My Madeline is 11!

Madeline turned 11 on December 18th. I can’t believe she is 11. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were putting our little peanut in a stocking under our tree. We had her birthday party on thursday. 11 friends from school came over to compete in Wii games. The gaming theme seems to be a huge hit with the kids and its super fun to hang with such a nice group of kids for a couple hrs.
Here are some old photos of Maddie and then pics from the party.

Thanksgiving in Richland, WA,

A Strasser Thanksgiving!  Here are the pictures from a super fun week spent with my wonderful family.  I love that we all make this holiday a priority to get together.  Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Strasser who started the tradition early.  My family rocks!!

Here are a bunch of photos from the big football game that we play on thanksgiving morning.  Most of the pictures were taken by my cousin Jared who was on the injured list because of shoulder surgery.

Dear Tooth Fairy

My girls love leaving the tooth fairy a note. Isabelle has been writing the cutest notes lately and I wanted to share them. I am keeping the improper grammar and spelling.

Dear Tooth Fairy,
I lost another tooth. I’m sorry its in haves. It broke. I don’t know how it broke but you can still take it? Please will you write back. How small are you? How are you so sneaky? Where do you live? Do you live close? Does every kid in the world have a tooth fairy? So you don’t have to fly to china because that would be a lot of flying. O yeah, I’m 8.
Love,
Isabelle
p.s. i hope we can be BFFs

Hi tooth Fairy, I lost my tooth again. I was so excited to write to you again!!!
Love your favorite little girl,
Isabelle
p.s. I believe in you. I love Fairys. I love believing in magical stuff.
p.s.s. if I could see you and play with you we’d be best friends.
p.s.s.s. What’s your name?

Attached to each note is a drawing of Isabelle and the tooth fairy flying together. Too cute.
I love Isabelle’s sweetness and how she is concerned about the tooth fairy flying long distances.

Weekend in Florida for Mom’s birthday

My mom had a significant birthday this month and to celebrate I met her and Jenn in Florida for a weekend of sun, sand and fun.  It was nice to get together for a special weekend.  We stayed in a condo of a friend of mom’s in St. Petersburg.  It was super hot the first day which was perfect because all we wanted to do was lay out in the sun on a beautiful beach.  I arrived at 5:30 am because I flew on a red eye (which by the way, is my new favorite way to travel) and napping on the beach felt very good.  We mostly stayed close to the condo and enjoyed the pool right by the ocean.  It was a nice weekend and I am glad we were able to help mom celebrate her birthday.  Enjoy the photos!

Camping in the back yard!

I set up the tent tonight for the girls and our friend Austin who lives a couple houses down from us.  It’s nice to see them get excited about something so simple.   I am so thankful for our beautiful big back yard.  I am wondering who will be coming back inside tonight.

Our first broken bone :(

Well it’s actually a fracture. Ava fell out of our pool (it’s 4 feet deep) and fractured her elbow. Apparently she was trying to dive off the ladder and slipped. I saw her tumbling out and land on her arm in the sand, bless her heart. I have to say I was relatively calm like I would hope I would be in these situations. I did feel like I was going to throw-up the whole way to the hospital though.  The adrenalin must have worn off.  I asked her at one point as we were driving to our Dr’s office if she was ok and she said “No, mom. It’s very painful.” Well of course it is dear, that was a silly ? for mom to ask. Golly. I was super glad we were able to see our Dr. Thank the Lord for Dr. Lux. and nurse Hannah. I do have one complaint and that would be the x-ray tech. He obviously was too young to have experience with children and was not gentle at all. He wanted a picture of her forearm and she couldn’t turn her hand so that her palm was up and flat so the darn tech tapes her hand down while she is whimpering and in pain. I asked him if it was necessary to tape her hand, couldn’t he think of another way to get his picture? Nope. Well, thank goodness he was fast. Any more painful pictures and I would have kicked him. She didn’t like moving much and was in my arms all afternoon. I told her later that I hadn’t held her for that long since she was a baby and it was wonderful. She said, your welcome mom.

A week of firsts!!

It was a very exciting week last week.  All kinds of things were being done for the first time ever.

Ava learned to ride a bike on monday.  Madeline spent most of the morning helping her to learn to ballance on the bike.  They would ride up and down the sidewalk in front of the house.  It was too cute.  And then after dinner Scott took Ava out onto the road and let her bike without someone holding the back for her.  It was thrilling to see Ava bike up and down our street.  The first time she started peddling without Scott holding on she let out a squeal of delite and was so excited that she forgot to look up.  She did that a few times.    Ava biking

On Tuesday, Madeline went flying with her Grandpa Bob.  What an amazing day for her!  She actually had a flying lesson and held onto the controls for most of the flight.  Of course the pilot/teacher held onto her controls too but it was still very exciting for Madeline to make turns while flying!  They flew over Grandpa’s house and Autzen Stadium.  Madeline is still talking about her flying experience and is happy to tell anyone and everyone she knows all about it.  Thank you Grandpa Bob!!

