How is this possible?

Now, with the law of averages it seems logical that Lucy would only put her shoes on the wrong feet 50% of the time. This is why I think that she knows exactly what she is doing when she puts her shoes on, or her clothes for that matter. If I don't plan on going anywhere special, I let her chose her clothes and put them on. She takes advantage of this opportunity to wear the most girly play clothes she can find. What is more girly than a pink dress paired with her favorite jean skirt, worn Lucy style?


Not only are her dress and skirt backwards, but she decided to take it to a whole new level and turn her dress inside out too. I love the tag. She's got a style of her own, that's for sure. It took plenty of convincing to let me help her turn it right-side-in and change the skirt for pants when we had to run an errand later that day. Her hair did get done eventually, too.

December projects

Confession: I work best when I have a deadline. I have tried, without success, to trick my mind into thinking that I have the power and authority to create my own deadlines. Sadly, the best deadlines are those imposed by other people and holidays.

Now that I have that off of my chest, I want to show you the awesome things that I accomplished this month for Christmas!

I finally finished our family quilt for my mom. I won't tell you how long it has been sitting in my craft room with everything finished except the pictures. My talented neighbor did the decorative stitching for me and I finished binding it before my mom left on the 27th. Only 2 days after Christmas (doh).

I am still a novice at quilting, and would someday like to figure out how to quilt designs other than square, but the beautiful stitching made a big difference in my simple quilt. I loved the design that my neighbor used, and I was happy with everything except the fact that my iron was too hot on some of the iron-on's and they didn't work out as well as they could have.

I started my next project this summer when our nieces, Emily and Valerie came to visit for a day. I wanted to show them how fun our woodworking equipment is to use, so I decided that we would spend the day making shelves. I used some left-over MDF for my shelves and the thought of sanding down the edges was enough to make me decide to put it aside for...a few months. Finally I decided that I wanted them out of the way so that I could work on my Christmas projects. It didn't take much time at all to come up with an alternate plan to sanding. I just spray painted the insides and "wrapped" the edges with fabric. They turned out really cute.

My last project for this month, almost killed my sewing machine and my washing machine, but it was worth it. It turned out so much cuter than I expected. I made a picnic quilt for my sister's family. I had never tried a rag quilt before, let alone a jean rag quilt. It is quite the process, especially if most of your jean material comes from size 4T (that's toddler) jeans and smaller. Luckily I had some friends who were happy to give me some nice adult sized jeans that had seen better days. I was grateful for that.

This is the flannel backing of the quilt.

and this is the top.

This is the humongous wad of lint that I pulled out of my dryer when I put it through the washer and dryer after clipping the edges. Our washer rebelled for a week after I washed this quilt, eventually it coughed up the lint so that the water could drain.

Lucy and Maddie were my constant helpers through this whole ordeal, I couldn't have done it without them.

Making the basement family friendly

When we first moved in, it was a completely blank slate that held all sorts of possibilities. From the first time he saw it, plans have been brewing in John's mind, and his fingers have been itching to frame it in.

There isn't much that can stop John once he sets his mind on a project. Only weeks after finishing his solar panel project, he was ready to get to work again. This time he decided to start working on the playroom and hallway to our someday-to-be extra rooms, sauna, and bathroom. Sauna? Yes, you heard me right, did I mention that my husband can be a bit eccentric sometimes. He has guaranteed me that I will love it, and he is almost always right. So there you have it, we are going to have a sauna someday.

This will someday be our playroom, I love the angles on the walls. Below is a better view of the wall on the right, we put a little door for a reading room under the stairs. Just add some bookshelves and bean bags and it will be good to go.

As always, the kids were more than eager to help. To keep them busy, John gave them a big cardboard box and a hammer. While he was busy hammering boards, the kids were busy making a Matilda type "chokey". They used about 15 pounds of 16 penny nails. They loved getting into it because it looked so dangerous.

We have yet to find a punishment that Maddie takes seriously.

Despite the tortured look on his face, Johnny loved getting in the chokey and showing everybody how tough he could be.

John did actually let them help a little with real work. Lucy is now an expert at handing boards to John for the cutting process.

Of course, if you are going to do such an important job, you have to wear the appropriate attire. What looks more important than a princess dress, and even princesses protect their ears!

