Angry BIRD-Day Party...Take Two!

Here's my second (and final) installment of our 9 year old's Angry Birds Party.

The Cake!

Pretty sad, isn't it??? I usually do a pretty good job (if I do say so myself), but we had some Cake-tastrophes that contributed to our simple and gooey cake: dry & crumbly cakes, cakes stuck to pans, runny frosting (totally blaming the insane humidity on that one). You name it...it went wrong!

But we held our Angry Cake Chins high and plodded on!

The "structure" is made of chocolate wafer cookies. The small stones are CoCo Puffs. I was going to add some Oreo Dirt, but we also had a Blender-tastrophe! And the little figures are right out of the kid's Angry Birds "Knock on Wood" game!

But the Kidlets loved it! And the Grown-ups seemed to like it!

Humid Frosting aside...it tasted pretty yummy!

This is my life, Good Bloggy Friends! 

John apparently didn't get the "Crazy Shot" memo!

Angry BIRD-Day! Part 1...

I'm pretty sure everyone and their Mom knows the game Angry Birds.

Well. Maybe not. My Mom was like, "What? What's this you're talking about?" But then, my parents still have a rotary dial phone in their kitchen. Ma & Pa Kettle they are!

Anyway. My kids are obsessed with this game. And they're ridiculously good at it! So it wasn't a surprise when my soon-to-be nine year old asked for an Angry Birds theme for his birthday party.

He wanted an Angry Birds cake, Decorations & Party Invites...but all the gifts on his list were either Pok-e-Mon (which will be the death of me) OR Skybenders (I don't even know if this is correct. It's the video game where you can buy little guys and put them on your glow pad (for reals) and that figure becomes your violent cartoon game character). 

Oh. And he wanted the game Mouse Trap.

But I had to squeeze some sort of Angry Bird into the gift pile. And I found the perfect idea over at Angels have the phone box. She has an excellent free crochet pattern page with the Main Angry Bird Himself and a Green Piggy to go with Him!

Seriously. Don't you want to smack that smug smile of the goofy pigs face when he doesn't explode?

Moving right along...the patterns were easy and quick to follow!

Here he doesn't look so angry! Let me mention that the safety eyes I had malfunctioned and attacked me...so I just made thick knots out of black yarn to use as pupils.

Now he's looking angry! Also, since these were going into the hands of a crazy energetic kid, I crocheted the Angry Uni-Brow instead of using black felt. And I stitched that bad boy on...tight!

Here's my finished pair. They look rather friendly with each other!

And here's my Happy Customer!

Not So Much Fun

Hi, Everyone.

Remember me? I used to blog here...kind of regularly.

I've been MIA for a long time and I think I'm ready to share a bit why.

Here's the Warning: This isn't funny or crafty. So you can totally stop reading now if you want. My plan is to get this off my chest and come back later tonight or tomorrow back to my old self!

Here Goes.

Our oldest, Louie, just turned nine on Monday. He's currently in third grade at a Private Catholic School. This year he has been the victim of bullying. It has broken my heart.

It started back in October. His bully is a girl. I won't get into too many details. It started with verbal bullying and taking his things from his desk. Then it turned physical. The first incident was poorly mishandled by the teacher and by administration.

We love our school. We are those super crazy-active parents who volunteer for everything. We love the families we've met. We love the teachers our son has had. We had total faith that things would work out and we wouldn't have any more problems.

Three weeks later she did it again. This time was bad enough that I was taking pictures of my son's chest while we both bawled after school. We met with administration the next morning. Things seemed positive.

And they were positive with this girl. She has kept away from Louie.

Then his teacher started bullying him. Verbally and Emotionally. His teacher consistently puts him next to the girl who has hurt him. We've requested twice that he be moved from her class. We were turned down. They had Louie talk to the school counselor and together they made a list of pros and cons of him staying in her classroom. He told the counselor that, even though his teacher is crazy and says crazy things, he's used to it. He's used to it and he knows she's a liar and he doesn't have to believe what she tells him. How sad is that? My heart broke...again!

So. Here's where we are. There are six more days of classes. Administration asked that we document our year. My report had 11 pages! Our principals have brought our complaint to the Father of our Parish. I have faith in this man. He is an educator and in the two years he's been at our church, he has made some fantastic changes to our school.

So every day I pray. I'm not sure what I should pray for, though. 

It seems wrong to pray that this woman loses her job. But I hope she does. 

It seems ridiculous that I should have to pray for the administration of a school to see what is going on under their noses and wake up! But I do. 

I pray for wisdom that my husband and I can make a decision this summer as to where we send Louie to school next year. Louie wants to stay where he is. He loves his friends. He loves all the other teachers. 

Mostly, I pray that I can be the brave Christian soldier our son seems to be, with his chin up and ready to forgive and forget.