Spring Time in the Northwest.

Flowers.

Sunshine in your eyes.

 (Daphne)

Kids playing out side.

(Zelda and Rez)

Easter Eggs

 Bike rides.

Shelf Elf

We cleared off the mantle and Ocean thought it made a great place to sit and read.  Who needs couches?

Harvey had to see what good the mantle was to him.

He stretched out.

Did a little yoga. 

Maybe this will be the next big exercising craze!

Rez discovered it made an ideal place to play his gameboy.

Look how many shelf elves we can fit on the mantle (such cute ones too)!

Ahh, Fall...

the time of year when our yard is blanketed with dead and rotting leaves, needles, apples and hazel nut shells (the squirrels have already taken the nuts).  I was anxious to get them cleaned up.  One, to mulch our garden beds over winter and two because snowballs mixed with dead leaves do not make pretty snowmen.

On a dry day, I rallied the troops and we got to work.

Rez got the leave blower first and there was a lot of blowing going on...

It just didn't involve the leaves.

But they were having fun.

We did eventually get everyone a turn with the leaf blower and some rakes.  The yard was successfully cleaned up. 

I didn't get any pictures until a couple of days later and there were already new leaves down.

Sick Day!

Last Friday was supposed to be one of those days, when you run all day long.  I was completely scheduled, running here and there.   It would start off getting everyone to school, then get myself and the little kids ready.  Take Harvey to preschool, run errands, pick up Harvey, drop the 3 little kids off at my friend's house, then volunteer at the elementary school for 3 hours.  Pick everyone back up, etc.  The only glitch was, Thursday, Julius started looking droopy, sneezy and coughing. 

 He even had a fever.  I was able to cancel all of our appointments, including Harvey's preschool since the next morning he was coughing too.  We had a lazy day at home with no commitments.  It was wonderful. (It was a good thing too since we ended up having our hot water heater fixed that day, thanks again Nick!)

We all need a sick day once in a while.  (It is even better when you aren't the one who is sick.)

(The picture was a few days later, I asked him to look sick.)

How To Become A Demigod.

Humans have to watch out when young demigods battle.  

Their celestial bronze and imperial gold swords can't hurt a human, but their battles can cause all kind of destruction.  We just won't see it for what it really is, because of the mist.

It is said that Greek half-bloods and Roman half-bloods could never get along.

Lucky for us Percy Jackson, son of the Greek God Poseidon, and Jason Grace, son of the Roman God Jupiter, have become good friends.

To transform our young mortals in to demigods we needed a few things.

Every demigod who has been to camp has a t-shirt.

We started with plain white undershirts and Rit dye.

I wanted a good vibrant color, so we used the stove top method (be sure and add the 1 cup of salt and Tablespoon of detergent).

I used a couple of sticks from the yard to stir.  You are supposed to stir constantly for 30 minutes, but I stirred them intermittently, the color was a little variegated because of it, but they looked fine to me.

  

We then rinsed and dried the shirts, then washed by hand and dried again.

I had the boys iron their own shirts to get them smooth and ready for the stencil. (Note the cardboard in side the shirt, to protect the back from the stencil.)

I found a great tutorial online for making camp half-blood t-shirts with freezer paper stencils.

We adapted it to what we wanted and were good to go.

First we printed out the lettering how we wanted it.  Then each boy traced theirs onto the non-shiny side of the freezer paper.  Adding symbols and additional words if they wanted.

Then we used an exacto knife to cut the letters out.  It took a little getting used to, to get the cuts smooth and nice.  I did this part.  

Ocean's had "Camp Jupiter" with lightening bolts.

Rez had "Camp Half-blood" with Poseidon in Greek underneath it (it is amazing what you can find online and cut and paste into a document) and an anti-lightening symbol and a row boat that fires giant tridents symbolizing Hades and Poseidon preparing war against Zeus.

After ironing the stencil in place with the iron on cotton setting, we dapped black fabric paint on the stencil with a sponge and let it dry overnight.

In the morning we pulled off the stencil.  It was a little tricky in spots because I think I might have saturated the paint to much, it stuck to the cardboard and the paper stuck around the edges of the letters.

We were able to get it off though carefully using the tip of the exacto knife.

With the shirts being done, they needed their weapons.  Nerf and spray paint to the rescue.  First gray primer, then one bronze and one gold (we found that the bronze looked better with a layer of gold underneath, then the bronze on top).

The finishing touches were their hair.  Percy Jackson did not have red hair.  

Luckily Rez has a hairdresser for a mom.  

Ocean got a hair cut, to appear more disciplined as a Roman solider would.

Here are the final results...

Jason Grace, Son of Jupiter,

Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon.

Halloween

Here we have...

A flower,

a dead woman,

two half-bloods,

three ninjas,

and two pirates. 

We had fun getting ready for halloween this year.  

Daphne first wanted to be Cruella DeVil,  and in searching for costume/make up ideas we found Kandee's make up tutorials.  She is amazing.  Instead of Curella, Daphne opted to just be a "dead" woman. 

Trip came up with the idea of being Pirates.  We had a pallet in the garage from our new toilet being delivered, so he used it to make a raft to use instead of our car for Trunk or Treat.

It was a hit.

Rez and Ocean love the Percy Jackson books, so they were Percy Jackson and Jason Grace (from the new Heros of Olympus series) I will post later how we transformed them from mere mortals into demigods.

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