Getting ready for Christmas

Getting ready for Christmas this year was quite a task, luckily I have felt tremendous Christmas spirit these past two years. You might remember a Christmas post last year, where I explained that most of my post-marriage Christmases up to that point were overshadowed by infant induced insomnia or morning sickness. The lack of this, and the fact that my children are at the age where they get very excited about it, might explain my love for the season right now. I love the Christmas Advent candles that my neighbor makes, this is the second year that my children have enjoyed burning the candle and counting down the days. Thanks again Katy!

The first order of business was stringing up the lights. On one F.H.E. in November we brought out our L.E.D. Christmas lights and tested them out by stringing them all over the house, down the hall and around all of the beds. We turned off all of the lights in the house and the kids had a great time following the colorful lights through the dark house. The picture below is an example of what happens if you leave our 7 year-old Johnny to his own designs. We laughed at the long plug socket snake that he made coming out of the wall, luckily they were L.E.D. lights and you can safely hook up to 16 light strands together without any problem.


The first real snow of the season happened in November, I am grateful that I was able to get some pictures because our December has been unseasonably warm. I love my two little pink marshmallows, and they love the snow, as you can tell by Lucy's picture. Johnny made an amazing frog complete with bulging eyes, he spent hours in the snow this day.

Thanksgiving 2010

We spent Thanksgiving in Arizona this year. My sister, Marilyn, and her husband, Rob, have epic Thanksgivings, and we have never experienced one. So this is the year that we decided to take the trek through snow and sleet to the Arizona border and witness that amazing sudden change of climate. We were also excited to visit with some more of my favorite people, John's sister, Lori, and her husband, Matt, who moved away from us to Arizona recently. We had a wonderful time visiting with both families, but we must have had a TON of fun at Lori and Matt's house because I didn't take a single picture of our time with them. I don't know how I managed that! Luckily, Lori blogged about their Thanksgiving and we made it into a few of her pictures.

http://thatswhyilovethem.blogspot.com/2010/11/thanksgiving.html


We visited the lights at the Mesa Temple,

And enjoyed some down time with our family. We were able to see so many of them, Marilyn's family, Mikes family and Matt and Lori's family.

Lucy loved the BIG "puppies"

And we had an delicious Thanksgiving meal, complete with turkeys from the "Turkey Pit." Rob roasts about about 20 turkeys at a time in his 6 foot deep pit for neighbors and friends the day before Thanksgiving. They are very tender! Thanks to our families for putting us up for a few days, we love you!

A little bird told me...

...that my mom needed some help with organizing and de-junking one of her rooms. I'm not the best candidate for this job, but I do have a bit of experience in this area. I have had to help my little collector (Hannah) de-junk on many occasions. Sometimes it is hard to be compassionate when it comes to cleaning out *special* things. For example, I still don't know how to help Hannah let go of her C.O.B, ie. collection of old balloons.

While helping my mom with her room, I found that she had some interesting things that she just just wanted to share with someone before she let them go. They were things of little monetary value, but sometimes she wanted to share a story about it, some enjoyment by looking at it, or literally share it. One of these things happened to be a hummingbird nest. How often do you find something like this? Very cool! I told my mom that I would take it home to Hannah and let her enjoy it for a day or two, since she is an avid bird lover, and then we would get rid of it. Well, Hannah was very excited about it, and somehow she convinced me to let her keep it until spring so that she could put it in a tree. I'm looking forward to spring, until then she is going to need some more shelves to hold all of her treasures. Thanks for sharing, mom!

Happy Eleventh Anniversary to us

As you can tell, I am slowly playing catch-up for the past 2 months. I wanted to write about our 11th anniversary on November 6th. Very frequently I find myself telling John, "I'm so glad that I married you." I could go on and on about the reasons, but when it comes down to it, it's all about friendship. Thanks, John, being you.

We were able to celebrate by farming out our children and spending an evening in downtown Salt Lake. It was a fun evening with good food and great entertainment.

When we came home that night, John told me about the Oreo cookies that our neighbor had sent over to help us celebrate. Apparently, as she was cutting Hannah's hair the day before, she had asked Hannah what her parents were going to do for their anniversary. Hannah told her that we always just stay up late and eat Oreo cookies for dinner (emphasising that we were doing it without her.) We enjoyed them very much.

