Last week I saw a pattern for a crochet heart garland, and I immediately wanted to make one. It would be an adorable Valentine's Day decoration and I knew Emma would like to have it up as a birthday decoration as well. Even though I have been slowly working on my granny square afghan, I apparently still don't really know how to crochet because it took me forever to get this pattern figured out. I looked through the comments several times, thinking that some people would have written about mistakes in the pattern and how they didn't really end up with a heart when they tried it. But, nope, apparently it was just me.Finally, after spending two days' worth of nap time trying to figure it out, I got it. And duh, it really was actually very simple. Also very cute, don't you think?

Emma turned six last weekend, and I think if you asked her she'd say she had a pretty fun birthday. One Saturday we spent the day at Paradise Park, along with two of her friends. Sunday we brought her cake and presents to a pizza restaurant that she likes and celebrated there, along with Steve's dad and his wife.For her cake, she wanted a simple pink heart, which was absolutely fine with me. After I iced the cake, she asked me to get out all our sprinkles and said she wanted to be completely in charge of putting the sprinkles on the cake. I remembered the inch deep layer of sprinkles on last year's cake, but of course it was her birthday and if she wanted a little cake with her sprinkles, so be it.First she started to put the sprinkles just around the edges, which I thought looked cute and seemed like a perfect amount of sprinkles. I said, "Hey, that looks great!" and started to put the cake up on the stove away from little hands. She immediately stopped me, saying, "I'm not even close to being finished!" And let me tell you, she was not kidding.

One of the crafty blogs I like, Uncommon Grace, is written by a woman who makes beautiful Waldorf dolls and occasionally sells them. Every time I saw any of these dolls, I really really really wanted to buy one, but I couldn't justify spending $145 on a doll, especially because Emma isn't into dolls whatsoever.When I learned that Grace was going to be donating one of her dolls to Craft Hope, which gives all proceeds to the people in Haiti, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to buy one because, hey, now it's for a good cause! Perfect, right? Also, Allie is starting to show an interest in dolls so I think she would be happy to have it when she is a little older. So, once I decided I was going to buy this doll, I stalked Craft Hope until it was listed and I purchased it immediately. She came in the mail today and I am so excited! The details on this doll are exquisite and she is really beautifully made. Is it a little ridiculous that I want to put her in the sling and wear her around the house?I'm going to save her and give her to Allie when she turns two this summer (or maybe wait until she turns three, I'm not sure). I hope she loves her as much as I already do!

Last weekend the kids and I went skiing with my parents, brothers, sister-in-law, and grandma. We went to Breckenridge and it was a lot of fun. It is SO nice to go somewhere and have so many extra people along who are willing - and happy - to help with the kids. I actually got to read a book on the plane!The only semi stressful part of the trip was at the beginning. I had to get three kids, two carry-ons, a humongous suitcase, and myself checked into the airport and through security all on my own. We managed to make it without hitting any major snags, although there was one particularly tense moment on the escalator. I couldn't hold Noah's hand because I was holding Allie with one hand and lugging bags with the other, so I nervously instructed him to hold onto the railing and told him exactly when to step on the moving stairs. As we were nearing the top, I told him to hop right off onto the flat part, but he apparently got nervous and dropped to his hands. I saw his little fingers on the top step as it was flattening, inching their way towards the floor that was swallowing up the steps, about to be chewed and mangled in the escalator's teeth. In a moment of panic, I didn't do anything reasonable like drop the suitcase and grab him, I just yelled, "Noah! Noah! NOAH!" and caused all the nearby airport patrons to turn and stare at us. Luckily, he stood up just in the nick of time and his fingers were saved. Whew!

(As I was writing this, I got curious about escalator accidents and did a bit of Googling. In the United States, escalators apparently send over 10,000 people to the emergency room every year, so be careful next time you're on one!)

The kids and I visited my parents last weekend, and while we were there, it was brought up that Noah will be old enough to go to bible school with Emma at my parents' church this summer. Noah was really excited, at least until my mom pointed out that kids who go to bible school need to wear underwear instead of diapers. I can tell he's been thinking about this quite a bit lately, because a few times since then, completely out of nowhere, he has said, "I want to wear diapers to bible school!"

