Diabetes Art Club

I have written about this amazing organization called CHAP (Children's Healing Art Project) before. Today, they hosted the first of hopefully many Diabetes Art Clubs. Basically this is a time for families dealing with Type 1 Diabetes to come together and just create. While the kids could use any of the many art supplies to make whatever their hearts could dream up, they also had some specific projects for the kids to work on. They decorated name tags, painted t-shirts, made collages, and made signs for the D art club. One project was to paint pictures of their favorite foods to be hung in a new restaurant in downtown Portland. Super cool! Oh, and guess who I got to meet?....

Heidi (A Work In Progress...) and me

The best part of the event was meeting up with a wonderful Dmom blogger, Heidi. It was so cool to meet a family that I know through our blogs and Facebook. Like you would guess, she is super sweet! Looking forward to getting together more.

Now for some fun pictures of our time today at CHAP....

Bryce creating art with glitter glue.

G and Jaden painting their restaurant art.

Jaden's artwork was of his favorite food: Watermelon

(I loved this so much I had him paint one for our kitchen)

Bryce painted his picture of spinach, broccoli, and carrots.

Drew loved the huge fort at CHAP... here he is peaking inside.

Drew running around having a blast.

Looking for his brother in the big tube.

Bryce in the huge fort.

100 day

Today is the 100th day of school. It was supposed to be yesterday but we had a snow day. In Oregon, an inch of snow closes down everything, even though it was all melted by 11am. Anyhow...

As part of the celebration of 100 days, the kindergartners fill a posterboard with 100 items...beans, noodles, cheerios, stickers, whatever. I asked Bryce what he wanted to use for his 100s poster. He came up with test strips! Unfortunately this idea came right after garbage day so most had been tossed. Decided to see how many I could find by just looking around the house. Afterall, those lil buggers are EVERYWHERE!

I searched around Bryce's bed first....found 31! Went through our van and found 19 more! Under the sofa and between the cushions revealed another 8. Couple on the driveway, one in my bed, few along the baseboards down the hallway. I was partially shocked by the amount of strips laying around but at the same time, surprised I couldn't come up with 100 of them. Oh well, macaroni noodles is probably a better choice for this project anyhow!

ssssssSIX

Last week, My Sweetest Boy turned SIX years old!!!

In honor of this special occasion, we had a

ssssssSpecial ssssssSixth Birthday REPTILE party.

Bryce with his favorite stuffed albino crocodile, Claude, and his croc cupcake cake.

Making a wish (think it has to do with a cure? my wish does!)

We had a reptile lady come over with about 15 different reptiles to awe the kiddos. Bryce got wrapped up in a Woma Python to his utter delight.

the kids loved this....

Monitor Lizard

American Alligator

The kids even got to pet the alligator. Bryce was up first.

My youngest thought this was so cool!

This was only a small section of this snake....

It took ALL the kids to hold up this albino burmese python.

It was a great party (even better since bgs were AWESOME!)

Valentine Eats

Breakfast:

Dinner:

failed sensor

give me a "D"

Devastating diagnosis

Insulin dependent for life

Always on alert

Blood sugar roller coasters

Eat everything but count the carbs

Test throughout the day

Every day, every hour, every minute

Sugar is medicine

couple great giveaways

Gotta tell you about a couple great giveaways in the DOC....

Leighann at D-Mom Blog is giving away some Extend Bars...head on over and check out what she has to say about them and get yourself signed up!

Hallie at The Princess and the Pump is giving away a Skidaddle Bag for all those D supplies, don't miss out.

CHAP/Elements Glass

We have this AMAZING organization here called CHAP (Children's Healing Art Program) They provide art therapy to children in a couple of the local hospitals as well as programs for kids with disabilities and chronic illnesses. They have this awesome studio downtown filled with tons of art supplies where the kids can create with no limits. Paint literally covers every surface of this place! It is open to the public but as "VIPs", we get in free ;-)

This month, CHAP held an Art Club activity at a glass blowing studio (Elements Glass). The kids got to make their own glass ornaments. What an amazing experience.

Bryce standing back from the super hot 2000 degree oven that held the melted glass

rolling colored glass pieces onto his melted glass blob

melting the color on in the fire

coming out of the kiln

doing more rolling/shaping

Bryce then blew into a hose to form the glass into a ball...

Bryce's finished glass ornament

Sweet Tomatoes