Month: March 2013

especially by my sweet husband! 🙂

I’m grateful he supports me in my crazy crafty endeavors. 🙂

Just doing a little sunday afternoon singing-pianoing

Lorelei loves the opportunity on Sundays to dress up. This dress is her favorite, because it’s like a princess dress.

I told her we were going to take princess pictures, and this is where her hands went, next to her face? 🙂

And I am enjoying figuring out hair styles for Lorelei too…

I’ve said this before, the boys as they get older want to play with toys more, but seem to do it less. So I love SUNDAYS when we can just ‘be’, the Legoes got left out for a few days afterwords, and the kids played and played and played.

Animal Report!

Tucker did a great job with his 4th grade report. He choose the praying mantis, and wrote a paper, and made an poster:

And I think his report is my favorite!
Praying Mantis
by Tucker Phillips

Introduction
The praying mantis is a born hunter and you have probably seen one before. It is very cool, common and there is usually at least one or two in your backyard during spring.

Description
The praying mantis is a hunter who is usually green or brown. When they are born they are light brown usually resembling his\her parents. It is usually ½ cm to 4 in long.

Home
They usually live near a plant or in a garden or field that is warm and has bugs and is sunny, warm and a good place to lay egg sacs. They usually live in Northern America, Northern Africa, Asia, temperate rainforests, and Southern Europe.

Food
The praying mantis will usually eat whatever is available. It is commonly thought that they will only eat bugs such as aphids, mosquitoes, flies, roaches, bees, cricket, butterflies, grasshoppers, beetles, and spiders, but they will also eat small birds, such as hummingbirds and sparrows. Also they eat minnow tadpoles and other small fish.

Winter
During winter they die…but have usually already laid eggs in an egg sac, which is a hard case that many kinds of bugs lay eggs in, and is similar to a cocoon. The egg sac will usually burst around the beginning of spring or slightly earlier.

Facts
Some cool facts about praying mantises are listed below:
1. Mantis means prophet in greek.
2. An 80,000 year old praying mantis was recently found in amber. This bug could be the link between modern day insects and the dinosaurs from ancient past!!!
3. The praying mantis is a pure barbarian. It will usually eat it’s mate after mating.
4. Praying mantis will often be put into farmers gardens purposely because they eat other bugs.
5. Praying mantis have been know to attack cats and SURVIVE!!!

Plants
A few plants that live near the praying mantis are trees which they often lay their eggs in or live in. Also they will live in bushes or pea plants or vines.

Adaptations
Some adaptations praying mantis have are:
1. They are usually green or brown to blend in with the nearby plants or other places to live in.
2. Another reason praying mantis survive is there protective egg sac. It will shield them from the cold and any other kind of threat that could face the young mantis.
3. Adult praying mantis will have barbed claws for attacking prey.

Predators
The main predators of the praying mantis are large fish, who will devour egg sacs, bats who will swoop down and devour them in the night and last of all birds who will grab it or any other insect it sees.

Conclusion
Finally here’s the conclusion. Praying mantises are very cool. It is a hunter but here’s a big question? Can they socialize? The answer usually not with their kind but they will crawl on human hands without hurting us. The big answer….sometimes!!! Well I’m out of ideas, so I guess this is the end.

While I was touching up the office walls, and had to pull out all the furniture, and pulling out the sewing machine table, reminded me how for years now I have wanted to paint it yellow. So I decided that now was as good of time was any, and started on the task. Because Apparently I have painting ADD, and I love having my whole house torn apart painting things! 🙂
Sun Yellow! Bright, yes?

Before, don’t mind my de-junking mess-

3 coats of paint in:

After being distressed.

after being stained

and the finished product…

And after I got the blinds cleaned,

the couch steam cleaned,

I can now say the office is now COMPLETELY Dejunked, and CLEAN!

I still have a few painting projects I want to do (desk and hutch), but I think I’ll wait until the weather is a little warmer! 🙂

Bets on how last it will stay clean? 2.4 minutes? Yep, you were right. 🙂

Truman likes to play while he’s doing his jobs. Like cleaning his room for example. Who would want to clean your room, when you could become Tie Man?

🙂 Silly happy boy!

Tucker got up early, and took care of the youngest two children, and then made Toph and I breakfast in bed.

Pancakes, Eggs and Juice. That’s no easy task!

So grateful for such a thoughtful boy! Hard to believe sometimes that he is only (yet already) 10!

Grandma Hunsaker is doing so much better, she recently fell and broke some vertebrae in her back. After surgery, and a few days in the hospital, she was released to a rehabilitation Center, to help her get her muscles strengthened, and ready to return home.

We got to go visit her there, and happened to plan our visit at the same time they were serving Ice-Cream for an Ice-Cream social. 🙂

The boys were thrilled to get to sit in Grandma’s room and eat Ice-cream while watching Arthur.
We’re glad that Grandma is already doing so much better. 🙂

He’s got ’em, and he’s using them, and this is how he spends his afternoon, doing his ‘scissor work’ 🙂


I love watching my kids master new skills.