This morning he told me that he wanted to wear underwear so he could go to bible school so I gladly helped him put on a pair of his little Thomas underwear instead of a diaper. A little while later he said he had to pee, so he sat on the potty and did it. I sang our little "Noah peed in the PAH-TEE!" celebration song and we clapped and cheered. As soon as the fanfare was over, he stood up and said, "So, should we go to bible school now?"

He did great all day - enough that I encouraged him to wear his underwear while we picked Emma up from school and then stopped at Target afterward. Once we'd gotten everything we needed at Target, we went to check out and got in line behind a nice woman who turned around and smiled at the kids. She asked Noah his name, and he grinned proudly and said, "Noah, and I have underwear in my pants!"

(And because the pictures of Noah on the potty are a little too indecent to share with the world, here is a lovely G-rated picture of Allie, who is hopefully picking up some tips from her brother's new skill.)

I picked up all the Girl Scout cookies last weekend and have been slowly distributing them to the Daisy Scouts this week. We did end up having snow days yesterday and today so I still have quite a few boxes in my living room. I will be so glad when all this cookie business is over. My kids, on the other hand, probably won't. No matter how many times I tell them to leave the cookie boxes alone, they just look at the stack of boxes and see a big jungle gym and they can't quite keep themselves away. Those boxes have been played with so much in the last week that I'm a bit concerned that, instead of Girl Scout cookies, everyone is going to be receiving Girl Scout cookie crumbs.This week has been a little rough for me. This is a really hard month for Steve at work and he will be working minimum fourteen hour days throughout January. Tonight we picked him up and went out for dinner, then dropped him back off at work, and that was the first time he's seen the kids all week. Which means that I've been alone, stuck in the house with these three, all week long and there's no hope for an end to it soon. Really, for the most part it's not so terrible, but doing bedtime alone stresses me out. By the time I'm putting them to bed, I feel like my patience for the day is completely spent. Of course, they never want to go to bed and there is SO much dawdling and messing around that most nights are not without some yelling on my part. :( At the same time, I know Steve is probably feeling stressed at work so I'm trying to find a happy medium between wallowing in my own misery and feeling sorry for him, too. Besides, now the kids are asleep and I'm free to do as I please, and poor Steve is still at work at 11:09 on a Friday night. I hope we will get to see him for a few hours this weekend, although I'm not really counting on it. Heaven help me get through this month!

Anyway, that's enough whining. Have a good weekend!

Brrr! It's been crazy cold here and we've gotten quite a bit of snow recently. It's actually snowing right now with something like 3-6 more inches expected by tonight. I know a lot of people don't like snow, but I am perfectly happy to snuggle up inside (where it is nice and warm) and watch the snow fall outside. The public schools in our area have had four snow days so far this year, but Emma's school hasn't been off at all yet. I was joking with her other car pool driver this morning that her school isn't for the wimps, but it really does seem silly to call off school so much.
We've been getting a lot of citrus fruits in our weekly produce deliveries, and I've been wanting to try making some candied orange peels. Yesterday we gave it a go, and I think they were a hit. The kids liked them a lot, and I thought they were okay. After munching on them plain for a minute or two, Emma suggested we smear some Nutella on them. I love that kid. Candied orange peels + Nutella = a little bit of heaven.

Inspired by all the snow we have here, Emma was on a bit of a snowflake making binge the other day. She cut out dozens of paper snowflakes and when she was finished, it looked like a snowstorm had blown through our kitchen. Our table and floor were covered with hundreds of tiny scraps of paper, so I handed her the broom and suggested she get to sweeping.Noah and Allie soon realized that they could make a snowstorm of their own by throwing the little pieces into the air. After many of her attempts to combine all the pieces into a single pile were thwarted by her little brother and sister, Emma tossed down the broom in frustration and said, "How am I supposed to get anything done with these little kids around?!" I had to tell her, honestly, I have no idea. I've been wondering the same thing for years.

