Knee Deep

Wowsa! The fall time has stirred up the Jackson hive and we have been busy bees.

For starters; Here are Noah's latest sayings at soccer:

"I am Awesome! Seriously, I am the best player on this team!" This comes after scoring 13, yes 13, goals in one game. One of his coaches was quite pleased and finds Noah's comments funny. I am not sure how I am feeling about that.

"That tall girl was no match for me" Finally he gets some competition (this girl was g-o-o-d) and blows it off.

Needless to say we have had to have some talks about modesty, bragging, and hurting other's feelings. I kinda feel bad for Noah. He is an almost 6yr old with 3 soccer seasons under his belt, however, all of his team mates are 4yrs or young 5's that are playing for the first time. On the other hand, this situation sets itself up nicely for us to teach him a lot of good moral lessons AND for him to learn more self-control. Today, he expressed both, until the end of the game when he made the comment about the tall girl. Come spring he will be done with soccer and we will try his hand at basketball.

I am knee deep in halloween costume sewing and crafting. The boys chose to be power rangers (Noah orange, Caleb red). So far things have been coming together easily. The main parts of the costume are easy enough; shirts and pants in the colors requested. I made shoe covers that will make their everyday shoes looks like white boots. Today, however, I am trying to make the helmets. Oh my. Let's hope I did not spend two hours paper mache-ing balloons for nothing. Here is the progress so far (see pic). I ran out of the nice store-bought mache pulp from the craft store. So, Caleb's mold is made from newspaper strips dipped in a combo of water and mod podge. Let's hope that works too.

The boys wanted to play in the leaves falling in the yard. I raked them up and it took all of about 3 seconds to blow all the leaves back out in the yard. It was cute. Nice way to spend 5 minutes of this nice fall weather.

Caleb's school had their fall party on Friday. It was cute. The class sang songs, and we saw some of their normal day, and then they were loaded up on sugar (cupcakes, M&M's, gummies) and add in a little carbs (pretzels, cheese crackers) and then released to their mommies to take home.

YAY! So, on Friday Caleb's lunch consisted of those items listed above and half of a banana. The banana was all I could get him to eat when we got home. AND who wants fruit when you just ate a plethora of yummy junk! He got some goody bags and the pic is some of the things he got to bring home! FUNNY GUY!

I have been thinking ahead to Christmas and Teacher Appreciation gifts (plus I really wanted to make these), and picked up the goodies to make these drink coasters.

I have seen this tutorial and wanted to give it a try. Some turned out great. I think the simpler stamps worked best. Others, the stamp didn't sit just right or the ink is lighter in some spots. Oh well, it wouldn't be homemade if it was perfect and identical. I love them anyway and believe their recipients will too.

I also made some little pocket tissue holders. Sorry, no pic. I was able to make 7 of those little easy gifts in little less than 1.5 hours. If I can do it that quickly, an experienced sewer could prob do it in like 45 min.

Upcoming projects that will be finished before the end of November (I like giving myself deadlines - I find I accomp

lish more with this pressure):

Canvas painting of my kids hands - saw this online too and have to do it.

Tote bag that I bought material for a VERY long time ago. (plus I am on fabric buying restriction until my stash diminishes substantially.)

Knit a poncho (which I bought yarn for so long ago {big surprise} and found a finally trendy cute pattern)

Ok I better stop.

The boys ran The Spirit of Survival Super Hero Kids Marathon. I can't bel

ieve how great they did! The way this works is that the kids are given a log sheet and are supposed to complete 25 miles before the race day. It took us about 3.5 weeks to do this. We would walk/run 1-2miles at a time and have a rest day after a stretch of back to back walk/run days. It was slow going at first, but once the boys got it down, by the end we were running most of our 2 miles. The day of the race every kid participating comes together and runs the last 1.2 miles together all in support of cancer research. We got out there and the boys were so excited. They didn't realize how many kids were going to be there.

Noah got so excited, that he took off and ran the entire 1.2 miles. He only stopped at the aid station half way through. It was amazing. At the last .25 miles to go, I left him and sprinted to the finish so I could get a picture of him coming across the finish line. No sooner had I crossed the finish line, turned around and dropped to one knee and focused my camera, I saw him coming. Unbelievable! He told me he just decided to run and try to stay as close to me as possible. Literally my mouth was on the ground! Caleb soon came across to the announcers shouting "Folks that there is possibly the fastest 3yr old we have ever seen!". They both received medals from Superman. After all, this was a Super Hero marathon. The world had just witnessed Super Orange Man and Super Red Man (requested names by my 2 super heroes) complete their first marathon.

We have fall break, trip to Tennessee to a Titan's game, halloween, Noah's Birthday, Noah's fall festival, all within the next two weeks. Here to keeping our lives full and busy! It's a wonderful life!