Engleberts in Missouri [miz-er-ree]

In 1999, at a large family get-together for Thanksgiving, my younger brother said to me “When am I going to have a wife and kids of my own?”

Apparently October 20th, 2008.

Meet McKenna Jolea, 5 lbs 15 oz, 21 inches long.

Last weekend, while one child was burning her life to the ground driving her future into a ditch deciding to drop out of college for a while, another daughter and I were blithely crafting away.

I had run across these totally adorable I Spy bags on  Alpha Mom and I had a burning need to make one for my grandson for Halloween. Violet and I headed for the crafting mecca in our town Hobby Lobby to pick up supplies.

Basically, these are bean bags with a vinyl window. They use a teeny tiny amount of fabric - the 1/2 yard I bought was waay too much. They also require bean bag filler and vinyl. I decided to buy a yard of vinyl which comes on a bolt 60″ wide because I needed a 3×3″ square of the stuff. You could use rice instead of the filler but I like the little poly beads. I like these poly beads so much that I bought 3 bags and only used about 3/4 of one bag. I am a craft supply abuser.

Why is there a broom in my picture? Because that’s the way my husband rolls.

These bags also require a lot of little trinkets. Surprisingly, there just aren’t that many halloweeny type trinkets out there. I bought some novelty buttons and cut off the shanks. I settled for about 20 items plus the letters of Alex’s name.

I decided to make one for my niece Cecelia too because I thought “she’s at the age to enjoy something like this”. Little did I know that there is no age that isn’t attracted to the I Spy bag. Steve, April and Violet all liked playing with them - alot - I wasn’t sure I’d ever get them back.

I added a photo of the trinkets hidden inside, since my grandson and niece aren’t readers yet, as well as a printed list that the moms could use to tell them what to find. I think they turned out pretty well and I want to make a more generic one with about 50 items in it.

While we were at the Hobby Lobby picking up crafting supplies, Violet fell in love with this cow material.

Little did I know that her love of this cow fleece would burn fiercer (fiercer? is that a word?) than a fiery sun. Her desire to possess this cow fleece was just about life threatening - she swore she’d do anything- anything Mom! in order to convince me to purchase it - so I did.

She spent the afternoon putting together her cow blanket and then spent the rest of the day snuggled up in her cow blanket.

She loved making her cow blanket so much that she’s decided to make a business out of it. Her initial business plan included giving several blankets to her friends at school to entice their parents into buying blankets of their own.

Each blanket is 6 feet long with two lengths of fleece. That’s 4 yards of fabric at about $9 a yard. Or about $36 just in material. How will she pay for all this fleece? A small business loan from the bank of Dad and Mom, of course. Um…no.

Ok then, how about if we buy the material for 1 blanket and then when she sells it she can use the money to buy material for the next blanket. Eventually she will sell enough blankets to make a tidy profit and pay back our initial investment. Um…Umm….

****WARNING - SALES PITCH AHEAD - READ AT YOUR OWN RISK****
Who would she sell these blankets too? Why you of course! Her loving family! Violet is sure that you will love her blankets. They are really warm and cuddly. And what a deal - Violet will make you the blanket of your choice for the cost of materials plus $5. Just think, you could be cuddled up on your couch just like this:

How could I not promote these blankets when she swears she will use the money for college and not for useless trinkets, toys and junk? Exactly.

and I only managed to post on one (one!) of them.

I’d like to list for you all of the ways that my time was spent, thus justifying my non-posting. I’d like to - but I can’t. If I were 20ish I might suspect that I had spent the entire month of September in an alcoholic stupor, blacking out the specifics of my days. But, I’m not 20ish. If I were much, much older, I could blame it on Altzheimer’s or something.

