PURE EXCITEMENT!!!!

I am VERY excited about our latest purchase!! Most of y'all know I have a small embroidery/monogramming business that has kept me busy in my spare time and given me a little extra spending money. Well, since I won't be returning to work next year, I've been looking for a way to earn a little more money. So, we decided to invest in a commercial embroidery machine. :) The Baby Lock BMP8 is like the queen mother of embroidery machines. There is pretty much nothing is can't do. Caps/hats, shirt sleeves, pants legs, ribbons, small bags--ANYTHING! I can't wait to get started making things! I've already got a bunch of patterns ready to go.

Hopefully I'll have a website up and running sometime in the very near future. I'll be doing burp clothes, onesies, flip flops, pillowcases, baby blankets, monogrammed shirts, "I'm the Big/Little Sister/Brother" shirts, Birthday shirts, koozies, and lots of really cute acrylic items. I might also get into doing boutique dresses and other children's clothing...we'll see what the market is for those.

If you need anything monogrammed/embroidered, just let me know! With my new software, I can convert most jpg or other photo files to an embroidery design.

Three Times in One Night...

I've been sitting at this computer for hours now, feeling my butt go numb, but I finally have a chance to check out everyone's blogs, so I'm taking advantage of the kids being asleep and my "24"-addicted husband being downstairs watching his favorite show for hours at a time. (He's trying to catch up on all the "24" episodes. It's much too intense for me.)

Anyway, I've been tagged! So if you haven't done this yet, YOU'RE IT!

Three Joys: My family, The beach, The gospel

Three Fears: Continuing to gain weight at such a rapid speed that I explode, The creepy crawly furry centipedes in the basement, That we'll have to go on welfare since I'm not working next year

Three Goals: Lose weight, Catch up on my scrapbooking (which I haven't done for years), Be better at doing the things I know I should be doing (personal prayers, scripture study, FHE, etc, etc, etc)

Three Current Obsessions/Collections: Embroidery (I'm getting a fancy new machine on Friday!!!), Reading (The summer is the only time I have to read.), Exercising (HA! This is a lie I try to talk myself into every day!)

Three Random Facts: I'm becoming more liberal (maybe open-minded is a better way to put it) and less straight-laced the older I get, I love GA but would like to live overseas or some place exciting for a little while; I want to live in a small town for the rest of my life; My life is full of contradictions that totally confuse my husband. (See random facts #2 & #3)

Maddie

Disclaimer--this post is all about how wonderful we think Maddie is. We realize that no one loves their kids like parents do, but we just want to brag on her. She deserves it!

Maddie had a GREAT Kindergarten year. She had a wonderful teacher who taught her SO much. Maddie has most of her addition facts memorized, is reading on a mid-first grade level and won several awards this year. Here's a run-down of her honors:

Golden Gator--This award is like the typical "student of the month." Students are honored at the monthly awards ceremony. They get a certificate and a medal. Maddie wore hers around the house for a week.

(Sorry the picture is so lousy, the lighting is dark in the gym and I was sitting way far away. I zoomed in as much as I could.)


Georgia Young Author Award--One child from each grade is chosen to compete in a county writing competition. Maddie won for the Kindergarten at Ila Elementary and then she won the county level as well. She was honored at a Board of Education meeting. We'll find out if her piece was chosen from the regional level at the end of the summer. From there it could go on to state. :) Maddie is a great writer! We LOVE reading the stories she brought home from school.
(Maddie with the other Ila students who won and their teachers. Mrs. Pearson is in brown and our principal, Mrs. Jeffers, is to the left of Maddie.)

Fastest Girl--At our school's Field Day, Maddie won the 40-yard dash (or "41 dash" as she called it) for her class. They had all of the winners from each Kindergarten class compete and she beat all the other fast runners. She was very excited and her daddy was VERY proud.


Citizenship Award--At the "Kindergarten Celebration" at the end of the year, Maddie was awarded her class's Citizenship Award. This honor goes to the top boy and girl in each class who have shown exceptionally good behavior over the course of the year. Maddie only "pulled 4 cards" the entire year! (Some kids pull that many in a day.) Thankfully she's one of those kids who are little angels at school--despite being (way) less than perfect at home.

(Maddie and her friend, Caroline, who also won her class's Citizenship award.)

