Moran Family Fun

Over a year ago I bought the book One Yard Wonders which has 101 sewing projects that use just one yard of fabric. As soon as I got home I couldn't wait to look through all the fun projects and as soon as I was finished Emily wanted to take a look as well. She quickly chose the project she wanted me to make for her, a Folklore Bag. I think out of all the projects in the book it might be my favorite as well so I was happy to see she liked it too. It might have taken over a year, but this morning she finally got her bag. What do you think? And for fun, one picture of Emily's hairstyle today

Last week the girls finally got out of school for their summer vacation. On the last day of school they all came home with backpacks full of unused supplies, terribly beaten up notebooks, broken crayons and bits of paper, candy wrappers, and gloves and sweaters they had forgotten at school throughout the school year. I was going through Abigail's backpack and sorting out the trash from the treasure when I got to her pencil box. The box is still in great shape and will be used again next year if she needs one. The pencils inside were another story - every single pencil was a teeny little stub of a thing, the longest was four inches and the smallest just under two inches, and most of the erasers were too tiny to be of any use at all. As I took out pencil after pencil (23 in all!) it got funnier and funnier to me. The number of pencils, the tiny size of them all, and most of all, the fact that they were all perfectly sharpened. She was using these little pencil stubs to do her work at...

I'm thinking this might be true only because all of her pictures recently have looked something like this - This version is of two people toasting before having a drink - she loves to say "Prost!" before having a big glass of chocolate milk . In the picture above there is some sort of disco ball hanging for the ceiling and I think those might be tattoos on their arms . In other pictures she 's drawn lately the drinks have looked more like martinis to me because of the shape of the glasses and the round things ( hello , olives ) floating in the drinks . It 's funny and disturbing at the same time .

Sometimes we have too many t-shirts around here. There are drawers and drawers overflowing with t-shirts that never get worn. Emily especially has too many shirts - they fill up two and a half of her five dresser drawers. I decided to make dresses for Natalie and Samantha out of some of those excess t-shirts. I made the first dress for Natalie while the girls were at school. I took the top of a shirt that fit her but had a stain on the bottom half of the shirt, cut it off to make sort of an empire waist and sewed strips of fabric from the other t-shirts until it was long enough to be a dress. When Samantha saw Natalie's dress she wanted one for herself as well. I had already laid out an old shirt of Sam's for the top of the dress and was playing around with bigger Emily shirts for the bottom part. I had the shirts in the order I thought they would look the best but Samantha asked me to make it a little differently from Natalie's dress. Instead of tiers for her dress she wan...

Last weekend we had a fun birthday party for Abigail. It was nice to work with Abby and plan the party together and I think it was a pretty successful day. We had a county fair theme so there was lots of candy, balloon animals, face painting, and cake. Instead of writing all about it here, I figured it would be easier to just share the pictures because they're worth a thousand words each! Since were were trying to keep with the county fair theme there were lot of bandanas, jars of candy that the kids filled their treat bags from, and three cakes. As usual, the doughnut cake was a hit with everyone (including me - hooray for not having to bake!) In the morning as we were setting up for the party Emily had the great idea to add face painting to the line up of activities. She practices a few designs on Samantha and set up a table with brushes and paints. She did a really good job and I loved that she wanted to contribute something to her sister's party. Our friend from c...

Most mornings around here, we all wake up about 6 am, read scriptures together, and then get ready for our day. Jared leaves first for work, then the three older girls leave for school, and finally Natalie and Samantha head out the door for Kindergarten. This morning Samantha was so tired that she crawled into my bed and fell back to sleep right after we finished reading scriptures. I probably could have gotten her to wake back up, but when she's that tired I would rather let her sleep. Thinking that I wouldn't mind a little extra sleep myself, I climbed back in bed as well. Around seven Natalie came into my room wanting not only to sleep, but also to eat. I sent her to the kitchen to get something to eat and told her to eat at the table and then come back and lay down with us. I woke up at 9:30 and Natalie was not in the bed with Samantha and I. She can really get into trouble when she's left alone (see here and here ) so I was not looking forward to seeing what she'd...

One evening last week we went for a walk. It was a beautiful day and we had a nice time walking to the little fountain here in town and then wandering along the paths that lead through the fields around town. Germany is a beautiful country and as we were walking I was overwhelmed by the blessing it is for us to live in such a gorgeous country. The world truly is glorious and I am grateful to be able to spend time in nature really enjoying the beauty of this world. I was glad I thought to bring the camera with me and was able to take some pictures of the beauty that surrounds us everyday. Samantha feeding the sheep in a field just outside of town Jared, Emily, Samantha, Abigail, and Natalie feeding the sheep. At first the sheep weren't too sure about us, but once we started feeding them they all came over to say hello. Natalie, Jared, Emily, and Samantha The kids all love the huge bales of hay that the farmers wrap up in plastic. Abigail was really excited to climb on top of the...

Jared likes to say that he doesn't eat to live, he lives to eat. Way back in February - it seems like forever ago now - we took a trip back to the States. While we were there Jared did his best to eat at every restaurant he'd been missing while we've been here in Germany. One day while we were out we saw a Five Guys. Having never eaten at Five Guys, but hearing how amazing their burgers are, we decided it would be the perfect place for lunch. It had already been a long trying day for all of us, but Natalie especially was having a hard time. She was a crying, whiny, mess who refused to do what she was told and if we tried to pick her up she would go all limp as if she was dead. We ordered a cheeseburger for her and hoped that a little food would cheer her up and improve things. She ate two or three bites, put her burger down, and proclaimed in her always loud voice, "This burger makes me happy! I love cheeseburgers!" It was so cute and I was relieved to see a smile...