Hooker By Day...

Yes, I'm a hooker. Scandalous I know. I also love WIPs and chains. I'm holding both right now actually. =)

I used to sew a lot, but currently I crochet. Let's face it, a skein of yarn and a hook are more mobile than a sewing machine. I try to keep a project bag with me, whenever I leave the house, for downtimes.

I'm currently working on an Orient Beach Tunic. I made a goof with the yarn and picked up four Shawl in A Cake in Restful Rainbow instead of Shawl In A Ball. What's the difference? I don't know because I haven't looked. I do know they're both blends and they look similar. Check out this fade.

Typically cakes abruptly change from one color to the next, but this one does a subtle blend to each color.

While I'm going all crochet on you I'll add the hooks currently on my favorite list are these Boye Ergonomic hooks. I now question why I didn't buy bigger hooks a decade or two ago. I always bought the cheap aluminum hooks because they were the cheapest of course, but for a couple dollars more they beef up those handles. Why do those hook makers feel when I'm crocheting delicate thread it's perfectly acceptable to shorten the hook that's already the size of pencil lead? I don't get it. I was crocheting snowflake ornaments last Christmas. The hook was tiny so I baked it with Sculpey polymer clay wrapped around the handle. Just like that I had a manageable size hook the I had extended an inch so it fit my hand.

Alright, all this typing means I'm not hooking.

Jennifer

WIP - work in progress
Chain - crochet stitch
Hooker - someone who crochet (uses hook)

* No affil

Emma Lou

Dental work on dogs is never fun, but when you combined it with removing back dew claws it's really bad.

Emma came home from the vet yesterday with a cone around her neck. She's tried to get it off without any luck.

We're working on cone acceptance today. I saw we... She was being a brat this morning doing her ear piercing bark. She seems to be pain free so if the cone is her only issue we're good.

Jennifer

Dusting Off

Well looky here Pure Joy still exists. It's covered in a nice layer of dust, but I might pull out some Pledge if I can remember how this works. =)

It took more effort than I felt necessary to get blogger to allow me to log on. Of course this all stems from me logging into Kaitlyn Joy's email account then my blog and the two were suddenly linked. =( Apparently it's an unforgivable action for Google.

Moving on...

We have reached the point in the summer where you start to question if God notices us down here in central Texas baking. It's 104° right now. We recently spent two weeks in Minnesota where people complained of the dreadful 85° heat. I'll just insert a head shake right here.

Kaitlyn Joy had a great time on both Clearwater and Gull Lake.

Neal enjoyed seeing both sides of his family. The girl in The middle is Neal's cousin.

I took some of the downtime and crocheted...

...surrounded by people. 

I was alone until they suddenly found me and started joining my quiet space.

We may have done a bit of this too.

Foam Glow 5k

Today we ran the Foam Glow 5k. I didn't get any pictures while we were covered in foam because it was insane. Initially it was cool to see all the pink and green/yellow foam flying in the air over the crowd. The kids thought the foam was awesome. Kaitlyn Joy wanted to roll around in the bubbles. Meanwhile we adults kept rubbing our eyes. Think about it, foam is made from soap. Soap and eyes don't mix. Do you remember the pain from the last time you got shampoo in your eyes? Yeah... not cool. At one point I grabbed Kaitlyn Joy and blindly lead her out of the crowd and away from the foam machines. Although we enjoyed running the race with our friends, it's the first and last time I'll be doing a foam run. I don't mind running sticky, having soapy shoes, nor having my skin turn pink from the soap dye, but when you're in a crowd having foam blown on you it's shockingly suffocating. When you inhale foam and even for a moment feel like your drowning, it's quite frightening. By the time the race began we were pink and all my make-up had been washed off by the foam. We were stormed on after stepping out of the foam which was perfect timing to get all the soap out of our eyes. The rain stopped before the race began. 

Believe it or not, Kaitlyn Joy and the two boys are the same age. Kj is tall for her age and little bit with the red glasses on is short for his age. 

