Grimmie the Wandering Wesen

I've been busy making this cute little guy for the Facebook Grimmsters group.  We're going to pass him around and take pictures of him around the world. Jaime came up with the idea, Donna made the sweater, and I got to make Grimmie.  It's been a fun project.



This little thrift store piggie sacrificed his bean bag innards to the cause. (Let us have a moment of silence....)



I got some brown suede at Jo-Ann.  Then I dug out my old stuffed animal patterns and found a head to use. This was part of a dog pattern (sort of a Husky type), which I scanned and reduced. (Convenient, that!)



I thought at first that this head was a bit too pig-snouty, so I spent a while trying to come up with something different, but it just wasn't working, so I decided to just go with it.



He looked much better after I got the rest of his face on. (I stuck his head into the sweater to get a picture!)  The hair gave me fits but I like how it turned out. 



Grimmie's pieces coming together. I made his legs out of some jeans that I had decided to turn into cut-offs. (I always wear a hole in the right knee--why is that?)



I did as much as I could on the sewing machine, but toward the end had to do a lot of hand stitching. (We had a productive General Conference weekend--I was finishing up Grimmie and Doug started a new leather project.) I realized that there was no way I could fit the head and the arms and the legs inside the body (for sewing up inside-out)--there just wasn't room.  So I assembled his top and bottom halves separately and  then stitched him together.



Grimmie all finished! You can see the stitches around his middle. He's got polyfill stuffing in his face, arms, and legs, and the bean bag fills up his body and the back of his head.  It was just the right size!



Kate was happy to help me take some pictures of Grimmie outside. Isn't he cute in his sweater?




Kate loves Grimmie.  She knows he's not staying--she will be sad to see him go, but I think she will enjoy following his travels. ( I can make her a Grimmie-friend later.  After I've recovered from this one!)



I took Grimmie down to Point Defiance and got some cute pics... here he is enjoying the duck pond. 



Ah, spring!

Grimmie the Wandering Wesen begins his travels! ("Wesen" is pronounced with a "v" sound--it's German--so it's more of a visual alliteration than an actual one.) Grimmie will be visiting the United Arab Emirates next, and then some friends in Europe. Eventually he'll be going to the Grimm set in Portland. (Norberto Barba's wife Gina offered to take him in for us--assuming they get a third season, which hasn't been officially announced yet, but we are optimistic!) It's great fun to have a group project like this. 



And here are Kate and Grimmie playing together. She cracks me up.

Easter Cousins

We had an especially nice Easter this year, since we got to spend it with family.  Grandma Mary was here for a few days, and then Doug's sister Erika's family came down from Everett Sunday afternoon.  The kids loved having more people around to play with!



We went to a friend's neighborhood egg hunt Saturday morning, but I had also dyed a few of our own eggs, so I put those out after we got back from Church. Gotta get the Easter basket photos, right?



Andy helped.  A couple of the eggs got slightly cracked as he threw them into the basket a bit exuberantly. 



"How many eggs are in the basket, Andy?"



When I was growing up we once dyed some eggs using onion skins, and we wrapped carrot tops around them (tied in place with string) to give them a cool leafy pattern.  (I think my mom saw the idea in a church magazine or something.)   I thought I'd give it a try  this year (not the onion skins, but the leafy part).  I forgot to get carrot tops, but I went over to the woods and picked a few fern leaves to try.  I wrapped them around a couple of the eggs and then tied nylons over them to hold the leaves in place (found that suggestion online).  I did get a little bit of a pattern.  Probably would have worked better if the fern leaves hadn't been so dry.  I'll have to try it again another time!



Aunt Erika and family arrived in the afternoon. (Yay!) Kate enjoyed playing outside with Chloe...



...while Sabin got Doug's crash course in beginning fencing.  I've watched Doug do this with a few of the neighborhood kids before.  He's really good at it and the kids just eat it up.

We had a super-fun game of Apples to Apples (where Sabin won by a landslide).  The kids stayed overnight, camped out in the living room, so they could leave with Grandma in the morning and go back down to their dad's house in Portland.  Kate was a little too excited at having cousins sleeping over,  but we eventually got her settled down.  (And then Sabin was looking for something to read so I hooked him up with Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians... bwa-ha-ha!)



Doug started a new quarter and was back to class bright and early in the morning.  The kids had a little more time to hang out, and then we got some pictures together before they had to go. (Andy looks suspicious.) 



Hugs! Awww!   We all loved having some Cousin Time and Grandma Time.  We're having a reunion (and Erika and Lee's wedding!) in July, and then we get to see all the other cousins too. It'll be great to get everybody together.

