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spinner_mom
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Name: spinner_mom
Gender: Female
Interests: my kiddo's and dh, spinning, knitting, crocheting, reading
Expertise: my family
Occupation: Education/training
Message: message me
Member Since:
3/16/2005
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| Filler.
Yep, nothing much happening here except for packing, and baby kitty stuff, and first week of summer break has been very, very, laid back! I really gotta kick things back into gear, and get a little structure to our days. I know it's summer break and all, but no one but myself has picked up a book alll week!!! Geeeeze! Ok, ok, maybe 13 yo ds picked up his programing book, but that's been about it. I think it's time for me to find another read aloud series of books, or maybe books on tape to play during the day.
So on the kitty cat front we have some pictures!!!! There were really no good birth photos I'd like to share. It was quite gross, and bits of placenta left around here and there, so we have those pics, but I'd rather show the cuteness, and not the 'omg, is it really that messy?'!!! Take my word for it, birth is messy.  Here are the little ones at about a day old though. Awwwwww!
Here they are as they feed. For some reason one day when they were eating I couldn't remember the word nipples to explain them eating to the kiddo's, and I called her nipples milk duds, so everyone cracked up, and now they all call them milk duds. The kittens always eat in this order too. They were born in this order, so I'm wondering if its a thing. The dark grey cat is Stinker (rhymes with mamas name, Sinker, so now the neighbors don't have to wonder if we're calling a cat Stinker, because we really are ), and then the darker orange cat is Salmon, and the lighter orange cat (last born, and the runt of the liter) is called Trout. He has the biggest mouth you see. His mew mew mews are MEOW MEOW MEOW's!!!
Here they are on Mothers Day...
Mama standing pretty for a treat...
Cuteness...
And Stinker.
All of their eyes are open now, and they are belly crawling all over the place. They are poking their heads up out of the box that they're in, and mama cat baps them back down with her paw. I've had to stop the kiddo's from intervening a few times. They're worried about Sinker hurting the kittens, but I keep telling them, no she is trying to keep them safe by keeping them still, and in one place. The kitties need to learn how to be a cat from her, and we need to let her teach them what they need to know! So keeping a balance of letting the mama cat do what she needs to do, and making sure my kiddo's don't overwhelm the whole mess of them has been a little nuts. Another five or six weeks though, and it might turn into all out chaos!!! Blah!
TTYL 
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| It's one of those things that every knitter hates to hear. Cccrrrrrraaack!!!! My knitting bag was next to my desk, and mama kitty was using one of the babies as a pillow, and I felt inclined to help the kitty out, and as I kneeled down next to the kitty box, which is next to my desk, which is where I keep my knitting bag... I seemed to have cracked my ka-needles with my ka-knee! Dread filled me as I opened my bag, and somewhere along the lines I remembered that one of the needle companies replaced the needles no questions asked. First I gotta remember the names of the needles. Most of the needles I've been buying lately are from JoAnns, and they come in a green package. Name name name name.... internetz to the rescue!! Clover!!!! All over the Clover website, and I'm not seeing it. Loooking looooking. Then I look at the side of the needles. These are my looong dpns. I know I ordered them from Paradise Fibers when I was first figuring out that I could do the whole dpn thing. I didn't know what I was doing when I ordered them, and they were my first ever dpns, and 10 inch long ones sounded good. When I got them I was like, 'what am I gonna knit? A sock for a giant!'  So mostly I just put rubber bands on the ends of these and use them as short straight needles, and I LOOOOVE them! So I was pretty sure they were size 8's and looked at the side of them and they say Brittany on the side of them!!! Hummmmmm. Look it up and yep, they are the ones!!!! They have a replacements request page, and you just go and fill it out, and cross your fingers, and pray!!!! And you can bet your bippy that if I get my needles replaced by them, I am ONLY going to be buying my wooden needles from them from now on! They are only a dollar or two more than the Clovers, and this is the first time in what, 15 years of knitting and crocheting that I've ever broken any needle! But when you hear that crack... it's like watching a good friend break their arm, or something!  Thank goodness the dpns come in sets of five, so I am not totally without needles to knit with.