Madeline getting ready to fly

Madeline with the plane

Taking flying very seriously

my 10 yr old is learning to fly!

And finally we now have some water skiers in the family.  Well besides me.    Over the weekend we traveled to Richland for the 4th to be with family.  It was wonderful as always.  It was over 100 degrees all weekend.   What better way to beat the heat than to be on the Columbia River.  Dave took us out friday and sunday!  Madeline tried skiing on friday but didn’t get too far but by sunday she was ready to try again and got up on her first try and skied for quite a while.  It was amazing.  I didn’t learn that quickly!!  Isabelle also tried a couple times but on her second fall she hit her hands on the skies and was pretty much done.  She was close to getting it too.  I am sure the next time we get on a boat she will get up.  Thanks to Dave for taking us out on the river and to Nicole who was a super ski instructor!

I have video of the water skiing thanks to Dave and Jeannie.  It was taken with my phone which I then uploaded to Facebook.  As soon as I figure out how to get the video off my phone and onto my computer I will put it here for you to watch.

 

Bags, purses and candy wrappers

Its been bag making central at my house lately and today the kids got in on the action.  We made little coin purses out of candy wrappers.  It was a fun craft.  Its always a bonus when the 4 yr old can do it all by herself and the older sisters think its still cool.  I love when crafting goes well.    My new favorite book is full of purses and bags that you make using duct tape (did you know that duct tape comes in almost every color!!), a stapler, paper, old t-shirts, placemats or pillow cases.  Its super fun and a totally different way of creating for me.  I love making purses out of crazy stuff.  Next up on the “to make” list is making the juice box purse that are every where!!  I have a bag of juice pouches all ready to be cut up.

Here are some photos of all the bags we have been making.

The bag I made for my Jenny

Sabine’s bag

Madeline’s bag she made from an old t-shirt.

It’s lined with duct tape and the seams are stapled together.  no sewing required

The subway map from New York.  I loved the look of the subway map and wanted to make something out of it.  I had this pattern to make a purse from wall paper.  Why couldn’t I use any paper.  So I printed out the subway  map, covered it with clear duct tape and them followed the pattern.

the purse from the subway map!

The star burst wrappers we saved from our trip to sunriver.  Before handing over the bag of star bursts to the kids I asked them to open the candy carefully so we could save the wrappers to make purses out of.  They did a super job not ripping those wrappers!  We had enough to make 4 purses!!

Ava holding the little purse I  made for my niece Lizzie’s birthday!!

Ava checking out her purse.  She made the whole thing by herself.  She did a great job with planning her pattern and putting all those wrappers on the clear tape.

Come on over to swim!

The girls in the pool first thing sunday morning.  It was 9am and not too warm yet but who cares about being cold!

What does it take to put up a big above ground pool? Well, I can tell you. First you level the ground by tilling, tilling and more tilling.

Scott working very hard at tilling our favorite weed corner of the yard.  The trampoline was in this corner for years so we never did anything with it.

Then you rake it all out, stamp it down, add some sand to make it extra even and then put the pool out and fill the puppy for over 6 hrs!! And now it’s up and ready to be filled with kids!

I had to get some time with the big machinery…hee hee.  I could hardly hold onto the tiller.  Man, I need to do some pull-ups/push-ups, my arm strength is not good.Isabelle getting a turn with the stamper.

Here’s my plan for the summer: wake up at 7:30 am, make some coffee, eat some breakfast out on my sunny porch, put sun screen on the kids, get my lounge chair all ready with some water, a phone and a good book. Now I am ready to lounge in the sun all day while the kids play in the pool. Of course we will stop to have lunch, snacks and to reapply the sunscreen but basically that is how my summer is going to go. Sounds good, huh? I can not wait! Check back in July to see if my plan is working.

Early schooling in video game developing

The game is out and we are allowed to talk!  Seriously, I had to sign something that stated I would not talk about what I saw and heard on our visit to Pipeworks.

My very good friend Dawn’s husband Dan works at Pipeworks here in Eugene.  Its a nice little game developing company.  Well, maybe I shouldn’t say little…they did just roll out the game for the new Night at the Museum movie.  The girls were asked a few months ago to help be testers on a new game Pipeworks was working on.   We were told it was a cute girlie slumber party game.  Sounds good to me.  I did not actually get to see the game since the testing was all private.  Kids always answer honestly when their parents are not present.  I did learn that Madeline was interested in the one woman’s job who asked the testers questions about the game.  Isabelle liked the music of the game and both thought it was fun.  How could they not enjoy the whole experience?  They were given candy bars and pop and got to spend an hr playing a game no one had seen yet.  Surprising they both understood how big that was.  And their names will be in the credits as testers on the game.  How cool is that?  Scott was sooo proud.  Here is the link to the game we will soon be getting.

Charm Girls Club