Stuff

Well, Jessi seems to have completely recovered from her... whatever it was, fever illness thingy. She stayed a little warm for a few days, and took naps for a few days, and has been a little grouchy, but I think that she is pretty much back 100%.

I kept waiting for one of the other kids to get sick, but so far, (knock on wood) nobody has anything too terrible. Joy is fussy, runny nose, and has a tiny fever, but she's also pushing through some molars so I'm going to blame that. Joey is doing fine as well.
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I do have to brag a little, we are happy homeschoolers who are confident in what we are doing, but sometimes, with some people, you can feel the need to "prove it." So this morning when Joey saw a picture of an animal and said that it was a gazelle, I upped the ante by asking him where gazelles live. He was of course correct and replied "the savannah." I went ahead and asked him to name some other animals that lived on the savannah and he complied. I saw that we had the full attention of the person (who shall remain annonymous) so I casually mentioned, "and where do kangaroos live?" "the scrub." "and what else lives in the scrub?" "those different kind of elephants with small ears."
Not wanting to let Joey hog the spotlight, I let Jessi inform us that polar bears and penguins live in the tundra. Not too shabby for a 5 year old and 3 year old.
Ah, sweet success. Once again I am glowing in the satisfaction of proving that my unorthadox schooling methods are working.
Here's the full disclosure. They know this not because I have spent hours drilling them on the various biomes of the world, but because... we play zoo tycoon for hours at a time.
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I have a little shop online where my mom and I sell handmade toys and clothes. No one is breaking the doors down, but I'm at least getting to the point where my extensive love affair with fibers can sort of pay for itself. I sold a soaker last week and the customer posted a rave review on one of the largest online cloth diapering communities. I'm pretty stoked. It feels great to know that someone really, really likes my work.... I mean someone who isn't related to me or friends with me, someone who paid real US currency to aquire it.
I made a custom shirt and sent that out, I can't post pictures of it yet because it's a collaberation with another online shop owner. She is quite popular, so linking my work with hers will probably (hopfully) be a good thing for me. She'll unveil the set at her stocking next week and at that time I will post pictures... you never know if there are industry pirates out looking to see what is going up next! (ok that was 98% a joke... but I still don't want to steal her pre-stock thunder.)

I'm doing another dinosaur shirt which will be fun, it's for a bigger kid so I have more shirt to play with. I like doing baby shirts, but there is really not much room to work on a 12 month T. After that I plan to do a panda shirt, then I have a secret project that I'm doing for a mother's day swap. Pictures of all will follow.
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Speaking of making my hobby (a nicer word than addiction) pay for itself... I owe Jeff $19. He gave me $40 of "pin money" (I adore that term, it sounds so quaint and goes right along with my white-picket-fence life) . Well.... I obviously wanted a trip to the local yarn shop. I tried to keep it at $40, honestly, I did. But the lady... she said she'd give me two for one prices on some things that weren't moving... and she TWISTED my arm into trying some new bamboo silk/wool blend yarns, so by the time I got what I actually went in for, plus the extra... it was $59. Sigh, I guess I need to give back my $40 and give him a big kiss to cover the $19.