As Luck Would Have It...

Don't ask how it happened because I have no idea. All he tells me is "hurt mouth". It appears that two of his teeth when into his lip resulting in lots of blood and a big fat lip.

The Race to Shop

On Black Friday I went out with my sister Katie to watch people shop and get stuff they really didn't need. Katie was prepared with a list and I had my elbows all ready to knock people down for her if need be. No one enjoys Black Friday more then my sister Katie. When she asked at the Thanksgiving table who wants to go out with her the next day, lots of heads ducked and turn the other way, avoiding eye contact. Somehow I won the boobie prize and enjoyed it:)

We don't wait in line to get in stores, but we do get up early (around 6ish) and were to the stores after 7. Katie was in Katie-mode.

She got a door buster she wanted and couldn't have been happier.
Katie talked me into going to Wal-Mart (this was crazy) the parking lot alone gave me anxiety. Clearly Katie LOVED it.

Katie's heart was beating so hard and she was so excited that she was HOT. She would only turn the temp in the car up to 64 degrees, I was freezing.

As if Wal-Mart wasn't crazy enough we headed to Herbergers next. Ugh... look at this parking lot. We parked far away and walked, I had my fill of crazy, honking drivers at Wal-Mart.

What's Thanksgiving... Without a Trip to the ER?

We had a busy eventful day. It started early traveling to my sister's house. The boys were so excited to go see their cousins that they decided to bring a little fun. The fun was in the form of something we purchased at the World Market a few weeks ago, "fish eggs". They aren't really fish eggs but they are little plastic type beads about the size of a small bb. When put in water they expand and become these rubbery bouncy balls. Needless to say they scream "FUN". When the boys were transferring them into a cup a few fell on the ground. Katie asked Geremu to pick them up and when he came up... he had already eaten them. Needless to say we were in town for approximately 42 minutes and we had to make a trip to the ER. In the first 10 minutes we were at the ER we had a near fire alarm pull by none other than Geremu. Thankfully it was a pull alarm and not a push alarm otherwise I'm pretty sure we would have been responsible for paying for more then our co-pay.

Geremu is alright, we hope, and the only picture I got from our trip was as we were leaving the ER.

After leaving the ER we headed to Megan's for Thanksgiving.

Look at how big and cute Meredith has gotten.

Shortly after we started eating, as luck would have it, Cullen slipped and hit his face on the table. This resulted in Cullen crying and Geremu laughing so hard that he too slipped and hit his head on the table as well. Geremu seems to be no worse for the wear but Cullen has quite a shiner under his left eye (this picture doesn't really do it justice).

After the meal the kids spent some time playing together outside.That is Johnny falling in the picture below, not one of my kids:)Pop made all the kids day by making them marshmallow guns. Here is a picture of them learning marshmallow gun safety.Geremu playing at the park.We also learned the sex of Megan and Kyle's baby through the cake they are holding. It's a...BOY!The boys went bowling late in the day.
Here's a picture of Cullen's form- BEAUTIFUL.We all enjoyed being around family. Good times with LOTS to be thankful for.

Black Friday Deal...

Although I sounded VERY optimistic in my last post I haven't meet my goal of 1,000 shirts yet. I don't want to discourage you people from buying these shirts or selling them at an event. Frankly, I still need all the help I can get, I'm just trying to stay optimistic here.

I started my gig as a traveling sales women today and the boys did fairly well as my mascots. Here's my Black Friday deal: Buy a shirt and receive a free HUG. If sales don't go well on Black Friday I'll come up with something even better (if that's possible) for Cyber Monday.

1,000 Shirts by Christmas

I'm pretty sure I'll be making my goal of selling 1,000 shirts by X-mas. This just keeps getting bigger and bigger- I'm so excited but I'm exhausted. I've already printed and sold over 300.

I put an order in for an additional 570 shirts yesterday and I got 7 boxes of shirts delivered today (and this wasn't all of them). I printed shirts until 9:30 tonight and I'll print some more tomorrow. After I clean-up tomorrow I'm not printing again until Monday (I need some time off). I'll be playing the roll of the traveling sales women this weekend as I travel around selling shirts out of the back of my van.

This whole changing the world one t-shirt at a time thing is off to an awesome start.

Nick took the boys to the Christmas parade tonight. They had a great time and the rain held off until after the parade was over. Nick leaves to go hunting with his Dad and brothers tomorrow, I really hope Nick doesn't kill a deer.

The Tale of the Wet Sleeve

So today I look in the bathroom and Geremu is sucking on the sleeve of his shirt just standing in the bathroom. I don't really think much of this because whenever Geremu has spilt any liquid on his shirt he proceeds to suck the water from his shirt. About two minutes later Cullen comes running up to me to tell me, "Mom, I dropped this star in the toilet and Geremu got it out for me." Then he says in his sweet voice, "My hero."

I'm 100% positive it was toilet water Geremu was sucking off the end of his shirt sleeve.

Do you know what this is called?

Here's a picture of Nick's facial hair he's been working on since November 1st.

It's sort sprouting in patches, some thicker than other

but he's too proud to shave.

So do you know what this is called?

Crop Failure

How much longer until December 1st?

