Hobby Lobby, such a strange, cool place, full of crafting freaks like me!

One problem with the dollhouse is that Avery was not really interested in the dollhouse that much when I first started it. I mean, she would play with it a little, and she was interested in what I was doing, but she wasn't covetous of it :) Now she wants her own dollhouse (luckily, she wants a smaller one!), which got me thinking, I am hoping that this house will last for generations, so shouldn't each daughter have one to pass down? We really don't have any heirlooms in our family, so it would be nice to create one, right?

And that concludes my boring post about something that no one cares about :)

We love love love going to the Denver March Powwow. One thing I'll miss about living out "west" is the powwows! I'm sure they'll have some in Maine (they have them in Maryland, for heaven's sake!) but they simply can't be as awesome as the ones out here. Oh, well, we can't have it all, can we?

The girls, of course, had a blast! It's really rare that all four of us can have so much fun at the same place. Mmmmm, fry bread...

I did, however, miss the women's fancy shawl dance, my favorite, but we can win them all. The girls really wanted to see kids dancing, so they really got a thrill out of the community dance at the end. Some of those kids were totally decked out and could really dance at the age of four or five. Nice.






Those are the market skirts that I just made the girls. Avery threw a fit because the shirt didn't have a picture on it and I couldn't find my fusible interfacing to sew one on real quick. That'll be my next project.

I started making these skirts for the girls:


Except I didn't use the gathered pocket with buttons (and buttonholes! Yikes!) I shirred the tops so they gather naturally. My first time shirring and it was so easy! I scored some delicious fabric at Mill Outlet, fabric that I had been drooling over online and could never find in-store. Until now. It's mine mwah-ha-ha!

I ordered this pattern:

and the no-fray nylon chiffon for it. It was $1.50/yard! I bought a lot so I could make many different color combinations. It's not as hard as it looks. The girls have their hearts set on a rainbow version. Which is cheesy, but fine by me since any shirt would match it, right? The only annoying thing about it is that I will have to beef up my thread collection so the stitching won't show. Either that or use clear thread, but that stuff is a serious pain in the butt to work with!

I took 7 TRASH BAGS full of kids clothes to ARC yesterday. I packed a 16" cube box of 2T and size 5 clothes to send to Abby and Vera, and the smaller stuff I packed to send to Sarah, which came to 2 16" cube boxes. Poor Tyler will be naked while his sister Kayla is dressed to the nines LOL! The rest went to ARC. Seven bags, people! I found my spring stuff, and some summer stuff for Riley and Avery from last year. I bought Riley 5s and 6s last summer, so half of her clothes should still fit. Fingers crossed! I also found some of Riley's old 3T clothes that Avery is thrilled about. I haven't even gone through my stuff yet, or Rudi's, and I'm sure we'll have more to donate. Avery really needs very little in order to be happy. She is VERY picky about her clothes, but she doesn't need a large selection. Mostly she'll only wear the skirts that I make for her and some dresses.

I also went through my boxes of fabric. I saved two pieces, TWO! Out of two boxes of fabric, I saved two cuts. Granted, my "active" stash isn't in the garage, but rather in the "sewing corner" in my bedroom, but still, I got rid of a lot. There is a charity group that meets at our local quilt shop to make quilts for homeless or hospitalized children, so I'm donating to them. Of course, I kept the colors that Mom requested for her quilt. Wow, I have a lot to take to the post office!

So, I have a hypothetical-but-really-not-hypothetical question. If you had a pack rat husband who has been dragging the same boxes from house to house, never opening them inbetween and you know for a FACT that he would never notice, would you throw them out? I think we have about two boxes of his shoes that he has never even peered in for 7 years. He has clothes in his closet that are still in the boxes we moved them in. So, what do you think? Get rid of them? Is that a betrayal of trust, or a do-what-you-gotta-do kind of thing?

We are trying to rent a smaller truck than we used last time, but we have more furniture (like the bunkbeds) and too much crap in general. There are some things that need to be replaced and will not survive another move, like the stand for the stereo. We can just buy another and leave it in the box and moving it in a box will take up a fraction of the space. Same with our dishes. They are terrible! We'll probably toss them and buy new right before the move and keep them in the box. That kind of stuff. But seriously, my goal is to get rid of half of our belongings. We just have too much junk.

