Valentine's Day Card making

Each year the kids like to make their own Valentine's Day cards. Since both of the kids are at new schools this year, we decided to make the same cards we made last year because they were so much fun!

Last week, the kids and I took all of their old crayons, took off the paper, broke them up, and put them in heart molds. We melted them in the oven for about 15 minutes at 250 then took them out and let them cool. We ended up with cool looking multi-coloured heart crayons!

Then I went and got some red and blue posterboard and wrote "Have a Happy Valentine's Day... for "crayon" out loud" on the cards. For Little Miss's cards, Ryan drilled a whole in the top of the heart crayons and we made them into necklaces and then used double sided foam dots to attach them to the cards. For Little Man we just attached the crayons to the cards.

The kids will hand them out at their Valentine's Day parties on Friday (Update: We had a snow day on Friday because we got 12" of snow on Thursday so the Valentine's Day parties are delayed until the week of the 15th).

What a great Valentine card idea - I love it that we are not handing out sugar filled candy and the kids had a blast making them :)

Ryan's Grandmother

Last Wednesday, February 3, 2010, Ryan's grandmother, Louise Clack, lost her battle with cancer. While we are all sad that she is no longer here we take comfort in knowing that she is no longer in pain and is up in heaven with her husband of 62 years.

The funeral was this past Saturday. Ryan's brother, Denver and his wife Laurie flew in for the funeral on Friday afternoon. We drove to Abilene Saturday morning for the viewing which was followed by the graveside funeral. The pastor who did the service was wonderful ~ he really captured Grandma Clack's life in his sermon reading her favourite Bible verse - Psalm 23.

Psalm 23

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he restores my soul.

He guides me in paths of righteousness

for his name's sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil, for you are with me;

your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and love with follow me all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever."

He ended the service by talking through Ecclesiastes 3 which talks about a time for everything.

Ecclesiastes 3

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace..."

Again, it was a wonderful service that really celebrated her life and accomplishments and her dedication to the church. While it wasn't the best circumstance, it was also nice to get to see all of the extended family especially the cousins and all of their kids.

After the service we talked with some of Ryan's cousins about getting together at another time for a family reunion where we could get all of the kids together for an afternoon.

After we left, we went over to the nursing home so that Ryan could visit his grandfather (his Dad's father) before we left.

Then we drove home to Dallas, picked up the kids from my parent's house, and spent that evening and the next day with Denver and Laurie and Ryan's parents.

Rock Climbing at REI

Today we (Ryan's whole side of the family) all went to REI to shop. As we got there the kids saw the huge rock climbing wall at the front of the store. It was "open" and there we people waiting in line to climb it.

Little Miss was fascinated by it and so I asked her if she'd like to climb it. She told me that she'd think about it while we shopped. As we were coming down the stairs she decided that she'd like to try it. Once Little Man saw that she wanted to climb it, he of course decided that he'd like to try climbing it as well.

Little Miss buckled in and was all set. They told her how to indicate that she was strapped in (say "belay" and wait for a "belay" response from the spotter) and how to indicate that she was ready to climb ("climb"). Then she was on the wall. She did pretty well at first. Once she realized that a crowd had gathered to watch her, she got a little overwhelmed and a bit embarrassed (she's not a "center of attention" kind of kid) and wanted to stop. She probably could have gone a bit further but really wasn't comfortable. So the spotter told her to hold onto her rope with both hands and she repelled down the wall. She was excited that she'd gotten halfway up the wall and had fun repelling down.

Next it was Little Man's turn. He strapped in, said "belay", and "climb" and got busy with climbing. He also did great. He got up to about the middle of the climbing wall and by accident realized that if he wasn't holding on the wall that the spotter would "catch" him on the rope and thought that was super awesome. He's definitely a "center of attention" kid. He let go of the wall, held on to the rope, and started swinging. Once he saw that the people watching thought that was cute all climbing went out the window. He started swinging from the rope, then would grab onto the wall again and then let go and push off to swing. He's such a ham! We finally got him to grab the wall and repel down. Once he hit the floor he did a spread eagle on the ground because that's just the kind of kid he is :) It was really funny!

U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing

Today the kids and I along with one of Little Miss's friends and her mom went to the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

I have been wanting to take a "field trip" to the BEP for some time but I wanted to take both of the kids. So since Little Miss is in school full-time I had to wait until there was a non-federal holiday to be able to go.

What a great outing!

On the way there I made a "worksheet" for the kids (I'm such a teacher!) that had four large circles and a large rectangle on it. We then gave each kid a quarter, dime, nickel, penny, and a dollar bill. Each child was supposed to draw each coin onto the circle and the dollar bill into the rectangle.

Here's what we ended up with :) I think if they'd had more time (they did these in the car on the way to the BEP) that they might have turned out pretty good!

You are not allowed to take any electronic equipment into the building so we left all of our stuff in the car, went through security, and then boarded the bus that takes you into the main building. We were the Red Tour group. Since our tour didn't start right away we went around the downstairs and learned about security features of the new notes, how to recover money that has been damaged, and how notes were made originally. We also saw the many different versions of notes through the years.

Then we set off on the tour. We got to see millions of dollars being printed, sorted, cut, stacked, and inspected. I believe that they said that they make around $267 million dollars every day and this year they will be making $151 billion for the Federal Reserve. After the tour we went and watched the educational video. It was really interesting. We learned that the engraved plates that are used to imprint the bills are hand engraved. An engraver must complete a 10 year engraver apprenticeship in order to actually engrave the plates and they do it all by hand ~ it was amazing to see.

Finally we toured the upstairs. The two most interesting displays for me were the note magnifier and the damaged note section. The note magnifier let us zoom in super close (that's the scientific term) to each bill and see the amazing security features added to each note including miniscule writing on different parts of each note. The damaged note section told how there are people at the Federal Reserve that are pretty much "forensic money" detectives. They can take severely damaged money and figure out the denominations of the bills. There was a story of a man that had been saving money his whole life by putting it behind his furnace in the basement. When he died his wife took the money only to find that it had "melted" together into solid bricks of money. She sent it to the Reserve and they examined the money and were able to determine that the value of the money that she had sent in was somewhere near $325,000 and they sent her a check for that amount.

Obviously I had a great time today. It was a little over the kids heads but they had fun just the same!

Here are the only pictures that we were able to take at the Bureau today :)

New Year's Eve 2009... Ringing in the New Year!

We spent New Year's Eve 2009 at my parents house playing games and watching the ball drop. Little Man actually stayed up (not by our choice) to watch the ball drop for the first time.



We got out the party hats and noisemakers and even set off some party poppers.

Happy New Year!

My Year in Status Updates (Facebook) 2009

There is a Facebook application that picks status updates from the last year and puts them into a collage. Pretty Cool! Here is the one created for my year in status updates.

Gingerbread Houses 2009

GINGERBREAD HOUSES 2009

We decided to try out Gingerbread House decorating this year. I bought two kits from Joann's because I heard that they were the best. Ryan made the houses the night before Christmas but today was the first day that I thought we might actually have time to decorate them :) The icing was a lot trickier than I expected. It was a learning process for us all but we made do and ended up with some pretty fabulous gingerbread houses!