Again, my favorite part of celebrating our anniversary at home is that we get to sleep in and have breakfast in bed. Then we took a leisurely trip to the temple and did a session, it was wonderful.

One more word about a certain princess

I am still confused about Lucy's infatuation with Disney princesses, we don't even own a Disney Princess movie. My children watched Beauty and the Beast for the first time ever last week when I rented it from the library. Why does she love them so much? After my last post, I had to laugh at a conversation that I had with Lucy today. As she was walking around in her new Snow White dress, she asked me if we could go to the store and get a Snow White Polly Pocket. I told her that if she is really good, Santa might bring her one (I happen to have connections with him, and know that he has one set aside for her already.) She looked at me and said, "He can bring Sleeping Beauty a new head, too, and then Maddie can't play with her." I am starting to wonder if she will ever forgive Maddie. Poor girl, one little mistake and she loses Lucy's trust forever.

So happy together

I have so enjoyed spending time with my two little girls this year.  Hannah and Johnny would be so jealous if they knew of all of the fun stuff that we do together while they are in school.  That is until they remember that we used to go to plenty of fun places before they started school too.  Some of my favorite times with Hannah and Johnny were when John worked from 3 p.m to 1 a.m.   After he would leave for work I would take Hannah and Johnny to the zoo.  We would show up just as everyone else was calling it a day and heading home.  Sometimes it would be so empty that we felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.

Our trips to the Discovery Gateway museum have been that kind of fun, I am glad that I got a membership this year.  I love this age so much, it is so carefree.   I am thankful that I have had this time with my girls this year.

A word about princesses

When Maddie started becoming interested in princesses, I remember feeling surprised that a "girly-girl" had made her way into our family. Hannah would cry when we called her a princess, and would much rather play with her plastic frogs and stuffed animal cat than a princess any day. Considering this fact, I don't think anyone can blame me for feeling a bit surprised.


Well, Lucy puts Maddie to shame when it comes to her love for princesses. Her princess "Polly Pockets" are her constant companions, and she feels naked without her princess dress. For a few weeks she carried a Disney Princess book around with her constantly, and I started to wonder if she realized that it was a book and not a dress catalogue. She would flip through the pages point out the "pretty" dresses, then find Cinderella and admire her blue dress because it was "just like mine." As I wrote in a previous post, she had a terrible time parting with this dress each night when it was time to change into her P.J.s, and she was devastated when she had a potty-training accident and the dress had to go through the wash. On a plus side, I was able to bribe her with a Snow White dress to get her to master potty-training.

As you can see, her princesses even eat at the table with us. Sleeping Beauty met her demise a few weeks ago when her head fell off as Maddie was playing with her. Lucy still talks about her and becomes very concerned when her Belle or Cinderella have their heads turned slightly. Sadly, after this experience she wouldn't let Maddie touch her princesses, almost a month later, she is still not allowed to play with them.

This girl even eats chicken noodle soup like a princess, she divides her portion into four neat piles of soup pieces and eats one at a time, I took this picture after she finished off all of her chicken. It is amazing how these kids come wired so differently, and how I have to re-learn how to be a parent to each of them

Happy Solar Panel Day

For my Anniversary this year, John gave me some solar panels. I love this picture because it shows how happy I was when they arrived.

Actually, I was happy, but we thought that it would be funny for me to pose with "my anniversary present." What husband in his right mind would give his wife solar panels as an anniversary present? That's like the "give your wife a leaf-blower gift faux paux" X 1000. As much as I wanted these panels for my gift, it was a coincidence that they arrived two days before our anniversary. John has been wanting to have solar panels since before we had children, and the day finally came last month. He was absolutely giddy about them.

He installed them himself with his dedicated little helpers.

John has been so excited about these solar panels that he has done something I never thought that he would do, he created a blog! In this blog he gives a more detailed description of what went on from the planning stages of the solar panels to the present. Way to go John! Thanks for being so smart.
www.kc7ekk-solar.blogspot.com

To celebrate the first day that our solar panels gave us electricity, I decided to make a solar panel cake. Johnny was my solar panel engineer in this project. I couldn't have done it without him.