I am completely uninteresting.  Has it really been two months since I updated the blog?  Yikes! 

Okay... so Gunner had a thing.  A lump in his armpit and then a bigger, hard lump in his arm.  Turned out to be an abcess and a necrotic lymph node.  Still no idea how or why, or what the cause was, but it seems to be healing well now.  He had to have minor 'surgery' done ~ they cut them open a little and drained them.  He's doing much better now, just a little sore still.  He's still really in to reading and video games, especially reading about video games.  He also really likes Legos.

Nate is stressing over school work and heartily dislikes the cirriculum we're working on.  I keep trying to find ways to engage him in it, but ultimately it always comes back to he just doesn't learn well this way and it stresses him out a lot.  I'm calling a new psychiatrist or psychologist or something to get him in for another eval and hopefully some therapy.  His OT is still working with him on fine motor skills {working with Gunner, too}.  He's a strapping big 11 year old now and developing a touch of teenybopper attitude.  He is heavily interested in science and electronics.

Ali just turned 4 and is so big and grown!  She's adorable and a lot of a diva.  She is kind of in a "too big to be little and too little to be big" stage right now which is frustrating her, but overall she's a funny and pretty cheery kid.  She loves to draw, paint and color.  She's also very into baby dolls ~ caring for them, diapering, etc.

Ana is still a sweet, sensitive 6 year old.  She learned how to ride a bike a few weeks ago, no training wheels at all!  Her favorite things to do are artwork, especially painting.  She's pretty good at it.  She's learning to read now too, and is interested in simple books she can read herself, with some help.

Benji is darling.  Everyone thinks he's just the most awesome thing, and they're right!  He's four months old now.  He's starting to make some word sounds ~ Ana swears he said HI! to her the other day and both Nate and I heard him say what sounded like "mama", but he hasn't repeated either since.  He likes to mimic us.  If we stick our tongue out, he sticks his out.  Nate likes to get near Benji and growl, so now Benji growls every time he sees Nate.  He can roll from back to front but is still working on figuring out how to roll front to back.  He's done it a couple of times, but mostly he just gets on to his belly and then gets frustrated.  He chews on everything he can work in to his mouth.  We need to buy a high chair soon ~ I can't hold him while eating any more because he tries to grab everything.  He almost managed to get yogurt in to his mouth today ~ I caught his hand inches away.  He is definitely sensitive to, if not outright allergic to, dairy so we need to be extra careful with introducing solids to him and it will be a couple of months at least before he's ready.

One of the kids' favorite holidays was just the other day:  Halloween.  I spent probably too many hours sewing up their costumes, but I think they turned out pretty well.  Nate pulled together his own costume, but the rest went with a theme:

Thanksgiving is coming up in three weeks and I am SO excited to be hosting dinner here at our house this year! 

I've also been knitting a lot, and I dearly love dying yarns to knit up.  It's SO much fun!  A few things I've made:

And just a random cute picture:

I was THAT mom.

You know the one.  The mom who has her obviously tired kids out too late at the grocery store.  The one whose baby slept peacefully all through the store, but woke up as soon as the groceries were going on the conveyor belt at the check stand and immediately decided he was DONE and screamed all through paying and bagging.  And then was happily, peacefully asleep again as soon as she started walking away. 

Ugh.  I put off grocery shopping until the cupboards were bare, so we had to go yesterday.  Of course, Mick didn't get home til nearly 7.  We got the kids out the door and fed at a restaurant.  By the time we got to the WinCo it was about 9pm.  Ana and Ali wanted to go in to the store instead of staying out in the car with Mick and the boys.  So I tucked Ben in the sling, grabbed a cart and the girls and braved the store, knowing they would be tired within the hour.  Their bedtime is 10pm.  Huge mistake.

It went great at first.  Ben fell asleep after a few minutes of fussing.  Ana and Ali got to learn all about choosing produce and they helped me pick out some peaches, some apples, some corn.  I told them about the wax coating on apples, how to tell if a peach is ripe, how to pick good corn ears.  Then Ali had to potty.  Okay, fine.  That took twenty minutes.  Finally we got back to grocery shopping and got through the rest of the produce.  And then Ali said she was tired.  Ana wanted to keep going.  So we kept going.  We got the rest of our groceries as fast as is possible with a pokey six year old helping out.  Cart piled high, we headed for the check out.  Got about half the groceries loaded on to the conveyer belt when Benji woke up.  And screamed.  I tried bouncing him, tried the pacifier, tried everything, but he was frantic.  The person behind us took pity on me and helped bag up the groceries so we could get out faster.  As soon as I started moving again Ben calmed down and fell back asleep.  I so badly wanted to just abandon the groceries to go calm him, but we really needed them so I pushed through to just get it done and get out.

So screaming baby, tired kid, over tired kid and a frazzled mom out too late.  Next time?  We'll just go on his day off!  Times like this I really wish we had a second vehicle so he could take it to work and leave the van with me.  Five kids in the store during the day would be easier than three at night.

I've gotten exactly one thing made today.  None yesterday.  I'm off to a blazing start on my goal, aren't I?  Ugh.  I need more hours in the day!

30 Days Fail

Okay, I didn't make it 30 days.  I didn't blog every day and I had to spend a little money in the last few days.  But I did well for the most part, I think.  It gave me a good idea of what we have to spend in a month and areas where we can trim a little in the budget.

