September So Far

 September has been rolling by quickly! Here's some snippets of how it's been going around here...

9.2.22 - 

9.3.22 - 

Annah came home for a night!

Caeden has been taking his guitar places and sometimes we get to hear him play a little bit. Apparently, he recently serenaded students and teachers outside during a fire drill at school. I hear he also plays in the hallways and sometimes outside the high school office.

Sylvia was home for 2 nights and requested a  dinner at Texas Roadhouse!

9.5.22

I made a pumpkin cream cheese bundt cake and it was gone very quickly. 

I did also make 2 loaves of pumpkin cream cheese bread, which lasted almost a whole week.

I will not be bothered by finding Caeden's backpack in random places around the house. All too soon there will be no backpacks to find in random places around the house.

9.6.22

I didn't have any lessons to teach, so Jeremy and I went to DQ for supper.

Last month the water tower in Arrowsmith got painted as some repairs were finished inside it.

This month, it got repainted a nicer, calmer color of blue. (Apparently someone didn't approve of the first blue.) It was silver and had never been painted. It does look nice as you drive into the village now.

9.10.22

The marching Mustangs competed at Washington HS Marching Band Invitational today. It was 94 degrees out, very humid, and not one cloud or breeze in the sky. They had to walk a looooong way to and from warm-ups in full uniforms carrying instruments and then go right on the field to perform. One student passed out before they even made it to warmups, and others had to stop in the medical tent after the performance because everyone was overheated! It was a tough one! They did a good job though. The band is mostly seniors and freshmen this year.

9.13.22

I've noticed it is starting to look like Fall in some places.

On my way into the high school this morning...

9.14.22

More Fall. On my morning drive to work.

The neighbor's cat by our house, watching Jeremy

All grades except seniors were required to do MAP testing this week. The HS principal found volunteer jobs for the seniors to do today to earn the next MAP testing day [in December] off school. Caeden and these guys were on cleanup duty around the school grounds.

9.16.22 

Jeremy took Caeden to a glaive concert in Indianapolis! Glaive is younger than Caeden, but Caeden has been a fan of his for a while now and was super pumped about the concert. He LOVED it!

9.17.22

The Marching Mustangs competed at the Normal Marching Band Invitational at IWU today. They had a great performance and earned 3rd place and best color guard!

Here is a video of their performance. Their show theme is "Candy Crush" and includes the songs:

Sweet Caroline, Sugar Sugar, Cake Medley, Lollipop, and a mash-up of Sweet Emotion and I Want Candy. I think it's pretty fun, and the audiences are liking it too!

And crowds always love when the band does their Monster Stomp off the field!

My fall allergies really had me down this weekend, so we didn't stay to watch the rest of the bands after Ridgeview performed. We took Caeden and stopped at Moe's on the way home. I guess Caeden is now a "Queso Guru."

9.18.22

Though we haven't been active members at Point of Change, the church we were very active in planting and growing, for a couple of years, the 10 year anniversary celebration was today and the guys went to represent our family. The church was just basically given a beautiful, large, old church building two weeks ago, and today's service was held there. 

I stayed home and tried to rest up and watched the service online. 

The 10-year video made me cry. So many memories with this church, these people, in the last decade. 

9.19.22

Our weather radio went off many times between midnight and 3am, and we found ourselves in the basement for 20-30 minutes around 1am for a tornado warning.

This is Homecoming Week at Ridgeview, and today the spirit day was "Anything but a backpack." Caeden wanted to haul a dresser around school all day, but we didn't have one that would work. So, he carried his books and Chromebook in a cardboard toilet paper box!  

9.20.22

Today the homecoming spirit day was "Teacher/Student Swap," and students were supposed to dress like their favorite teacher and teachers could dress like students for the day. A lot of students dressed like specific teachers, and a few teachers dressed like any generic teenage student, or created their own student persona for the day. But TWO teachers actually dressed specifically like Caeden! 

Mrs. McCoy messaged me last night to ask if I thought Caeden would be ok with her dressing as him. I thought he would be honored and offered to bring her some of his clothes. She had already planned on jeans with frayed edges, Vans, borrowed drumsticks from Mr. Marchese, and figured out how to style her hair up to look like Caeden's! I offered a hoodie or jeans, then she asked specifically for Caeden's black and white striped shirt. I had to laugh because he has 3 or 4! I took her 2 and a hoodie. She also rocked the headphones like Caeden does most days at school. She came into the library to pose for a photo before school and she even got his posture down pretty well!