Besides that it's been a pretty busy day! Everyone talks you into, 'it's Mother's Day! Take a break! Reeest!' Well, when ya rest the next day you have to pay the piper. Going to the beach means wet clothes and towels that neeeed to be washed or they mold sitting in a pile like that!!! Going to the beach means everyone gets in and out of the shower when we get home, and that makes for a dirty bathroom, and more extra towels and wash cloths. I am sooo glad that dh took care of all the food and dishes yesterday though! After lunch today the kitchen was a snap to clean up, so I got some extra around the edges things done, like the floors, and cleaning up the Kool-Aide drips in the fridge. So over all it was a good day of getting things done.
Besides that today marks the second week of kitty kraziness! All of their eyes are open, and they are up and mewing a few hours a day, and always looking for mama! Mama is staying out of the box more now too, and just letting them have more time away from her. If they get to fussing too much she darts right back to them. I'm thinking next week or the week after they'll be climbing their way out of the box. And we all had a good giggle as we were driving down our main road the other day, and there's a sign spray painted in HUGE letters 'FREE KITTENS!' looks like we're not the only one in the neighborhood looking after the mama cats. 
TTYL
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| It was the most awesome Mothers Day ever!!! There was much love and Happy Mothers Day-ing from all of my kiddo's, and we ended up at the beach flying kites (the kiddo's thought it was like this, and it was more like this, and now dh wants to go and do this! Talk about a workout!), and playing in the waves, and building sand castles!!! I got to wear my new glasses with the Transition Lenses in them, and they were awesome! If ever there was a great way to get used to new glasses, going to the beach sure takes your mind off the headaches, and sick stomach feeling, because we were having just too much of a great time!
Dh did all the handling of meals today, so I didn't have to worry about anyone getting fed, or doing dishes, or anything! What a blessing!
And now I am settling down with some yarn, and having a nice night of knitting, and we found a new show to watch on Animal Planet last night! My Kitty from Hell or something like that! The guy goes around telling people how to tame their cats down, or stop them from bad habits, and such. Pretty cool show with lots of great advice!
Hope all of you had great Happy Moms Days!!!!
TTYL
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| I know I know, I've gotten slack at blogging again! BUT that is about the only thing I've had time to be slack at! See, before we left for our CO trip I had called our home school evaluator that we've been using for the last like fourteen years, because we're going to be moving in June, and I needed our evals done as soon as possible. But here comes the wrench in the works... she is moving also! So I was like, 'whens a good time for you?' and she was like, 'how about such and such a date' and I was like, 'nope, we'll be on our trip to CO. How about such and such a time?', and shes like, 'nope, we have to be there for our phone to be set up that weekend.' So it was always not good for one of our schedules. Finally she gave me her email and told me to let her know all my good times, and she'd work something out, even if we had to meet at the library or something. Well, I must have gotten something wrong there, because it didn't get through to her in email. So a couple of calls later and we ended up getting our appointment for evals yesterday, right ~on~ our last day of school for the year!!! Iiii Know Riiiight! It's like a new worlds record or somethin for me.
Soooo, all my super record keeping all year pretty much worked out to be the bestest! I had it all finished off and printed up in a day! Just the last four or five weeks needed filling out, because we were on the road for two of it, and then this week and last week I was pretty involved with packing, and kitty cat birthing stuff (kitties and mama are doing great!!! ). The kiddo's all did their parts helping sort out the work, and getting their boxes together, adding in whatever books and things they wanted to show her about. I had packed all my paper clips already that I usually hold everything together with, and 14 yo dd came to the rescue with her little stapler! Thank goodness! 13 yo ds has thee biggest presentation, because he had dh load Scratch programing stuff onto the laptop, so he could show her the programs he's been working on, and according to dh the Scratch is supposed to help him get a jump into Python programing without having to learn all the script writing right up front. But 13 yo ds is really getting the hang at how it's all supposed to go together. While we were there dh made a quick Scratch program that was a number guessing game that asks you to pick a number between 1 and 10, and you punch your answer in on the keyboard, and then it tells you if you guessed the random number the number generator picked. Fun all the things you can do with this thing. <<<Lots of youtube links right there btw.
