bikes

So this has been a great summer of firsts for us. I took all 6 kids for a week of camping all by myself. Ava had 13 horse back riding lessons. Ellie lost her first teeth and Lauren had braces put on hers. The older girls are taking piano lessons, will learn to swim in a few weeks and they taught themselves to ride bikes.



Up until 3 years ago, we lived in apartments. There was nowhere to ride or store bikes so the girls never learned how to ride. A great friend gave us a bike and in the course of one weekend, they were off and riding just fine. We took them to our Goodwill Outlet store and found 3 almost brand new bikes; one for Lauren, one for Maddie and one for Ellie. Ava kept the gifted bike.



We were just about to buy Ellie training wheels when she surprised us by riding all by herself. They are having a ball and we go nightly to the school behind our house and ride, ride, ride. Grae and Molly spend the time playing on the playground.



This has been a very busy and expensive summer, and fall is shaping up to be the same way. We'll replace horse riding lessons with girls choir and bike riding with tearing up the upstairs. We're crazy.

Oh and our house appraisal went through fine. We needed to get $220,000 and the appraiser valued our house at $259,000. Wow! We bought the house for $185,000 three years ago so we were happy! This house has a lot of our blood, sweat and tears in it and we love it.

I finished Grae and Molly's quilts and I will show them later. Love picking fabrics for the quilts - sewing them, not so much. I found it boring sewing straight lines but the free motion quilting was fun. I made many errors but you can't tell without really staring at it so that's good! Well, off to sew diapers.

goodwill finds

We were browsing the Goodwill Outlet store for bikes and I stumbled upon this.



My heart stopped beating for a minute while Brian flipped opened the lid to reveal this...



The price: $15.00. I tackled a sales clerk and asked him to tag it as sold. It was mine. The machine came with the original manual and I discovered it was a Singer 201-2 Centennial model made in Feb. 1950. Only 25,000 were made.

We then discovered that it came with the original binding foot, ruffler foot and hem foot but no all purpose foot. After plugging it in and discovering it ran great, I called our local (very local as in only a few blocks away) sewing repair shop and was told they love working on old Singers and specialize in it. I'm going to have them rewire it (original fraying wires). I was also told they would find an all purpose foot for it.





The cabinet it came in is in very bad shape and I don't know if I want to sand it and restain it or paint it a bright yellow or orange or blue. I'm going to see if I can find out how old it is.

This is the top:


So anyway, I'm beyond excited as I've wanted on for awhile. Lauren has claimed it for herself when I die but I told her she could use it now while I'm healthy.

We did find bikes for the girls but that is another post.

overheard

I was sitting on the couch with Grae and Ellie and we were discussing the divine and human nature of Jesus. Sounds academic doesn't it.

Grae: "Did Jesus have a nose?"

Me: "Yes, he was a man."

Grae: "Does God have a nose?"

Me: "No, God is a spirit and doesn't have a body like we do. Jesus has a body."

Grae: "Did Jesus have hair?"

Me: "Yes, he had hair and wore clothes and he even went poop and potty."

Grae: "Jesus didn't go poop!"

Me: "Yes he did, he was a man. He probably even threw up when his tummy hurt."

Ellie: "Did baby Jesus wear a diaper?"

Me: "Yes, probably."

Grae: "Did he wear a Bum Genius?"

Me: "Um, no. They weren't invented back then."

Grae: "Did he wear a pocket diaper?"

Ellie: "Grae, he probably wore cloth diapers like Mommy makes."

Me: "Well Ellie, they didn't have bamboo velour then. Maybe he had some of linen?"

Grae: "Did Jesus have eyebrows.."

Here we go again...