Mr. Leinweber was a total surprise, and a friend of Caeden's walked me around the school to find and see him at breakfast duty. He later showed Caeden that he'd been taking notes on his phone when he came up with outfit ideas for weeks! I really love the post-it note patches on his jeans!

Yearbook photographers got Caeden and Mrs. McCoy together in her classroom. She told me that Caeden laughed so hard when he saw her that he started a coughing fit, so she counted it a success!

She even borrowed an energy drink can from another student so she could complete the Caeden "look!"

Pretty great teachers who know a kid well enough to dress up like him! T

hey say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...

Caeden was completely surprised, and maybe even a little honored.

All of the teachers who dressed up "like students"

Crochet Temperature Projects

Disclaimer: This post is copied from my crochet blog: Crafted With Care {Blog}

Back in February, I finally got excited about trying a temperature blanket project. Things changed a bit after I completed that first square based on January 2022, but I have actually completed couple temperature projects this year and wanted to document them here.

After I made my first linen stitch square, I decided I needed to loosen my stitch/guage and went up to a bigger hook. I had already stitched in all the ends of my first square, so there was no undoing it. I went back to Michaels to get more purple tweed yarn and learned that their whole line of tweeds I was using was being discontinued!!! I bought up everything they had there in the store, and decided I better re-think my project and figure out a way to do my project, making sure I had enough of each color of yarn to complete it, since I had no way of getting more--even online.

(As you can see, there are a lot of ends to weave in and hide, just in one square! Every time you change yarn colors or run out of a color you're using, you have 2 ends to weave in.)

Since the weather is so unpredictable, I decided to make my temperature blanket based on a year that had already happened! I decided to use the temperatures of the year 2020. It had been a particularly tough year for our family, but was also Jeremy's and my 20th wedding anniversary year. So, I decided it would be a great year to have something beautiful to remember it by. 

I did a lot of math to figure out the temperature ranges that would represent my 9 colors and allow me to use the daily high temperatures and not use up all my yarn. Whew! While I wouldn't call my color palette the traditional rainbow colored temperature blanket choices, I did generally use cooler colors for colder temperatures and warmer colors for warmer temperatures with grays, creams, and tans mixed in to pull it together. And I had one yarn that is available at multiple stores that I knew I wouldn't run out of, so that became my connector yarn for connecting each square and bordering the blanket, as well as my most common temperature range 66-72 degrees. 

My final overall temperature range/color/yarn chart:

Below is one month's square's pattern. Each date's high temperature and the yarn color for the temperature range it fell in. I created one of these for each of the 12 months before I began the 2020 blanket. To make each square, you start in the center and work out, so rows get longer/bigger and require more yarn as the square grows. 

Each square was 32 rounds, regardless of how many days were in the month. So, if a month only had 28 days, it would have 4 rounds of the neutral connector color around the outside to make it 32 rounds total. Therefore, all the squares were the same size and able to be connected in the end.

It was so satisfying to see each square complete its own pattern and turn into 12 beautifully different months!

I so enjoyed working this pattern that it took me less than a month to complete the entire blanket, stitch all 12 squares together, create a large border around the whole thing, and stitch in literally more than 1,000 ends! It was a true joy to work up!

I find it so difficult to get good photos of blankets, so I just basically tossed it on the couch and took a couple snapshots with my phone. If these photos were advertisement for sale, I would've had to done a better job. But, I don't think anyone would pay what it cost me to make this blanket, so I won't be trying to sell any!

 When I completed the blanket, I had enough yarn left to make another. So, I decided to make temperature PILLOWS based on 2021--one square/month for each side of a pillow!

When I finished the pillows, I had enough yarn left to make a basket to hold the blanket! 

 It's not based on temperature, but uses all the same yarns, and it all looks so nice in our living room.

(The painting was done by my paternal grandfather, who passed away when I was only 3 months old. It is a real honor to have some of his paintings in our home, and I treasure them.)

These were such fulfilling, therapeutic projects for me, and I truly loved making them for our home.