Here are us moms. For the next race I'm requesting a smaller shirt so after I cut it up, it won't be so baggy.

This is after getting out of the pink foam the first time.

Let's face it, evening races across town makes for a long night. We stopped at Taco Bell for our post race Freeze, but goodness we were tired.

Notice the marks on her right cheek. The story she told me was that during recess the kids were pushing each other down the slide. She didn't expect the boy to push her so hard. She almost flipped off the slide, but instead flipped over and hit her face. She burned her face on the slide and busted her cheek on her braces.

I'm pink! I've showered, washed my hair, scrubbed Kj (it's to late for her to function) and washed her hair, yet I'm still pink.

This may last a couple days.

5th Grade Promotion Gift

Promotion Sunday is on the horizon so we whipped up a little gift for our 5th graders. Traditionally we don't give our graduating kids anything. I'm not sure why we've never done anything beyond praying over them, but this year we decided to remedy that.

Tomorrow is the last Sunday we get to have our nineteen 5th graders in children's church. I have to admit, I'm being a bit sappy while thinking about them never walking through our doors again while heading to their class. I know some will stay on to help both during large group time and in our small group classrooms. 

As you can see, we gave them a plaque with their name, it's meaning, and a verse to go along with each one. This was harder than I expected. As parents start trying to be more cleaver about the spelling and uniqueness of their child's name, it's harder to find their meanings. One girl was thrilled when she saw the meaning of her name. She said her mom made the name up so she never knew what it meant. In my hours of searching, I discovered her name was a variation of another name.

We put a letter from us, the children's church directors (I'm the assistant director), in each bag.

19 bags for our 5th graders.

Summer Swim

Kaitlyn Joy joined a summer swim league this year. Despite taking three rounds of swim lessons when she was 4-6 years old, Kaitlyn Joy began the summer doing what looked like controlled drowning. It was seriously sad. She definitely improved a lot an even managed to win a couple ribbons. They have a wonky rule that each team will only receive three ribbons for each race, 1st-6th.  There were times when she came in 4th, but didn't get a ribbon because 1st-3rd were her teammates. Oh well... Next year she plans on bringing home more ribbons. She has joined a club swim team that practices three times a week all year long.

 

Here she is doing her best stroke which is the backstroke.

I have no doubt she'll master the breaststroke soon because they have her do it for most of the club practices.

 

The best part of swimming this summer was competing with three of her friends.

Finger Nails

I don't get how I can go from everything being peachy to holding my fingers at odd angles because my nails are to long for me to type normally. I struggle to push in the cruise control button on the Tahoe because my finger nails were to long to get in the hole. I was able to use my thumb if I turned it just right. They're shorter now so life is right again.

Speech Meet

Kaitlyn Joy will once again being going to the District Speech Meet. She's quite excited.

She'll be reciting The Fox and The Crow.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was pretty laid back. We skipped the Black Friday Thursday shopping other than buying a couple things off Target.com before the doors opened. Neal and I did go to a couple places on Friday, but we weren't out early hunting for door busters. We're honestly not in need or a real want so we gave up our shopping quickly. It was amazing to see the difference a day makes in how people tackle the stores. I feel bad for the poor employees that have to organize everything all the Black Friday mess left by the shoppers.

Kaitlyn Joy's Likes 2014

Christmas is around the corner and some of you have already asked what she likes. I've been procrastinating, sorry. I'm going to break the list into two groups with the last being the shortest. Group #1 are the things she enjoys, loves, plays with or reads most often. Group #2 will be things she says she says she likes, but just to be honest with you I don't believe they'll hold her interest for long. I've purchased enough of group #2 over the years to shy away from them this year.  Just a warning this will be picture heavy.

Group #1

• My child is a science freak. She finds animal facts, the solar system, and science experiments all fascinating.

 We were at Target recently and found these fun science experiments. Of course Kaitlyn Joy was immediately drawn to them.

• My child loves to read. This summer she read 2400 minutes timed plus additional minutes on her own. These are some of the series she loves.