So, Shauna's dog got out yesterday. We all watched as he ran straight out of the complex and to the right. We had no idea where he went. There are tons of side streets and other housing developments to the right of ours. So, I took Lola out and said "Let's find Gemini!" and she put her nose to the ground, went straight out of the complex and to the right. She turned into the condo development next to ours and kept going. As we were back in there, we see the neighbor's husband coming out, saying that he couldn't find Gemini in there. I said I'd keep looking, it's a huge place. After walking nearly all the way through the development, Lola spotted Gemini and he came running (Gemini and Lola are buddies). They stiffed each other, jumped on each other, and then Gemini got hip to the whole thing and took off again. He would not come to me, Lola kept running after him (which meant I had to run LOL). He left the condo development through the back and onto the sidewalk. Finally, he went into the gated apartment community that surrounds us and Lola was able to corner him and I scooped him up. Dude, he had us on the run all over the place! I was sooooo out of breath and sweating, and I have bronchitis, so that wasn't fun. I carried Gemini until I thought I'd collapse, and then I got the brilliant idea to thread Lola's leash through his collar and walk them both. Duh.

The apartment complex we found ourselves in was HUGE! I never knew it was so big, and with a layout like Washington D.C. Roads all over the place with no rhyme or reason. I thought I'd never get out. I had to ask a woman how to get out. Finally, I get onto the street sidewalk, and start walking towards home from the left. I see Shauna walking in the other direction, the direction that Gemini originally went in. I shouted as loud as I could, and she finally heard me and turned around and saw that I had Gemini. Yay, Lola!

So, I got the dental savings plan that Mom suggested, after calling several dentists to see if it was too good to be true or not LOL! Riley has an appointment on Tuesday for an evaluation and cleaning, then we'll schedule her fillings, of which I know she needs several. And sealants too. I called some dentists for myself too. Prior to learning about this savings plan, I had called dentists and was told anywhere between $1070 and $1500 for EACH crown (of which I need three!). With the savings plan each crown will be $580!! Holy cow! For $108 per year for the whole family, I will save at least $1500 just on one visit for me. Sweet, man!

Okay, that's it.

...my backside. Riley had skating today. The mother of the "problem child" in school was there. I just really get sick of her justifying and even finding ways to praise her daughter's behavior. I mean, seriously? For some reason we got on the topic of choices. I'm fairly certain it wasn't my choice (ha, ha, get the pun?).

Seriously, nothing is going on around here. Nothing, nothing, nothing...

The weather is getting better, so hopefully this weekend will be nice. We're planning on going to the Denver Zoo tomorrow. The weekend after this is the Denver March Powwow that Riley and Rudi, in particular, are looking forward to.

Oh, I've been calling dentists to see about getting some of my missing teeth fixed. Interesting stuff, I know! So, I have two implants with a missing tooth between them, and I asked a dentist's office, on a whim, if there was such a thing as a bridge abutted on implants. Turns out, there is! I may be able to get all three teeth replaced! It will cost a bit more right now, but I won't have to get an implant for that other missing tooth. Sweet...and these offices offer cash discounts and multiple crown discounts, so it shouldn't be too much more than I would have paid for two crowns. Nice. It would be so awesome to finally have those gaps filled! Not as if that's the only work I need done, but it's a start!

Riley's front tooth is not long for this world. It has been loose for several months, literally. She was still 5 when it first came loose. Now it's just sticking out there, all nasty and whatnot. Loose teeth give me the heebie-jeebies. Last year, Riley was playing with Matthew and as he was talking, his tooth was just flapping in the wind and fell out right there. I nearly puked. Her other front tooth is also loose, although not nearly as much. It's probably waiting for the other tooth to fall out. I'm taking the teeth-losing thing pretty hard though. My girl is growing up!

We've started feeding Lola a raw diet. So far so good. Right now she is getting one raw chicken drumstick and one raw egg a day. She seems satisfied. Chicken is the easiest to digest, so we'll stick with that for a while. Later we'll start adding other meats and some organ meat. The first time I put a drumstick in her bowl, she hunched up like she was going to get in trouble, or like I was framing her, and ran away with it. Yuck! So, I took the pad out of her crate so it was just the plastic tray in the bottom and tossed the drumstick in there. That way, I just wipe up the tray when she's done and put the pad back in. Easy-peasy! Instead of staring at her kibble and then walking away without eating, she is enjoying meals now. Hopefully she'll lose a little weight. Growing hair on her chest would be a bonus too. Some people suggest feeding rice and vegetable puree, but so many people say that's not necessary, so I don't know which to do. I'll probably just monitor Lola and see if she seems to be missing something in her diet.

