Easter Bunny Origami - Pinterest Busters

A Tale of Two Bunnies

  The first one had over 20 steps to make this little bunny basket that will hold small trinkets.  Cute on the web site, but didn't work for us.  

Dancer would say this pin is busted.  Maybe if you are skilled in the art of origami, but for the beginner this is not a winner.

Second bunny had only nine folds and we successfully made a whole fluffle of bunnies.  The bunny stands up and you can brighten up your Easter table by using them as name place cards.  We have to say that this pin is winner, winner, bunny dinner.

We Visited A Zoo

 Last week we took a day trip up north for our last big hurrah of the summer before Dancer started school this week.  Truth be told it was one of our only hurrahs of the summer, seems no one has the same days available anymore. We went to a zoo/wildlife/petting zoo place.

Dancer and I posed sweetly on the bear's lap for a picture.  

And then realized, what are we doing, we're sitting on a bear's lap!

Dancer ain't afraid of no bear!

Dad is so hard core he flossed the bear's teeth. 

My picture with Spark.  I guess this is all you get with a 15 year old.

 I did get a picture of both the kids and Paul Bunyan.

On to the petting zoo.  This camel knows where the treats come from and he wanted Dancer to feed him.

Dancer with Mother Goose

The parakeet house was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.  It is a large, screened building with about 75 parakeets in it. All the birds fly from one side of the building to the other in a big swoop.  If you stood with your arms out a bunch of them would land on arm.

They also loved my shoes for some reason.  I don't have any food on them so not sure what the attraction was.  I had to shake them off to get them to leave because they were starting to creep me out.

Not sure why there was a table in there, but as soon as Spark sat down the table filled up with birds.

The cutest thing we saw there was a mom kangaroo giving her little joey a bath in her pouch.

We finished the day off with a Chinese buffet and now we are back to the grind.

Dancer Graduates!!

Her graduation date was May 11th. She earned an AA Liberal Arts degree from Alexandria Technical and Community College.  Since she completed the entire degree on line and never met another student, or any of her teachers, she didn't go through the graduation ceremony.  We were at the party store and saw this decoration in the colors of the school so I snapped a picture to commemorate the occasion. 

We did get her a gift, a big gift at that.

Ripping off the paper she smiled bigger and bigger.

I didn't even know a counter top ice maker was a thing until Dad bought it for her.  Probably not a normal graduation gift, but she loves ice. She used to bring a cup of it home from work on the nights she works like a great treasure. Now she can have it anytime she wants, no we didn't have an ice maker in our refrigerator.  

New Retainer Finally

Dancer got her braces off six years ago and got retainers to wear.  About a year into wearing them I thought they looked pretty bad (aka gross), but every time we went in they said they were still okay and doing their job.  This spring at her yearly check up she got the same story.  About two weeks later they wore through and broke in half.  At last she got a new bottom retainer.  The top one isn't this clear plastic and will probably last until she is in the nursing home. 

When she went in to pick the new one up (which they just handed her, no bag or anything) she snapped a shot at the appointment log in screen.  She was so young, fifth grade here.

Finally a new retainer! The last one, which she had to wear so much the first year, lasted six years, so this one, that she only wears at night, might get her through 12 years. 

It is kinda odd that we are at the point where she send me pictures.  When we started I felt like the orthodonitist office was our second home we were there so much and now she goes to her appointments on her own. Time sure changes things..

Complete Randomness

Nikki incognito

Dad making crochet humor.  I thought my little elephant needed a mom so I am in the process making her one.

Frog in glass by Spark

Mac and cheese doesn't have food coloring anymore!!!  It is has been about 10 years since has been welcome in our house, but it's in now! Seems like a novelty to us.

When Fluffles isn't sleeping he's trying to figure out how to get some Temptations cat treats.

Out to lunch

Dancer, the queen of selfies.

Yeah, that's a goat/llama water bucket.  They think the buckets are either a bathroom or a footbath.

The thank you gift we made for Spark's speech co-op leaders.

Double decker sleeping spot.

Car washing.

The want ads at the feed mill.

Bert after a bath.

Dancer is moving on

Dancer is graduating this spring from community college with an AA degree in liberal arts.  She has decided to follow in Dad's footsteps and major in nursing.  We went to an orientation day, which seemed strange after she has been attending college for 3 years that we fnally go to an orientation.  We hope this works out for her.  She has one more prerequisted to take, which has to be completed before being able to apply to the major, and the she will hopefully be accepted.  They have about 100 applicants for every 40 that get in. Yikes, that's less than 50%! She will take the prerequist she needs and then if she doesn't get in the major apply to another school. Whatever happens at least she's moving forward.

Happy Birthday Dancer!

Dancer turned 19! She chose, as she does every year, cheese cake as her cake.

Turned Christmas paper into birthday paper by circling the 19 on it. It totally worked, everyone was fooled.

The one gift she really, really wanted for Christmas as an Ivory ella t-shirt.  The one she wanted was out of stock so I didn't get any, Oops! She would have been happy with any of their t-shirts I found out after we opened Christmas gifts. A good thing about having your birthday not long after Christmas is that you can reask, clear up any misunderstandings about what you wanted, and get them for your birthday.

For her birthday meal she wanted to go out to eat at Fudrucker's in the Twin Cities. This restaurant  meant a three hour round trip drive, but that is where she wanted to eat and we all love their food so we happily took her.  We went there the weekend before her birthday because no one was really available to celebrate on her birthday.  We did slide in a quick diner at Pizza Ranch between activities on her actual day so she got birthday diner twice.  

Graduation!

Homeschool class of 2015.  

I liked this photo.  I thought it would be great irony to have their program picture taken "outside" of a school.  It shows that you can graduate without ever stepping a foot in a traditional classroom.  

Dancer before the ceremony.

Twelve leaves on the rose to represent each of the graduates.  They had a dinosaur that held a rose and he would invite them to all the meetings.  This rose symbolizes they are all part of one.  Took a while to explain that to the lady that made the cake, she was going for aesthetics, but once we explained she did a great job with it.  I was in charge of ordering the cake so it is food coloring free, except for the rose, so that Dancer could have a piece. 

Each graduate set up a table to show a bit about who they are.  Dancer choose, of course, her tap shoes, 4-H ribbons and name tags, games we like to play, a Dr. Who mug, crochet dragons, Phantom of the Opera book, some pictures, and her beloved gel highlighters, which without she probably couldn't study and would have been a D- student (not really!)

The ceremony had a commencement speaker, a slide show of each of the graduates of pictures of them through the years, 

the parents presented their diploma,

and then they walked off as adults ready to enter the world!  Now Dancer is trying to get use to saying, "I was homeschooled" compared to "I'm homeschooled."

When we gave them their diploma, they gave us a rose.  Love the color of the one Dancer chose for us.

After the ceremony we went to Pizza Ranch to celebrate, seems we do a lot of celebrating there.  This was the sky, it rained most of the day, buy by this time the sun was starting to peek out.  Hope this is a symbol of how their future will be, sunshine after storms.

Dancer Inducted into Phi Theta Kappa