Crochet Me Crazy

chenille doll dress 

Here is a picture of a doll dress I finished awhile back. I AM still crocheting every day but I have really been falling down on the job with taking pictures and posting. There is just so much going on right now. The public school has been on spring break this past week so my house has been a "buzzing" with kids all day. I actually took 9 kids (including my 2) at a kid's play place called Jumping Jaks. Took 4 kids (including my 2) to the park and McDonald's last Friday and the same group, I took to the skating rink on Thursday night. I think there was at least one trip to Cici's Pizza in there somewhere where we had 5 kids with us. Tonight, Alison's little "boyfriend" went with us to eat chinese food. Sometimes I wonder if I'm insane! LOL! But in all honesty, I really don't mind. I would rather my kids have there friends here because I know what they are doing. I'm really glad they all like to be here.

We just bought a Legacy soft sided pool today and hopefully it will be here in the next week. It is 17x29x52 and is really huge. We have had a 12" round above ground pool for the past 2 summers that the kids have really enjoyed, however, it got a little bit crowded when friends were over. I decided we needed to get something bigger so the kids could have all their friends over to swim. I don't want to be taking all those kids to the neighborhood pool everyday so this will solve that proble. Jeff is going to build a deck around it. It should be a fun summer! The kids are VERY excited to be getting such a big pool. We decided on the soft sided pool because the liners don't need to be replaced and we can take it with us when we eventually move.

Yesterday and today, we spent the whole day raking and doing spring cleaning in the back yard. Jeff cut tons of limbs to get the yard ready for the pool. I was VERY impressed with Alison's little boy "friend" who lives next door. I offered to pay kids $5 an hour to help and of course, they all said they wanted to. All of them quit after a very short time but Santiago worked solid for 2 hours. He was actually a very big help to us! He raked and hauled literally mountains of leaves to the forest. Then he went around dragging the tree branches to the forest and stacking the bigger peices up against the fence for firewood. I'm just not used to a kid being that diligent and perserverent. The rest of the kids were jumping on the trampoline, screaming and having fun and little Santiago was just working his tail off! We paid him $20 for his work and he definately earned it! He is a real good kid.

Well, how about a few snap shots of life at the Ritz!