Yeah, it's low-quality, taken on my blackberry, but still...

Riley had her first skating lesson at school last Tuesday. Oh man, she had a blast!! I didn't realize that it was going to be actual USFS lessons. I thought they'd be more informal. One of the women teaching it had a kid at Riley's school until last year. She just had a baby two weeks before the lessons. And she's picking up each kid in turn and spinning with them! What? Her baby is 4lb 3 oz at two weeks, which is probably like not birthing at all LOL. She said she was skating the day before he was born and was teaching again two days later. Craziness.

It's amazing how much a kid can learn in a lesson, with the entire rink to just them. I had taken Riley skating a couple days before for the first time since December and it was like starting over again. In the class, they first learned how to fall and how to get up. Apparently being afraid of falling makes you fall. So she wasn't afraid of falling anymore and was fine. Being the "pro" Riley tried to help Caoimhe too much, holding her hand and so forth and more often than not they both ended up in a pile on the ice.

Riley wants to continue skating lessons after these are over. But they're only like ten 30-minute lessons for $100. That seems crazy to me. There is another rink that is quite far for us that offers seven classes for $100 but they include six free public skating passes, which are probably worth about $40. But, the thing is, it's World Arena, the home of tons of skating champions (recently, Rachel Flatt). I hear it's really competitive at that rink, and I'm not all for that. At all. In fact, I think competition is stupid in all it's forms. Hmmmmmm.

They definitely need to take swimming lessons, seeing as how Portland is over 60% water, so we're going to do that (after I call the pool and make sure that Avery's class is taught by a girl teacher. Seriously.) There's something strange about taking swimming lessons in the winter, so we'll pick them up for the springs session. I wanted Riley to take rock climbing classes, but I have a beef with the climbing gym. They only offer the class for ages 6-7 at 11am on a weekday. What's up with that? Sure, there are a lot of homeschooled kids in the Springs, but the vast majority of K and 1st grade students aren't homeschooled. Plus, they already have a homeschool group there, so I don't get it at all.

I thought that Avery would enjoy ballet class, seeing how much she enjoys dancing, but she said that she is too shy around other children and doesn't want to take classes. I convinced her to observe a class before signing up, so I'll get on scheduling that. Someday. While I'm at it, I'll have Riley observe a capoeira class to see if she likes it. I don't think she can really comprehend what it is. I think she would be good at it and enjoy it, so I'll schedule that too. Someday. I just love the history of capoeira and how they incorporate music, language, dance, and martial arts. I think they offer family capoeira too, and I could use some exercise. Perhaps I'll look into that.

I surprise myself! I just called the dance place and arranged to go there tomorrow to pick up information and schedule an observation and/or a trial class. Go, me!

Alright, the pictures of the Denver Aquarium. Avery was grumpy from the moment she woke up that morning and wanted nothing other than to see the tigers (yes, our aquarium has tigers!) and was a royal turd until we finally got to the tigers. Geez. Riley wanted more than anything to feed the stingrays.

Once we got to the sting rays, Avery decided that she wanted to feed them too. She didn't mind touching the dead fish (although she wasn't leaping for joy over it either), she picked them up by the tail, but would not touch the water. No way. Kinda weird. Dead fish vs. water. I think I'd choose water, but whatever. She dropped the fish in and when they floated to the bottom, the sting rays swam over them and sucked them up. That is, when the boys standing next to us didn't scoop Avery's fish out of the water so that they could feed the rays. I'm like "buy your own damn fish and stop touching hers!" Some people's children...We got to the rays right after lunch time, and as the rays are right next to the foot court, I think they were all fed out with all the people gathering there. The last time we went they were practically leaping out of the pool for food.

I think this is the one where the sting ray bites the fish's head off and freaks Riley out:

Videos of Riley feeding the sting rays at the Denver Aquarium. I'll post the pictres in a separate post!