I'm starting a new 30 days on Tuesday:  30 days of business sewing and knitting every day!

Some new pictures:

This yarn, which I hand dyed:

Is knitting up beautifully, into a pair of large longies:

The only issue is that I do not have enough for the legs, so I'm going to have to dye more and hope I can repeat the same mistakes to get the same colors to match the rest.

Some pictures from the park:

Benji in Mama-Made clothing items:

Me and Ben:

Ali looks so grown up next to Benji:

Some of my favorite pictures right now ~ Benjamin sucks his thumb.  He will not take a pacifier, refuses almost every time we offer, but now he has developed the muscle tone and aim to get his thumb in his mouth.  He sucks his thumb a lot at night especially.  I never thought I would think thumb sucking was cute, but this makes my heart melt.  It's utterly adorable! 

Fnally, our garden is doing SO well!  One of the pumpkins is bigger than Benjamin and still has a lot of time left in the growing season.  My poor, beaten tomato plant now has seven small tomatoes growing.  My basil is producing leaves like crazy; every time I pluck some more grow in.  We've eaten a couple of zucchinis and squash from the garden, with more than half a dozen more of each growing.  Even the watermelon and corn are doing well ~ the corn looks like it might start sprouting ears soon and Nate's watermelon plant now has a watermelon which is bigger than a raisin {it's about the size of an average strawberry now, actually}.  The canteloupe aren't producing, but they are flowering and vining.  I think it's too late in the season to expect anything from them, and they are very choked out by too many plants and too much grass and weeds nearby, but they were just an experiment anyway.  Next year if we're still in this house we'll clear a much larger space for the garden ~ there is a ton of grass and the weeds from the neighbor's yard choking out the plants righ tnow.  But even with that the garden is growing far better than we ever dared to hope.  We learned a ton about gardening this year; when we do buy a house, our permanent garden is going to be awesome.

My very productive basil:

The pride of my garden ~ tiny tomatoes!

The whole wild tangle:

Hard to see, but this is the huge pumpkin.  It's across the fence in the neighbor's yard and bigger than Benjamin already!

The mammoth sunflowers; a couple of them are over 9 feet tall.  Hard to believe they began life as little seeds dropped in an 8 oz plastic cup.

Forgot to post again yesterday.  I need sleep!

Spending 8/21: $20.47 @ JoAnn's ~ bought myself 2 skeins of heather grey Caron's Simply Soft to make hand/arm warmers and legwarmers for ME, plus a small treat for each kid as 'payment' for them allowing pictures to be taken.

$6 @ Safeway for whole wheat tortillas and a splurge of oatmeal raisin cookies

More dyed yarn:

I slacked

Forgot to post for a day.  That kind of sunk my 30 days of blogging...

Anyway, we went to the class thingy tonight and it was ... well, nothing new, but a good opportunity to listen and get everything straight.  We made an appointment for an assessment for Sept. 1st.  It will probably be around a year or so before we're able to buy a house.  Which is fine, and a year shorter than I was expecting, so it makes me happy.  Mick is disappointed; he wants out of this house.  He never did like it, didn't want to move here and strongly dislikes the neighbors.  But he'll survive another year here.  It is silly to move to another rental.  If we could find a comparable sized house for less rent and could afford the moving costs I would be willing to think about moving though.  $1100 every month in rent feels like such a waste.

However, we did find a better deal on car insurance!  Mick found a new carrier which dropped our insurance rate down to $20 less than we were paying previously, so yay for that!  Now we won't be paying nearly $300 every month for insurance.

Today's Spending:

$162 ~ car insurance

$16 ~ McDonald's {ugh. The kids were suddenly starving when we got to the class thing and were not able to sit still for the 1 1/2 hours, so Mick took them down the block to McDonald's for dinner and to play at the PlayPlace}.

$1.86 ~ I needed to retun something to WalMart.  I was planning to exchange it, but they didn't have the color I wanted so I decided to get it elsewhere.  While I was there I found a MP3 player clearanced for $12, down from the original price of $38.  We were planning to buy one for Nate for his birthday, so score!  The $1.86 was how much was left for me to pay over what I received back for the returned item.  It's perfect for Nate and now I have his biggest birthday present all ready to go!  Before his birthday I'll take it out of the package and load it up with his favorite songs.  I need to learn to crochet for his other present {a set of Potter Puppet Pals puppets}.

And Pictures!

Nana made the hat and soaker.  So cute!  I think he'll wear the bow to the back though...

The fit of a DDNB on a 12 pound 7 week old {still works great}:

Just a cute smile {he is such a little morning person!  He wakes up happy and grinning every morning.  I've taken to sleeping with the camera on the head board to capture his early morning Happy}:

Ali will be four in two months.  She is getting so tall!

A squash and zucchini from our garden.  The first big things we ate from there!  More are growing and we have about seven pumpkins growin now.  One is easily eight inches long already!

I take many pictures of this little man.  He is just so sweet and snuggly!

I finished the cabled vest I was knitting!  It fits a little big on Ben {okay, a LOT big... used the wrong size of needles and didn't check my guage first} but that's good because it should fit for a long time.  The pants fit a little small though, so that may be an issue.  Or they can just be short pants and he can wear them with leg warmers.

My yarn stash so far:

One year ago today {on accident I opened a photo file from 8/19/08... look how much they've grown!}: