Our Humans

My friend Lisa gave me the idea for these adorable clothespin dolls. Her children use them to reinact Bible Stories. I have been wanting to make them for a while, so I enlisted her help one morning after church. Here is Maiden holding her 'human'. That's what she calls them. She spends a lot of time pretending with these dolls. Recently I overheard her and one of her older brothers playing together:
Maiden: "I'm going to tell your husband you did that."
Brother: "No you can't."
Maiden: "Yes I can."
Brother: "No you can't, because I'm a man. I don't have a husband."
Maiden: "Oh."

Here we are just getting started. Lisa is the one in the black jacket.

Here the kids are choosing different colors of felt for the clothing.

Prince Charming...right in the center of it all, as usual. As you can see from the window, a lot of time has elapsed since I started with Lisa. It was a Sunday. Doesn't everyone take a nap on Sundays? Yes, I guess you could say I slept that day away. Enough of my Sunday routine and on to the construction of the dolls:

We used clothespins for the bodies, dowel caps for the heads, and clothespin doll stands to keep them in an upright position.

This is a little blurry but you can still see the construction of the doll. For the arms and hands, we used a piece of tan colored pipe cleaner and folded the ends over to make hands. Hot glue secured everything in place.

For a baby, The King cut one of the clothespins down for me and I made the arms a little shorter. I didn't add a doll stand or a dowel cap for the head.

Before we could put the head (the dowel cap) on the doll, we cut a rectangular piece (approximately 7" x 2") of felt with a small triangular shaped hole in the center and slipped it over the top of the clothespin.

Now that the robe is on, you can add the dowel cap for the head. Next, tie some yarn or DMC floss around the waist.

Here is our adult Jesus and our baby Jesus. We dressed the adult Jesus in cream colored robe and then cut an extra piece of felt in purple for an overlay that can be removed. (When the soldiers mocked Jesus in the book of Mark, they put a purple robe on him.) We need to come up with something for the crown of thorns.

We made 12 disciples (de-cycles as Maiden calls them) 4 ladies, Jesus, and baby Jesus. They are pretty universal. We can play out Old Testament stories as well as ones from the New Testament. We did not add faces to them. I like it that way. It would be hard to act out a story of people crying if we had smiling faces on them.

Here are our ladies up close. The widow who gave her two mites (Luke 21: 1-4) is at the left. We thought the drab colors made her look like she didn't have a lot of money.

Here is Mary holding Baby Jesus. We would like to make up more 'humans' for a Nativity Scene before Christmas. I would also like to purchase some Schleich animals to make our stories a little more realistic. I'm thinking about a rooster, a donkey, some goats and sheep. I found a wooden cross at a craft store that we can attach Jesus to when we do resurrection stories. Lisa's children made a tomb, I think it was made out of a tissue box and paper mache. We may do that a little closer to Easter.

I would like to give my younger children some Arch books for Christmas to help inspire their Bible story reinactments. I am so excited about these little dolls. Does anyone have any other ideas for us to add to our box of 'humans'?

Thanks for the great idea, Lisa!

Update

I thought I'd give you a quick update before I head off to bed. I'm feeling really good, except for being a little groggy from the anesthesia. They told me I could expect some pain and cramping, but I have none at all. The procedure went well. I didn't see the doctor after surgery but The King did. All he could remember was that the doctor showed him some pictures of my insides, explained that he scraped my uterus, and said everything looks healthy. Now I have a thin uterus again. I wish we could use that thinning technique for other parts of my body!

Thanks for your prayers. I am so thankful for all your kind words and comments.

Blessings,

More Hospital Time

As many of you know, I had a miscarriage in August. I spent four days in the hospital, needed blood transfusions, and had a D&C. I have been having some problems since then and at a recent ultrasound, the radiologist and my family practitioner wanted some follow up done because of a larger than normal cyst on my ovary.

Yesterday I went to see a gynecologist. He kept talking about the thickness of my uterus and how it was twice as thick as it was supposed to be. I figured he had me confused with another patient, so I let him know that I was there for a cyst on my ovary. He said he knew that, but that he was much more concerned about the thickness of my uterus. News to me!

After an exam, he told me I needed to have another D&C, along with a hysteroscopy (not to be confused with hysterectomy). He figures I still have remaining product of the pregnancy which is not allowing my uterus to return to normal size. Great, more hospital bills.

He told me he didn't want to wait (which made me nervous) and I will be going in tomorrow (Friday) for the procedure. If you know me at all, you know that I am a worrier. I am concerned about not waking up from the anesthesia, the possiblity of it being worse than what he thinks, plus the all the complications he warned me about. Oh yeah, then there is the possibility of catching some bad virus or an antibiotic resistent infection. Worse yet, I made a mistake of doing an internet search for 'thick uterus' and am more worried than ever. I'm a nutcase, I know. If you think of me tomorrow, could you lift me up in prayer? I would really appreciate it.

Lunch Idea

Scribe is my kitchen helper. He loves to try cooking new things. So far he has mastered baking bread (whole wheat from scratch--really from scratch--he even grinds the flour) and frying eggs perfectly. Now he can add another thing to his cooking mastery list: corn dog patties.

First you need a box (or two) of corn bread muffin mix. Mix it according to the directions on the box. Chop up a package of hotdogs and fold them in. (More or less depending on how hot doggy you like them.) Next, fry them on your griddle until they are done in the center. (They take longer to cook than pancakes, so be patient.) Serve with ketchup. Easy enough for a 10 year old to make!

Cobwebs

I was going through my photos this morning and found a few that I wanted to share with you. I took these this fall. October 17 to be exact. We woke to this amazing view. I have never seen anything like it before.

It looked like cobwebs covering the entire ground. Could this be from spiders? Can there be so many spiders working through the night to make such a huge web blanket?

When I went out for a closer look, there was dew on all the webs. The morning was slightly overcast and foggy, yet warm.

Don't you think they look like waves on water? If anyone knows what this is called, or why it occurs, please comment. It was a magnificent sight. God never ceases to amaze me.

(By the way, I'm sure you've noticed that I haven't been posting lately. My heart has not been in it. We have been struggling with our two oldest sons and I am feeling like a complete failure as a parent. I know, I need to give it over to God and move on...but it's hard. Really hard.)