My Mischievous Graduate 2013

I'm listening to Third Eye Blind's "Graduate" song while writing this post for inspiration but after singing a few lines I realize that it's not really fitting the occassion, especially the "punk ass" part. Still a good song though.

My eldest son, Alec, recently graduated from high school. (Big sigh of relief.) We've been waiting for this moment since his first day of kindergarten. It's been quite the long and winding road for us. School has definitely changed since my husband and I attended and it has been quite a learning experience. Unfortunately for Alec since he is our firstborn we made most of our mistakes with him. We even messed up kindergarten. We were not aware that he was supposed to already know the alphabet and be able to count to 20 before he started kindergarten. No one told us. We just assumed that he would learn it in school. There was not a starter kit that told new parents what to do. Over the years there were many more slap our foreheads and "Why didn't anyone tell us?" moments. But despite our grandest failures and mistakes our boy made it and graduated #40 in class with honors and certifications in Adobe Photoshop and Graphic Design and Illustration.

I was going through some papers and found these communication notes from his elementary teacher. At the time my husband and I got a good chuckle, but we had to hide our amusement and instead show Alec stern faces and have serious talks with him about his behaviour. There were a few other incidents but he stopped getting in trouble because he learned how to hide his mischievousness. I know he was still a rascal because he would tell us every once in a while about stuff at school. Now that Alec is older we can laugh about these notes from his teacher together.

 Chasing another student after spitting on his hand to "touch him" with spit.

Tearing movie tickets so it reads "ASS" and passing it to other students. 

Out of seat during Social Studies, Blurting in class that Santa is gay, Disrupting class during presentations.

We've come a long way since Alec's pranking days and he put in a lot of hard work and effort to achieve his goals. We know his AP classes were not easy and neither of us could help with AP physics. We're so proud of him and we definitely wanted to celebrate it.  Next post is about his graduation party.

First day of school. We still have the Blue's Clues Steve shirt.

Typical teen on phone. 

Minecraft Birthday Party, Pt. 2

As I mentioned in Minecraft Party Part 1 there is not much Minecraft supplies out on the market.  It's not like I could run to Party City and buy party supplies or order a cake from the bakery with a Minecraft theme.  Luckily I found a seller who supports cancer research and sells edible cake toppers on ebay. It was so easy. I ordered a plain cake with only borders from the bakery and carefully added the cake topper. The topper was brightly colored and exactly like the Minecraft image.  It really does not have a taste to it just like gum paste. I'm so glad I found it because my son asked me to make a cake that is in the Minecraft game and I did not have time to do it.  Here's the seller on ebay if you're interested.

http://myworld.ebay.com/cakesforcures2003  I am a mother of a cancer survivor who is 9. I wanted to figure out a way to help cancer research fund raising and I also have been interested in selling on ebay. I combined these two interests and donate a portion of all proceeds to cancer research.  (http://myworld.ebay.com/cakesforcures2003?_trksid=p2047675.l2559)  

You can also find Minecraft toys and T-shirts on Amazon.  Below is the sword in the game.  I don't have a picture of the shirt.  We ordered a large adult shirt and it acutally fit our 12 yr old boy.

Everyone knew the end of the world was not really going to take place on Dec. 21 just because the Mayan calendar suddenly stopped but there was such hoopla about it that it became a joke.  My son's birthday is December 22 so I thought it would be fun to add a music CD with  "end times" and other relateable songs in the goodie bag for the party. We did songs such as "It's the End of the World," "Sugar, We're Going Down," and "Stayin' Alive".

Comic is cd cover.

goodie bag stuff

We had a great time at Amazing Jake's.  The kids are all old enough to run around on their own while we adults sat at the tables and talked for 3 hours. Amazing Jake's has a buffet that we can continue to get food from thoughout the day.  It's not the greatest food but it will do. The kids really enjoy the endless amounts of pizza.  The kids were given cards that they scanned to play video games, ride go karts, rock climbing, and play laser tag and putt putt.  The only drawback is the kids run out of credits for video games quickly on their cards if they're not too careful.

Minecraft Birthday Party, Pt. 1

Once again I have neglected my blog for months.  I thought having a blog would be much easier than writing in my journal. My hands ached before I could finish writing about the events in my family's lives so many entries in my journal abruptly end. I thought using a computer would be quicker and help keep me on track - but it looks like the problem lies with me and not really my achy hands. I do love to look back on my life through my journals and reflect. I love remembering the good times and seeing how Jesus has always brought me through the tough trials of my life. Sometimes I read what I wrote and I think "that was dumb or I miss those moments." Unfortunately, I usually write when I'm in angst so there are many more tales of woe than the happy-rainbow stories. For 2013 I am determined to keep up with my blog and be more productive.

This past December we had a Minecraft birthday party for my son. He is a total Minecraft geek. I do not know how to play this game so I had zero ideas on how to have a Minecraft b-day party. One day when he was at school I tried playing Minecraft to get some ideas and it was beyond me. The character just walked around and I didn't know what to do. I built a wall but I could not figure out the purpose of the game. The same thing happened when I tried to play Halo. I just walked along a beach and around the space ship.  There was no one to fight. I don't understand these games. I'll take Tetris, Pac Man or Diner Dash any day.  However, I did learn from playing Minecraft is that everything is in a cube form.

I searched the internet, Pinterest, and Tumblr and I didn't really find any great ideas on Minecraft parties. The game is little more obscure than Legos or Disney themed parties.  It seemed to me that many parents were also lacking ideas. So far the only idea I could come up with was making creeper party bags. It only required green bags and black construction paper. I was wracking my brain  Then one day I came across The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft Papercrafts.  There are downloads of the characters, tools, weapons, and items in the game. He has instructions also how to fold the paper and make the cubes which come out to be approximately between 1-3" inches.  All it requires is paper, printer, and adhesive. Because we were having the party at Amazing Jake's I knew the little paper boxes would not work well and get crushed. But an idea started to form in my head and I decided I could make Steve's head with the free download.

This requires a square box or cube and patience. I also made this using Word. At The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft Papercrafts I downloaded Steve.  This download has Steve's entire body so I cropped out everything but the head. You will need to keep the original of Steve's head because you will be cropping it several times. On Steve's head I took the front side (with the eyes) and cropped out the rest and sized it to match as close as possible to the size of the box on one side. It should be a square (see pic below). I proceeded to this with the left and right side of Steve's head. On the opposite side I decided to put the his face again instead of hair. By this time I was running out of ink so I decided to use brown paper for the top of the head instead of printing it out.  I also printed on cardstock paper because it is more durable and the glue will less likely bleed through.

Left side, face, and right side of Steve's head.

Score the sides before gluing to the box. 

Using Crayola Twistables I colored in the white edges before I glued the side pieces.

Luckily I had brown cardstock on hand and didn't have to run out to the craft store.

The cardstock wasn't a perfect match but no one noticed. 

For the Creeper I bought green bags from Michael's (using 40% discount coupon) and cut out squares from black construction paper.  Glue the squares to form the Creeper face.

This is a picture from the game.  This is what Steve actually looks like which is exactly the same as the download. The Creeper is in the background. 

A special thanks to BenBurge at The Ultimate Guide to Minecraft Papercraft!