 She has this Thea Stilton book plus And The Chocolate Sabotage. They are the girly Geronimo Stilton books.

 Judy Moody, Amelia Bedelia, and Nancy Clancy books have been great readers. She doesn't own any of the books, but we've borrowed some from the library.

Her prize for reading I believe eight books and giving the names of people she would recommend them to and why, Barnes and Noble gave her The Never Girls book #1.

Other books I don't have pictures of that she's been interested in, but hasn't read are:

I Survived... (series) They're books about historical events like the shark attacks of 1916, hurricane Katrina and the Titanic.

Who Was? and What Is? books. She recently got Who Was Abraham Lincoln and Who Was Louis Braille, but hasn't had a chance to read them yet.

She loves The Magic Tree House book series, but we don't collect those because there are over 50 in the series. She's currently on #38, but has already read #39 (oops). Once upon a time we talked about buying these books and we both agreed it's better to just borrow them from the library. #38 is about Leonardo da Vinci.

Our no read book series at this time is Junie B. Jones. They're written like a first grader talks. Some think this is fine, but if you read a lot you know you tend to think and sometimes talk like the current book you're reading. I want to improve her vocabulary, not pull it down.

• Legos! It should come as no surprise that she loves Legos given Neal and I both loved them as kids. She still plays with the chunky Legos that are for 1-5 year olds. Finally the Lego company wised up to the fact that girls enjoy Legos too and they want them to have adventures. They currently have a jungle rescue line that incorporate two things Kaitlyn Joy loves: Legos and animals. Win-win! They also have Superheros, the Lego Movie and other fun things like horse stables and camping sets.

• My child loves pajamas. I'm not sure what her fascination is, but if they have pajama bottoms or feet in them she's all over it. She'll ask in the middle of summer if she can wear her footy pajamas to bed. Sure, why not? It was only 102 today.

These Pj's have the bonus of being My Little Pony. She's definitely a My Little Pony fan. She likes basically anything they're on. By the way, she wears a size 8 so we buy her 10's.

• Like most girls in the US she likes most anything Frozen. Unless it's Olaf or Sven she doesn't care for Frozen dolls of any sort, but she loves all the other merchandise like shirts, cups, necklaces, ect. This school year, after a lot of hunting and finally placing an order with Toys R Us, she has a Frozen lunchbox. She wanted a Frozen backpack, but settled for adding patches of Elsa and Anna to her backpack. Of course while sewing the princesses on I had to also add Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony.

 

 

• To say my child likes to play XBox 360 is an understatement.

She has been wanting these games. She has most Lego games, but not these two.

We've actually pre-ordered the XBox 360 Disney Infinity 2.0 with Merida (from Brave) and Stitch (from Lilo & Stitch) with a bonus character of Aladdin. Our plan was to give it to her for Christmas. Well wouldn't you know my child would decide she no longer wanted the Girl of the Year from American Girl now that she's about $2 away from getting the doll and her cat. Noooo, she wants to buy a Disney Infinity 2.0. So there goes the Christmas present. I'll just have her pay for it once it comes in.

With the Disney Infinity... thing (can you tell I know what I'm talking about) you buy characters and place them on the game board and magically they appear on the game screen. This little guy, whom I know nothing about (neither does Kaitlyn Joy), is actually sitting on the board. You can buy all different kinds of Disney characters like the two main characters in Candy Crush and Frozen.

Group #2

If you remember this is the short group of things she says she wants, but I don't believe will last long. It's actually only two things and they're related. I was quite surprised how much the bigger one is. Not. Going. To. Happen.

 This leg hiking dog is $100 or more. Ouch!

 Zoomer's puppy Zuppy is a more reasonable $35.

Blogger isn't enjoying all my picture flooding seeing how they keep making me slowly work each photo down from the top so this concludes Kaitlyn Joy's Likes 2014. I believe I've shared them all anyway. =)

One last random note, her favorite... superhero is Batman, My Little Pony is Rainbow Dash, and color is light blue.