Tim's Confirmation

Hello this is Jackie again. Tim's confirmation was Friday and Mitch and Debbie came and spent the weekend with us. Tim was confirmed with a homeschool group and the Archbishop came to a mass for just the 14 homeschooled kids. Unfortunately we forgot our camera so Mitch and Debbie have the only pictures of his actual confirmation. On Saturday morning we went for a hike in the woods that are behind our house and went swimming. I succeeded in winning two games of freeze tag in the pool! The rest of the day we just hung out around the house and played a few games. Sunday we went to the zoo, ate a picnic lunch, and Mitch and Debbie left from there. It was a great weekend!! Here are a few of the many pictures I took.

Everyone after mass with the Confirmation boy

Us on our hike

Taking a break

A bunch of warriors about to

attack me! The boys' got a real

kick out of playing war.

The house was a war zone the

whole weekend.

Who's who? From the back

Lucas and Nick look

extraordinarily alike. The only

difference is the hair cut.

All 14 of us fit around our HUGE table.

Our navigators figuring out

where to go next.

Us kids on a Gorilla

Playing in the waterfall

Will and Peter playing

Who can find the animal first.

Lucas, Nick, & Addie in front

of the Chimps

It was a really fun weekend!! Thanks again Mitch and Debbie for coming out!

New House

Hey this is Jackie! We're finally getting around to post pictures of our new house. Well at least I am. Here is the virtual tour of our house.

The outside of the house

Our computer/toy room

The front room

The family room

Another view of the family room

The dining room & kitchen

The boys' room

My parents' room

My room!!

Mary's/soon to be Josh's room

I hope that satisfied everyone's curiosity until you all can come and visit!

Projects

Hello everyone--
Just wanted to share some of the projects I've been working on lately. I submitted my final thesis draft about 2 weeks ago, so now I'm waiting to get the edits of my faculty. To pass the time, I'm trying to pretend like I have 1/4 the talent of Mom at the sewing machine.

My first project was a couple of baby pillows for friends who have recently had or will be having babies:



The "M" pillow is for a baby named Margaret, and the "Peanut" pillow is for my friend Joyce who doesn't know yet what she is having (since they don't know the sex, they are calling the baby Peanut all the time). As you can see, I didn't quite have the dimensions right on the first pillow so the cover didn't fit quite as nicely as it did on the second one. But, the second was probably the hardest since it was the first time I've ever used the embroidery function on my sewing machine.



As you know, a few weeks ago I was in Missouri visiting Mom and Dad. While I was there, Dad and I worked on building a bench to put on our back deck. Its a pretty small space and we needed something that gave us a little extra storage...so Dad engineered the perfect piece. We had to take it apart to get it back here to Chicago, so Gregg now thinks that he helped "build" it since he put it back together and painted it:). The first picture is just the bench and the second is the bench with the cushions I sewed for it.



That's all for now. Hope you are all doing well!
Love,
Carrie