So anyway, we wowed the evaluator again with all the things we've accomplished this year, and everyone passed to the next grade level! Yaaaayyy! And then we chatted about moving! Her and her dh are in their 70's, and dh and me are in our 40's, and I was telling her I reeeeeallly think this is gonna be my last, or at least next to last move! Moving boxes and furniture is just haaaard on a body, and I can't even imagine doing it again in 10 years, let alone in 20+ years from now! LOL And I think we are the last eval that she will do in her home that we've always gone to. Now she is going to be doing them at the University library. I'm glad we didn't end up doing that in about three or four weeks. Been going to her home since all of my kiddo's were in first grade, and anywhere else would have just been plain weird! I remember going there preggers twice!!! And carrying car seats in there when the older kiddo's were getting evaluated! I'm going to miss her! *sniff*
So, I guess, another chapter of FL life has closed *sigh*, ~and~ we are officially on Summer Break! Whhhheeeeee! Back to packin!!!
TTYL | | |
| One week ago today! Hard to believe!!!
Our first full day in CO and we woke up to snow. We had to unload the trailer. Here is our really super packed trailer! We got all the way packed and there was just the space where those plastic bins are, and dh says, we need a little more to fill it up! So we started grabbing all the balls, and frisbees, and everything outdoorsie off the front porch to really get in everything we could. Better to take a full load then to leave any space, and not have room for things later.
Here are the helpers lining up with the trolleys at the indoor storage. It was cooooooold that day, but doing all that lifting and moving boxes kept us warm.
Sorting and figuring out what needed to go to the house, and what could stay in storage.
Finally, dropping off the trailer, and youngest dd and me arranged the birds and pillows to be out of the way.
Had to make a stop at Lowe's to get some kind of heater for the house. We brought a few small ones, but we weren't prepared to run the furnace at the house just yet, but we needed to have some extra warmth so we could do the work that we wanted to do. As we waited in the parking lot the snow really started to come down!!!
Covering bumpers, and BBQ grills, and carts! Oh my!
Dh came out to tell us they had found a heater that had been packed away already, and it would be about 20-30 minutes while they moved stock to get it back down. See, didn't I tell you these people in CO were super nice! I got this shot of dh's footprints in the snow all the way across the parking lot!
And ya can't keep them in when it's snowing this hard. So I made them all line up outside and stick their tongues out! Creatively removed dh from the pic by slicing it in two. He doesn't like to be physically in my blog.
 
Here they are teasing each other saying, 'you must be oooooold! Your hair is turning white!'
Just before we left I got a shot of this Jeep that had been in the parking lot the whole hour + that we were there. And the snow hadn't stopped yet! Yeah we bought an ice scrapper for our van that day. LOL
Here's the buildup on the drivers side of the van. And she says, 'should I touch it?' Of course by the time her brother came out of the store with her dad, she scooped it all off the mirror and made a snowball out of it.
'Look mom, snow on the hill!' *click*
"Look mom, snow on the truck!' *click*
'Look mom, snow on the rail and trees!' *click**click*
'Look mom, snow on the ~cows~!!!  ' *click*
'Look mom, snow on the sign!' *click*
Here they are settling in! That little green horse has become a thang. I will saw it's head off one day!
There's a pink bean bag chair in that bag. Took her a couple of days to unpack it. Yes, they did school work while on the road. Not as much as I would have liked, but they did some.
And a pretty at the house. Apparently whoever moved out last, did so around Christmas time, and these door windows had old spray on snow on them, and pictures drawn into them. At sunset....
This is what we saw on the wall opposite the door. Beautiful!!!
I think we're gonna love it there!
TTYL
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