upcycling

well if you didn't know we're moving later this week back into our own home. even though we've loved living with momo (because we were all spoiled rotten)  it's time to go back out on our own. we found a house in greatwood & it's super close to both livi & i's schools... yay! the best part is that livi & i will have our own rooms again... YES! so with all that said we've decided that we needed to give our bedroom furniture a hip new facelift. so in livi's room all the furniture is the furniture that mommy had when she was a little girl. nonie saved it all these years for when mommy had kids & livi can't wait to have it. so livi's furniture was stuck back in the 80's done in brown, gold & peach so we're upcycling it to a light gray & raspberry. all the furniture that's going in my room was white, but we're in the middle of painting it charcoal gray & this gorgeous light blue. the dresser that is going to be in my room my popo built for my tia liz when she was a teenager. i'm so thankful that tia loves me enough to give it to me & trusts us enough to let it breath again in new color. daddy is doing that piece of furniture all my himself because it's so special to everyone. but as you can see for the past few weeks every day after school we get our painting clothes on to tackle wherever we left off the day before. let me tell you this is crazy hard work & we think mommy is a little crazy for wanting to this, but man oh man are these pieces looking AMAZING!! we've had a lot of laughs too, like when daddy spilt almost the whole can of paint after telling us to be careful where we walk & then bam it tripped over a can. we pay have had a few water fights from rinsing off the brushes. we also may have gotten bored painting the furniture & painted each other instead. don't worry we'll post pictures once everything is done, but for now here's what we've been doing!

family portraits

last month we finally got our very 1st professional family photos taken!!! one of mommy's babies in her mdo class, her parents are starting out their own photography business & gave us a free sitting for a gift. we can't believe how wonderful the photos came out & are super excited to take family pictures again & with our sweet sadie... sooner than later now that we know how painless the process is. so without further delay here's our pictures & if you'd like to have your family pictures taken let mommy know & she'll pass along their information.

chicken littles

ok, the best part of 1st grade as finally arrived, the one we've been waiting for all year long! every year livi's teacher (mrs. tinker) brings in lots of eggs from her good friend farmer kevin to hatch into chickens in the classroom!!! this year is an extra bonus because last year mrs. tinker wrote a grant for all the 1st grader classrooms to have chicken incubators & it was approved... yay! they have 5 egg incubators & livi's class has an 20 egg incubator. so for 21 days they get to learn exactly whats going on in the egg with an exploration kit & a special magnify glass that lights up made just for chicken eggs! everyday the open the chick life cycle egg & then put the real egg into the magnify holder to check it out! everyday after school mrs. tinker let mommy & i come by to look also because we were so excited... she's the absolute best!  so after day 5 mrs. tinker knows if the eggs are going to hatch or not & the ones that aren't she takes home to cook with. we loved seeing the babies grow everyday, we got to see them develop from the yolk into kicking their little feet... how cool is that!

if you look close you can see the chick's little foot

once it gets closer to the eggs hatching mrs. tinker puts the incubator on a live channel for us to watch from home on the computer. mommy was so stinkin' excite, everyday she'd ask if they eggs were going live yet. so we got to be the test run making sure everything was looking good live & we'd tell mrs. tinker how everything looked live. while she was testing she made a cute sign to surprise us, it made our day because it was so sweet. it's a good thing mommy hounded more. tinker because the eggs hatched 2 days early!!!

mrs. tinker called mommy super early one morning yelling to get on live because the eggs were hatching & the show was really about to begin! absolutely nothing got done in livi's class that day because they were glued to watching the sweet lil babies hatch. trying to get the kids to go to lunch was quite an event.. not a pleasant one. they didn't want to leave so there lunch ended up being a lil shorter than usual but they were fine with that. then mommy had errands to run so she was glued to her phone, its a good thing daddy was off that day so he could drive. thank goodness he's a good drive because every time a baby chicken was coming out mommy was yelling at her to encourage it & smacking daddy on the arm out of excitement. of course once school was out we stayed in livi's class for an hour watching them & talking to the babies & helping encourage the others one come out. when it was livi's bedtime we were watching them livi on the computer & of course one was about to hatch. so livi got to stay up a later than usual & watch it hatch then she dreamt of all the names she was going to name them.

24 hours after they hatch mrs. tinker is able to move them into a box so they have more room because all together there was over 20 baby chickens. as soon as they're moved they fluff up to twice their size, it's so stickin' cute! farmer kevin came to school to tell the 1st graders how proud of them he was & how to take care of their little chickens now that they had hatched. after the babies were 4 days old they students finally got to touch them (livi got to touch them on the 2nd day because mommy got to hold them & was helping mrs. tinker mark them... shhh, don't tell anyone) & they were so happy. they couldn't believe how soft & sweet they were. the kids weren't to happy with how much they pooped because it smelt so bad. mrs. tinker cleaned their home twice a day & it was still super stinky. last week mrs. tinker moved the chicken into the hallway so all the students & teachers could enjoy them & stop by to say "hi!" now the chickens have gone back to live on farmer kevin's farm to lead a long happy life. 

scholar dollar day

in 5th grade at the end of school we have a "scholar dollar" day where the goal is for us to learn about free enterprise. each student is allowed to work with a team or independently or with only one partner. we were even allowed to work with our friends that are in other classes & that's what i did! my bff (maddie) & i made the most awesome picture frames ever. we started way back in january to make sure we'd have plenty of work time to make them perfect with a little play time thrown in as well.we did everything ourselves from picking out the frames, to spray painting them, decoupaging them with designs, to packaging them & to making posters to advertise them!

all year the 5th grade students have been collecting scholar dollar from the beginning of the year by behaving, making good grades, doing uil or student council or cats to teachers rewarding us by seeing us do something nice for others in the hallway. all the money we earned we got to spend at scholar dollar day buying what our friends made. i earned almost 300 points so i went to town buying trinkets for everyone. so today only the 5th graders got to enjoy running their own booth & taking time to go shopping at the other booths... it was so so so fun! my friends made everything homemade lip balm to beaded nfl keychains (of course i bought both seahawk ones) to homemade crystals to headbands to the cutest octopuses made out of yarn with googly eyes to flower petal bath salts to the coolest magnets to funky buttons to dog toys to candles to soap, i mean everything you can imagine we had between all of us. also maddie & i's booth was a wild success & we were the 4th booth to sell out of our product... whoo hoo, we were so super proud of ourselves!!!