Gymnastics--Maddie didn't win any awards per se, but she really had a great year at the gym. She did SO well at the gym's "Tumble Bee." (They have a performance every year to showcase the gymnasts' talents.) She was the only one in her class who remembered the entire floor routine. Maddie is in a more advanced class and her teacher said that she has really matured and made great strides this year.









Big Sister--Maddie made a great transition from being an only child to a big sister. It wasn't always easy (imagine having to share the attention and affection of your parents after being the sole child for over 5 years!) But Maddie absolutely adores Wesley and he loves her just as much. She is so good at helping--she'll fetch anything we need and usually with only minimal complaining. :)



We are really proud of our Maddie Moo and can't wait to see what else she has in store for us!

The Happenings...

Not as in the new scary movie that looks just as dumb as every other horror movie, but more like the "what's up" at the Clanton home.

First and foremost, WE HAVE AIR!! After enduring record-breaking temperatures with only a window a/c unit, the air people finally came out this past Friday. (Only 3 days after they promised.) Things were starting to get a little heated in our house, and I don't just mean the air temperature. Being in a hot house is miserable and makes for very cranky moms, dads and kiddos. Kudos to all of those people (like my mom and Aaron) who didn't grow up in air-conditioned comfort like I did. Call me what you want, but I was a brat without air.

Second, summer school is over. I actually enjoyed teaching it. Not just because it meant I was in a nice air-conditioned school building while my poor family was suffering in the heat of our house, but because summer school wasn't about grades or paperwork or behavior observations or modificiations or interventions or collecting money or parent conferences. It was about TEACHING. Novel concept--I know. I taught 5 boys for 3 hours a day. These 5 kids failed the reading portion of the CRCT (our state's criterion-referenced test that every kid has to take every year.) These boys SHOULD NOT have failed the test because all five were plenty smart enough to score well, but when you finish a test that has 7 one-page essays/poems/passages and 35 questions in 10 minutes, you're probably not going to pass with flying colors. So, these 5 lucky lads got to spend their first two weeks of summer in school. It was definitely a humbling experience for all of them. If only teaching was like this all the time--I definitely wouln't be "retiring."

Third, we joined the YMCA--again. I HATE going to the Y. Actually I enjoy working out (when I can get motivated enough to go), but the Athens YMCA is old, dirty and smelly. Seriously, the building is over 100 years old and it smells as such. (Especially the youth locker room. OMGosh!!! It's vomit-inducing.) But, the Y has several pools, it's close to our house and it doesn't require us to put a second mortgage on our house like most gyms around here do. So, we plug our noses and go 4-5 times a week. Aaron and the kids mostly swim and I do the elliptycal machine. I'll look like that trainer Jillian from "The Biggest Loser" in no time. HAHAHAHA!

Fourth, Maddie is going to "Camp Nonna" this Thursday. (Let me just say that Maddie and Wesley have awesome gradnparents! We don't see Aaron's mom and dad very often but when we do, they shower our kids with love and affection. And my mom and dad come to Athens/Atlanta all the time, so they're always around. Mom has all of her grandkids so spoiled--the kids look for little presents as soon as Nonna & Poppa walk in the door.) Several years ago, my mom started having the grandkids come spend a week at her house in the summer. They call it "Camp Nonna" and they LOVE LOVE LOVE it. Last year was Hawaiian-themed. I'm not sure what this year will be. Maddie has said, "I'll miss you when I'm gone, but I'll be having so much fun I won't be sad." :)

So those are the big goings-on in our house. Nothing big about it, but we love summer--everything is SO much slower and less-stressful. :)

I'm alive...

So, this is pretty much how my pen & paper journaling goes. I'm all into it for the first little while and then I get caught up in life and forget about it.

Life has been it's crazy, typical self lately. School got out last week but I'm teaching summer school this week and nect to get a little extra money. Well, we THOUGHT it'd be extra. Unfortunately the a/c in our house went out Thursday evening. The guy came to fix it, but he had to order a part that won't be in until Tuesday. TUESDAY!! I'm so wimpy--I wanted to go to a hotel until then. Uh, no dice--we've borrowed a window unit from some friends and we're all stuck in our bedroom. It's like walking into a sauna when we open the bedroom door. It's similar to our yearly trips to the beach since we're all in one room with one bathroom and it's FREEZING in the room and HOT outside. Except that there's no beach, no pool, and we have to change our own sheets. So really, it's just the bad parts of the beach trip. :)