Done

We're eating chicken to celebrate.

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Vittoria's New Look

Vittoria has a new, um, facial expression. It is disconcerting when you are not expecting it. Here's a video. YouTube suggested adding the tag "cute." Here is Mary trying to do the same.

Almost almost almost done!

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Catching Up

Mary's 7th Birthday Party

Movie making party.

V's 4th Birthday Party....  The Wizard of Oz

Dorothy....

                                   No Wizard of Oz party is complete without the Scarecrow

                                                               Lions.....

                                                           
                                             Alina's 5th Birthday Party....  Jewelry making
                                                   PFUN party.  MEAN shop owners!

Trip to IL in April...

Miriam, Willie, Rhoda, and me.

                                                                     Cousin Mitchel

Rhoda's husband Jim and Uncle Jack

                                                      Miriam, me, Rhoda, and Ellen

Alina playing soccer...

Ania wanted to play soccer so she could have the uniform but chose to make her own....

Alina and Ania came up for a weekend.....  It snowed, and they helped Grandpa

clear the driveway. 

 The Nogas came up to spend a couple of nights with us.  What PFUN!!!  Tricky had just
                      had his "surgery"; hence, he had the collar.  The girls really liked him.

                                                          Swimming in the hot tub.

        Alina made a BEAUTIFUL floral arrangement from wild flowers around the house.

          Tricky.....  He'r pretty pfun.  He REALLY likes Greta, but I'm not so sure the feeling
                                                                     is quite mutual!

Do you see the mistakes?

I do! I do! :)

They have calligraphers in Léo and I'm going to hire one to write the names.

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Day I don't know what

Getting pretty close but the devil is in the details as they say. You might be wondering how I drew that map without a projector. I free-handed it. From memory. I'm that good. I joke. I joke. There is a project I downloaded. You make a grid and draw the map from a grid.

I had a 'helper' today, a girl that's going into 9th grade. She doesn't have quite the eye for detail that I'd ideally have in a partner, but it was fun.

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I added blue.

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Work from Sunday. It's coming. This is what happens when I get help.

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In case you were wondering I have been working but the battery was too low to email.
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I decided to work during school hours. So I couldn't use the students' desks. So I finished the red I could reach and started yellow. Wonder if I can make a time lapse movie morphology of all of these when I get home.

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Day 2

Finished the purple and started red
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World map Pfroject

Day 1 painting complete. Antarctica could use some work. The grid is level but the cement background is not. I thought it would look funny if the trim was not even. So I made the trim an inch. This looks worse. Think I'm going to have to redo that part.
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Oh, hello. It's been a while...

Here in the Pfaso it gets a little hot.  So people buy these big clay pots and fill them with water.  I don't know the science behind it, but then water becomes cold.  I bought 2.  One for drinking, one for bathing.

I had big problems getting it home.  I wanted to put them on the back of my bike, but they would have broken.  So two men offered to walk them home for me.  It was very nice.  I offered to buy them a Coke or something but they refused.  They just carried them home for me and left.  I'm really going to miss that.  Sometimes people here are so nice.

Here are the bags for the 600 trees we are planting for the school garden.  They have been planted and only about 100 survived. :(  It's OK though, because I can't imagine how difficult it would be to water 600 trees for a year.  Well, I can imagine it and know it wouldn't happen.  100 is much more manageable. 

My neighbor brings me dinner. I wanted to share this sauce. It's made with cotton seeds! That's a little piece of chicken in there.

Here is corn seed.  They called it couscous but I thought it tasted like corn meal.  I added olive oil and salt.  It was OK.  Not as good as cotton seed though.

Oh, hello, little fella.  He joined me one night for dinner.

I was the photographer for a tofu making class.  It was really interesting.  First you soak the soy seeds overnight and then put them in a grinder with water to make a paste.

Then you boil the paste and add an acid to get it to curdle.

Then you put it through a cheese cloth.  It's like really bean cheese.  After that you press it.  Then we sliced it into squares, seasoned it, fried it, but it on sticks and had tofu kababobs.  Pretty good.

For the big birthday girl

Look what fits Ania!

We were cleaning out Alina's closet and found the bunny PJs Aunt Libby made for Alina when she was a baby! :) Ania was SO excited, and Alina was SO sad there wasn't one for her to wear. When I was reading them a book last night, Ania kept saying (over and over) "I'm sooo so cute." ... "I'm sooo so cute." Ha :)

We also rediscovered the blankets I knitted for them.

The girls made fun bunny masks at Kerry's house the week before Easter. They were pretty cute!

Alina turns 5!!

I can hardly believe my little Alina is 5 years old!! I found an awesome cupcake book, and Alina requested 2 different types this year. Frogs and pigs in a blanket. I thought they were so darn cute I decided I would make both - the frogs for her day care celebration... (thanks to Mom for helping with these!!)

And pigs in a blanket for her weekend party (thanks to my coworkers for helping with these!):

We thought the kid who ended up with the tail end cupcake might be offended, but it turns out I don't think she even noticed!

Soccer started last weekend... Ania is playing this year as well. She looked pretty stinking cute in her new soccer uniform!

As soon as it started, though, she INSISTED that she get that ugly shirt off, because she wanted her dress back on. So she played in her dress. Luckily it was a t-shirt-ish sort of dress.

Action shot of Alina and Ania. Alina enjoyed playing MUCH better with the under 4 age group, so we just let her go with it... there were tons of kids and they didn't ask names (or ages). And come on... that girl with the pink shorts isn't under 4 either. :)

Immediately after that action shot, Ania fell down. Here she is walking over to show me just how much it hurt. :(