Spelling Words (Illustrated)

I found this in Kate's papers. Love it! (She says "die" is a flower drooping in a vase.)

동물

Continuing Kate's Korean lessons.




After going through the whole alphabet, I was just writing out random things for her to read, so then we started doing animals. I would write a word, get her to sound it out, and then she would draw a picture. (I had to get out the dictionary after exhausting my repertoire of animal names.) She's been having fun with this.

Andy's bath song

Sing hey! for the bath at close of day.

42

42 is, of course, the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. It's also how old I am now. (When did that happen? Time marches on!)




Dinner! We went to O Bok Jip and I got kimchi jjigae (again) and some leftovers to bring home. Yay! (Not the best jjigae I've had, but still quite tasty.)



Little Gulp tries out the chopsticks.

After dinner we went over to Paldo World to pick up a couple of things. Since I've been teaching Kate how to read Korean, I got her to practice on some of the signs. The best was the tank of geoducks (strange looking creatures, they are) with the sign saying "구이덕." That's "goo-ee-duk." Kate got a kick out of that.

While we were out my phone kept ringing with family calling to serenade me badly, as is traditional. What a great evening.

Hangul Lesson

Started teaching Kate how to read Korean.

Swamp Dragon

I was playing Drawing Dragons with Kate again, and out came this little guy.

Bee Mine

I came up with something cute and easy for Andy's valentines--thumbprint bees.  Easy is good, because I put it off till the night before Valentine's Day and had to get them done in a hurry.  Now that we have two kids in school there are more of these things to think about!



Kate made her own valentines again (I cut out the hearts for her). She drew a dragon on each one, and came up with a message for the inside. (Some of the things she comes up with are a bit unusual... I hope her classmates appreciated her creative efforts!)



Both kids came home with lots of candy. That seems to be the thing these days--valentines include candy. I don't think we really did that when I was in school.

Something else I discovered:  Kids + balloons = CRAZY GO NUTS!  They kept getting distracted by the balloons while we were getting ready for school, and then while I was taking pictures of Andy's valentines on the back porch, Andy tried to release the balloons into the wild.  Two of them did escape, while two more caught under the roof of our upstairs neighbor's balcony and were quickly retrieved.  So now we are down to four balloons.  Kate has given them all names and complex social relationships. 

I Heart You!

For Doug's birthday I picked up this bouquet of heart-shaped balloons.  The kids were more than happy to help Dad enjoy them.



The annual "pictures with the kids" shot--the balloons had to get in on the action.





Blowing away. ("Aaaaaaaaghhhh!")



Peekaboo!

We went to Southern Kitchen for dinner. Hadn't ever been there, but wanted to check it out. (It was featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.)  I didn't take my camera but wished I had when they brought out the strawberry lemonade--it's served in a mason jar with a huge pile of whipped cream on top.  Andy was freaked out by the whipped cream and wouldn't get near it, so I had to pour some lemonade into another glass for him.  (Then it was okay.)  This was quite a departure for us, as pretty much the only time we "go out" for American food is when we're traveling and can't find anything else.  Usually it's Mexican, Vietnamese, or Japanese/Korean.  So this wasn't really our usual thing, but it was fun to check it out, anyway, as it's kind of a local specialty. 

Happy birthday Doug! We heart you!

Year of the Snake

(Not my graphic)

It's Doug's year! He's a snake. We did have some dduk guk, just a little early. We had a ward activity that was a soup night, so I made dduk guk for that. Kate actually had some this time. (Not a lot, but she tried it, and she said it was good!)

Window Writing

Andy writes letters on the foggy kitchen window. He always has to do this now, ever since I accompanied his preschool class on their field trip to the pumpkin patch and we were writing on the bus windows.

He's holding a red pipe cleaner, which he also uses to make letters.  He'll do this with just about anything--strips of paper, noodles, fruit leather....



Such concentration! I have seen him write  words, but usually it's just the alphabet (or occasionally numbers). The other day he was playing on the computer, writing out all the letters in some painting program, and when he was done he wrote "THE END."  (Ta da!)

Drawing Dragons with Kate

Andy and I were both sick yesterday and Kate ended up spending way too long on the computer, so in the evening we switched things up with some tag-team drawing.  We took turns starting the dragons and then adding parts.








We came up with quite a variety!  Kate was telling me about their names and habits while we created them. 

Andy at Preschool

I love this picture that Andy's teacher sent.  It's just so him.