All the days of my life, at least in September, have been sucked into some kind of vortex or black hole or something. Here’s what I can remember about September. You might want to visit the necessary and get some snacks and a drink - this is a long one…

We made a flying trip to Florida

Over the Labor day weekend, we flew down to Florida to see my parents. Somehow I managed to post a couple of pictures from our afternoon at the beach but that was about it. We only got to stay for a for 3 days but it was really good to see my parents. I had been pretty worried about my dad’s health and was reassured by how well he seems to be doing. He was getting ready to have another surgery the following Thursday and seeing him put a lot of my fears to rest. His surgery went great and he is doing well.

Steve got the gift of a lifetime

Steve’s gotten some pretty cool gifts for his birthday. I mean, when you’ve been getting gifts for 44 (eek!) years it would be pretty hard for them all to suck. But this year was definitely the topper….

Two of my children have gone Greek

Jon joined Epsilon Mu Sigma - a Greek honor society. In an surprising twist of events, he was elected as Treasurer of the chapter. He is the only Freshman officer, all of the others are Seniors.

April successfully navigated RUSH week and received a bid to her 1st chioice. She’s an Alpha Sig Pearl and enjoying every minute of it. This weekend we went shopping for a white dress and shoes for her Phoenix ceremonies and her initiation. Have you ever tried to find a white dress in October? Not easy.

We did finally find one and it was reasonably priced. I thought we were going to have to get the $300 one from David’s Bridal. They are pretty much the only place that has white dresses year round. This is the third time I’ve been to David’s Bridal in the last few weeks. Why am I hanging out at David’s Bridal so much? We-ell…

Amber and Ilya set a date

Mark your calendars - June 20th is the official date for Amber’s wedding.

She’s been home a couple of times this month to do wedding type stuff. We went to a Wedding Extravaganza early in the month and got some great ideas. Then we sealed the deal on the location for the wedding. There was another couple that wanted the same place for the same day but we were victorious!

We also scored a wedding dress. Amber tried on a lot of dresses - she had some definite ideas about what she wanted to wear. Nothing too frou-frou, shorter train, off-whitish with a sweetheart neckline and possibly some lace - very simple - NO to a lot of beading, NO to a lot of crystals. In the end she fell in love with a dress that was none of the things she originally thought she wanted. It is a gorgeous dress and perfect for her.

She tried on a lot of dresses before deciding. Here are a few pics from our search. See if you can figure out which one she picked.

Soccer Soccer Soccer

Soccer season started and I’m assistant coaching again.

That means that we spend a couple nights a week at soccer games. Then, our Sunday afternoons are spent at the soccer field for practice. After running around the field for an hour and a half with a bunch of 10 year old, my Mondays are spent hobbling around popping Aleve’s like tic-tacs.

I’ve been trying to get some game pics but I’m too busy yelling encouragement from the sidelines like you know I like to do. Violet hasn’t screamed “GRAVY” at me from the field yet so I’m guessing I haven’t gone too overboard yet. I think she might be cutting me a little slack since I’m one of her coaches.

So far her team is doing pretty well. They are 3-2, losing one close game and one blow out game (0-7).

Other Violet news

Violet was selected as YMCA Camper of the Summer for her age group and got her picture in the paper.

She tried out for All City Singers again this year. Several of her friends auditioned too. Only 4 girls from Violet’s school were picked. Luckily, both Violet and her BFF Keisha were selected.

The Missouri Assessment Test scores are in and Violet’s performance earned her Academic All Star status again this year. Her class was ranked 9th in Mathematics and 10th in Communication for the entire state of Missouri.

My grandson turned 2

and is more adorable than ever.

Steph baked him a Rocket Cake (from scratch!) which he is still talking about almost 2 weeks later. I don’t know where she got that apron but holy 50’s flashback!

You can see all his cuteness on Steph’s Flickr site.

April had a birthday too

and since it fell on a Sunday, we had her birthday dinner at our house with most of the kids here. It felt like we were eating dinner in Green Bay since everything April requested was one of my mother-in-law’s go-to dishes. Yum!