saint peg doll exchange

My friend, Suzanne, and I have forever wanted to make Saint Peg Dolls.  She finally took the initiative and organized a Peg Doll Exchange with a group of other Catholic Moms.  Each Mom choose one saint and made one for every mom participating.  I chose St. Martin de Porres since it is my Father-in-law's name and Jimmy's middle name and because I think he is cool.  Here is my finished product. 

As I was rushing to get mine all done on time, I skimped on the amount of animals.  He is usually seen with a dog, cat, mouse, and bird, but everyone only got a mouse.  Sorry folks.  I did go back and add the additional animals to my own and my sisters, which actually made me feel even worse.

Then all the mom's assembled to exchange dolls.

People carefully examined them to pick their favorites.

Here was the rundown:

The whole collection:

Suzanne had some extra dolls and added a few of her favorites to her own collection.

St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. John Paul the Great, St. Blaise, St. Kateri, and St. Patrick:

Nora has been loving all her saints thoroughly.

Here are a few scenes I have found in her room...

St. Nick bringing Christmas presents for everyone!...

St. Terese dreaming about cake...

A cozy little room with Disney friends...

It is very sweet to see her learn all their names and love them so much.  She does, however, insist on calling St. Zelie Martin "Grandma."  Mary is her very favorite (as it should be), but she also loves Lucy, Veronica, and the Fatima children.  I can tell these toys are going to be treasured for a long time.  I am looking forward to adding to the collection.

first pig tails

Nora is was so excited when her hair was finally long enough to put into "Anna pigtails."

I was pretty excited, too.  The cuteness of pigtails is just too much.  She will probably be even more thrilled when she can make them into actual braids.  She actually often asks me to "cut her hair long like Elsa's."  It has been pretty hard to convince her that it doesn't work that way.

back to school and other things

Mid-August means back to school for Jimmy and time for Mom to figure out how to keep my other kids happy without him. 

 Jimmy thrives in school and gets a little stir crazy in the summer so he is always ready to go back.

Gus is super anxious to start school, but I am not ready to let him go/willing to pay for it. 

So it is extra hard for Gus to lose his playmate when he wishes he could go, too.  Good thing Nora is finally big enough to start becoming his buddy.

 I decided to set up another homeschool preschool day once a week with some friends.  Since I had already done the ABC's last year with Gus I wanted to do something else.  We started with a simple intro day having them practice ABCs and play with Playdoh, then we signed up for a free preschool class through Parks and Rec that had three classes.  It was mostly just a storytime, but the kids got a t-shirt, a book, and a puppet so they loved it.  Next we plan to do a Bible story each week.  More to come on that.  

We also find many ways to keep ourselves entertained at home by ourselves as well.  

Gus loves coloring so much lately and will spend lots of time putting great detail into his pictures.  

He is also happy to to workbook pages (because he can earn iPad time that way; let's be honest).

Nora is always happy to tag along with whatever project Gus suggests.

 To help make up for no preschool yet, I signed up Gus and his buddies for Karate.

They all loved it.  We may have to do it again.

All these activities I have planned are keeping us busy, but also making me tired.

Thank goodness I still have one kid who enjoys a good nap....

pretty good bed head

Nora upon waking up:

 Nora after Mom actually takes the time to brush her hair:

how we survived the end of the summer

We had made a list at the beginning of the summer...

Okay, our sign got ripped down and very beat up by the end of the summer and we didn't check everything off the list, but heck, we did a lot.  In fact this list hardly tells the story of our summer.  Hopefully, these pictures will do a better job.

...

We built our most epic fort to date...

It took over two rooms...

We set up Radiator Springs on our porch again.  

I never took a picture of the town, but we added my Dad's Piston Cup Race Track this time...

It usually only got played with when swimsuits were on...

We enjoyed our Legoland presents...

(see previous post for more details)

We also did our best to get out of the house now and then.  We went to summer movies at the theatre by our house on Wednesday mornings.  Zach took the boys to five different Lowe's Build and Grow workshops to make Avengers vehicles.  We went to lots of special programs at the library.  Jimmy got to be fully embarrassed by the balloon animal guy.  Then Nora got a balloon Cinderella at Chick-fil-A one night and she was thrilled...

The Scottsdale Library had an awesome Enchanted Forest exhibit for kids...

We stopped by the LOVE sign on our way out of the library...

We went to Ikea and tested chairs that we didn't buy (but I wanted to)...

We went bowling...

And we reveled in some monsoons...

So those are a few of our activities and then there were all the fun people we got to see.

We got to meet two new family members:

Our second cousin, Daniel...

And our cousin, Martha...

We got a family member to move to Phoenix!

Aunt Nat came to work at the same school as Zach and we couldn't be happier to have her.

When I asked Jimmy what his favorite thing was this summer, he said, "Aunt Nat moving to Phoenix." What a sweet boy.  She even beat Legoland.

Nana came to help her move so we got to see her, too!

Then Mom had a birthday...

Mimi had a birthday...

Baabee had a birthday and the big kids (not Gus) got to watch Harry Potter movies at his house and drink Butterbeer...

Mom got to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday and wear her favorite color...

 We went to an annual "August Birthdays" party.  

(I snuck in the picture meant for only people with August Birthdays since July 31st almost counts)...

Then our host drove the kids around on a digger in their desert backyard and they thought he was the coolest ever.

Then we got more family visitors.  Erin brought Helen on her first trip to Phoenix.  The boys were happy to finally get to meet their new cousin...

Uncle Danny and Courtney came for a few days...

We got popsicles with them because they love popsicles...

Nora might have loved them the most though...

Popsicles really do help you get through a nice, hot summer.

We ate lots of popsicles in our backyard while we enjoyed our blow-up pool...

Basically anything Frozen helps.  We went for Culver's for frozen custard on the last day before school started.

I am always ready for summer to be done, but never really ready for school to start.