Turkeys, Turkeys Everywhere

My boys LOVE crafts. Every night I have to go around and hang up the new creations of the day and take down old projects. This is not an easy task because they don't like me throwing anything away. I save the projects I really like and the cute seasonal ones I pack away to display again the next year. The majority of the projects hit the recycling bin after the kids go to bed. When I look around our house I'm starting to wonder if I have more pictures displayed then our local art center. The current art theme is....

Elf vs. Leprechaun

So tonight we were reading the book, "The Elf on the Shelf". Do you know of this? If not, look it up and purchase it if your family celebrates Christmas.

We were reading the book to prepare the kids for the Elf's arrival. The kids need to understand the "rules" before the Elf starts hanging around (after Thanksgiving). The Elf has yet to be named. After we were done reading the book Cullen looks at me and said, "So you're telling me that there are Elfs and Leprechauns?" Before adding, "And they are both small!"

I'm pretty sure Cullen is all ready for the Elf.

Tuesday, Already?

I'm keeping this short. The weather has been wonderful.

We have been busy...

and happy.

Camping on a School Night?

We spent the day outside doing yard work. When Geremu went down for a nap Cullen decided he wanted to make a tent. He spent a lot of time working on his tent.

He got a little help from his Dad.
Then waited for Geremu to wake so he could share his creation.

Since Nick was putting Christmas lights up Cullen decided his tent needed some lights too. Here Cullen is introducing the tent to Geremu.

Cullen REALLY wanted to sleep in the tent tonight by himself (it's not warm out at all). We didn't want to smash his hopes so after we ate Cullen got in his PJ's and headed outside (5:45ish).

Nick sat in the front window watching him knowing it was only a matter of time...

until he got too cold and came in.

He cleaned everything up then headed upstairs to get in a hot bath to warm up.

He was in bed and sleeping by 7:30.

Today November 13th...

is the day where bloggers everywhere are joining together in a campaign to buy water for Christmas.

$10 will provide one person in Africa clean water for 10 years. It will literally change and possibly save a life. A mother. A child. A brother. A grandfather. We are rallying together for a cause. Clean water. One day. $10. Asking everyone to let this be their first gift. Let water, let life be their first gift of the season.

Click here to be directed to the secure donation site of the highly recognized, non-profit, charity: water. All donations are tax deductible, and 100% of your donation will go to clean water solutions in West Africa.

Please share this with everyone you know.

Shirts, Shirts and More Shirts

So I've been busy, really, really busy printing shirts. Yesterday I started printing on the newest shirts that came in and continued today. I said I'd post some pictures of the shirts for people that are interested in getting them so below you will see some options. I ordered a few youth sizes to see if the image would look too big or be just fine. The shirts look fine but youth sizes are bigger then I thought, both boys are wearing smalls in this picture and the shirts are too big for them.

Here are a few of the women's shirts, we are printing on pink, blue and green. All of the shirts are printed in dark brown ink. I have a medium green underneath the small blue so you can sort of see the difference in sizes.

The green sort of looks like mint chocolate chip ice cream, this one is an XL.
I had to cut my head off in this picture because I had a crazy expression on my face. If you are a taller person (I'm 5'9") the women's fit is a little on the short side. I'm modeling a small and it seems to fit fine until I lift my arms up. The unisex small is comparable in width but a bit longer then the women's fit.
Speaking of crazy expressions this might be what
I'm looking like as I blog all this.
Cute, right?

Fall Swimming

On the platform planning out the jump.

This picture is a little dark but he is acknowledging the judges.

(Always a good move for a high score.)
The jump, look at that form people!

I'm pretty sure he didn't stick his landing, he rarely does.

Water...

We have been busy working on setting up a fundraiser to help http://www.water4christmas.com/ Water4Christmas is working with http://www.charitywater.org/ (this is the same organization we raised money for Geremu's 2nd birthday last year). Charity: water is a non-profit organization that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of public donations directly fund water projects. This has been quite a process and has taken some time to get to the point we are at. We are lucky to have a supportive school district as well as friends & family that are willing to support the cause.

So here is what we are doing. We are making and selling t-shirts for $10.00 and putting all the profits towards building wells. We started to print the t-shirts last Friday and my students are so into all of this and they are learning a lot in the process. They look pretty darn spiffy if I should say so myself. They have the water4christmas logo on the front with a quote on the back along with the charity:water web site.

We are doing this because we have witnessed people drinking unsafe water and we have seen the long term affects that unsafe water has. We have read the statistics that unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Everyday 4,500 mothers bury their children due to contaminated water. This lack of access to clean water is recognized as the leading cause of death in underdeveloped nations. And it just doesn't have to be. (For more information visit the websites mentioned above.)

So here is my HOT model you might notice he is growing a little something on his face. His department has declared this month "No-shave November" so I've declared this month "No-nooky November":)

My First Wordless Wednesday...

Great Granparent Visit

This past week we headed down to visit with Grandma Great. It was good to see her, it had been a while. I'm not exactly sure what's up with the look on Cullen's face in this picture but in all the other pictures Cullen had his arm around Geremu's neck and it was hard to see his face, so this is about as good as it gets.

We also went and saw Bob and Nita. Here Cullen is with Nita-baby!

I'm not so sure I would chubby-wubby a kid holding a scissors...

Cullen spent most of his night dressed as a "transformer". I'm pretty sure he doesn't even know what a transformer is but he knows his cousin dressed as one for Halloween.