Here is Holly on the way back from a trip to Urgent Care to have two stitches put in her forehead. While jumping on a mattress at a friend's house, she ran her head into the corner of a bunk bed. The cleaning and stitching was a traumatic experience for her AND for Mom... but a lollipop and the promise of ice cream helped to put this slightly forced smile onto her face.
We used a really cool idea I saw on Pinterest to make these Valentines for Holly to give out. I took a picture of her holding out her fist toward the camera, then added some text and graphics to it using Picnik, an online photo editor that can do techy editing as well as fun editing. (It was my first time using Picnik, and I thought it was cool, but I hear the site is closing down in April. So then I heard of iPiccy, and it's really cool too.) We uploaded the finished photo to Walgreens and printed out 40 or so, then used a razor to make a slice at the top and bottom of her fist. We slid in a Dum-dum, and, voila! So cute!
It turned out so good, Faith wanted to do it, too. Hers turned out just as awesome!
A week after the stitches went in, they came out. The removal was a little painful too, but Holly was brave, and a popsicle and then lunch with Mom made everything better. Then she got to go to school and show off her war wound to her friends.
I planted the first seeds of the year, broccoli. I am using SproutRobot to tell me when to plant each of my crops. It tells when to start seeds indoors, when to expect them to sprout, and when to transplant outside, all based on my zip code. I'm putting a lot of faith in this thing so I hope it works. You can't tell real well from this picture, but I made the seedling pots out of some newspaper and masking tape. Then I stuck them into this handy greenhouse (formerly a zippered bag that a sheet set came in). It worked excellently.
Emily continues to act spoiled and be spoiled.
Check out my cute baby broccoli plants! They sprouted over a week earlier than they were "supposed" to. The most difficult thing was choosing which of the three sprouts in each pot to keep, and which to thin out. It felt like planticide.
The girls went to an awesome birthday party at Pump It Up. Two rooms full of inflatable bouncy play equipment, and to make it even more fun, most of the time the lights were off and only some black lights and disco lights were on. Add glow necklaces and bracelets and some loud pop music, and it was a blast, even for grownups. Here, you can see that Holly came down the inflatable slide so fast that she bounced right off the bottom of it.
An hour of bouncing + getting sugared up with birthday cake + past bedtime = goofy fun.
I hope I don't lose all gardening cred for this, but I could not resist this potato growing pot I found at Walmart. It even came with the three seed potatoes. I saw (again on Pinterest) a DIY potato growing tower made of wire fencing, straw and compost, and I thought it looked really cool, but I am already extending myself a bit far with all these other things I'm trying to grow this year. I have gotten overly ambitious and then failed in a grandiose manner in past years, so I don't want to go TOO far. So I'll grow potatoes this year (hopefully) in this handy pot and then try the hippier way another year.
Dan was digging a trench in which to lay a pipe for my repaired gutter, and behind some weeds he found this fellow. Possibly due to the chill in the air, or possibly due to the lump in his body that suggested he had just eaten something, this snake didn't try to escape from Dan's hand. He did flick his tongue many times in displeasure. At least I assume it was displeasure. Really I have no way at all of knowing what this snake likes and doesn't like. Hopefully he likes his new home in the even weedier alleyway behind my house.
Last but not least: Thea and Faith each won a ribbon and a trophy today at the Pathfinder Pinewood Derby. Thea's racecar came in second for her church's group in the Teen level, and Faith's car came in second in the Junior level. Then, Thea's show car, which was decorated like a banana split, took third place Best In Show for the whole conference. Faith's show car, a forest, took third place Most Unusual for the conference.
