First weeks of school

 I've just finished my second week of school, as have my boys. Busy, busy busy!

1. Labor Day weekend we traveled to Two Harbors to wish my grandmother a happy 94th birthday. She looked gorgeous!
2. We've started taekwondo every evening for the boys. I have to pick them up from school, then drive them immediately there (so far, the boys have done their homework in the car). Rowan's TKD is two nights a week, Dominic's the other two. Me? I will use that time to grade.
3. This past weekend we took the boys to the Lions Parade in Osseo, where they marched with TKD. Gorgeous weather, though we did not get much candy for them. The floats don't really hand it out to grown ups. 
4. Sunday we went to the Renaissance Festival, where we had an awesome but dusty time (I'm ready for a week of rain). I splurged on earrings, the boys got swords, and Derick got a new wallet. 
5. I have really enjoyed teaching my students. I always teach the best in school.

This weekend we're looking at attending Dominic's violin recital--he's playing Bach's Minuet 1, and since he's getting his hair cut before that, he should have a nice spiky 'do for it. And the boys will help do some yard work to earn Lego money.

Now I'm just tired. I have worked on little bits of creative stuff here and there, but not finished anything. Right now, though, I'm inspired to do something I got ideas on from Pinterest and another page pairing an old and new photo, which I thought of while listening to the Paperclipping Roundtable while I was mowing the lawn last weekend.

How have your first few weeks of September gone?

Crafting around the house

True confessions: my craft is scrapbooking. I cross-stitch too, and I stamp a card occasionally, but I do not seek ways to fill my house with crafts. For one thing, it's impractical. I don't have a lot of space, and I have two pets and two boys. Combine those things, and you get damaged crafts. I can't bring myself to do that.

However, I recently put together my computer skills (creating a table in Word) with my stamps to help my son keep track of his violin practice. How often has he done each exercise and song over the last week? We now can tell:


The bonus is that Dominic does the stamping. He LOVES that. And also note that though it looks like he's choosing random star stamps, he makes sure he uses the same stamp every row. That is so him.

If he practices each song and exercise five times a week between lessons, he gets a reward. For him, he chose going to a local restaurant Three Squares to eat. He adores their chocolate waffles.

I love their breakfast burritos too, so I'm helping him practice as much as I can.