Since I last updated, we've been busy with lots of Christmas stuff and some not-so-Christmasy stuff.We made a bunch of treats, including what I think is now my most favorite cookie ever. This Date Spice Loaf was pretty awesome, as well.There was some crafting, although not as much as I would have liked. Noah made ornaments this year for the first time and I think we was pretty pleased with himself.For her ornaments this year, Emma devised an elaborate plan for embroidered Christmas trees with ornaments but once she (finally) finished one of those, she decided to wait and make those when she's nine instead. At the last minute, we went to Michael's and bought a kit that included everything needed to make twelve beaded tree ornaments. They ended up being really cute and all of them took her about an hour total. Perfect.We had a visit from Santa, which I think makes this the first year since we've been married that Santa has actually been organized enough to come before we leave for the holidays. Way to go, Santa!Pretty much everything Noah got this year (from everyone) had to do with trains. He is obsessed with Thomas these days and I thought he might get a little tired of the train gifts, but nope. We got him these train slippers and he has hardly taken them off since he opened them.We spent a couple great days at my parents' house, where it was non-stop fun except for one small part involving Emma puking all over herself at my grandma's house. Minus that, it was the perfect Christmas. I hope you had a wonderful holiday as well!

Tomorrow morning is when I have to turn in all the paperwork for the cookie sales for Emma's entire Daisy Scout troop. The girls turned in their orders to me almost a month ago so I've had quite awhile to complete this ridiculous amount of paperwork, but so far I've done exactly nothing. That is, of course, why I decided to update my blog right now - I just love a little procrastination!I've sort of been dreading putting up our tree this year because (if this year is anything like last year) I don't want to deal with rehanging a bunch of ornaments every time it gets knocked down, but also because it takes up a lot of space, and space here is pretty limited to begin with. Our train table, which is in the exact spot where we always put our tree, gets a lot of use every day so I was reluctant to move that as well. When I was complaining about all this to my mom, she suggested a perfectly wonderful plan - get a smaller tree! The kiddos and I picked one out this week and it's itty bitty but I am totally thrilled with it. I went through all our ornaments and picked out the ones that weren't breakable, didn't have much or any sentimental value, and didn't have any chokable parts. I packed those away and gave all the rest to the kids to decorate the tree however they wanted. It still looks plenty festive, it doesn't take up much room, and so far it's only fallen once. What more could a person want?St. Nicholas came to our house over the weekend and, in addition to some fun stuff for the kids, he also brought me this necklace. My, but he has good taste! I can't say for sure, but I'm betting he got the necklace here.
Oh yeah, and we're still into "fancy" around here.

Good golly, how can this week already be over? I've been meaning to blog about Thanksgiving, but now it's already been over a week so I'll try not to bore you with details.We spent a few days at my parents' house, which was great as always. The weather was amazing so we were able to enjoy some time outside before it got really cold.
We baked cookies, and one thing is for certain: Emma is still a huge fan of sprinkles.Steve was out of town for three days this week. This is the first time he's traveled in over a year, so I really can't complain, but I don't know how I did it when he used to travel all the time. Overall, everything went pretty smoothly while he was gone (even bedtimes!), so the biggest problem was just that I missed having him around.Emma had a little friend over today and they dragged all the old, forgotten fancy dress-up clothes up from the basement. It made me sad when Emma stopped wearing fancy dresses everywhere she went, but it looks like maybe Noah is trying to bring it back. Here he is traipsing around Cactus Grill tonight in his new "favorite dress".Now I'm off to go drink some wine and watch Love Actually with the husband. Have a great weekend, everybody!

The kids and I did something fun this year that I think will become a family tradition for us. I came across the Samaritan's Purse website and I thought my kids would really enjoy preparing shoe boxes for their Operation Christmas Child project.

I was a little nervous that they might have a hard time picking out a bunch of stuff they liked and then giving it all away, but I didn't need to be. Other than one isolated incident involving Noah trying to take a Jolly Rancher from one of the boxes after they were all packed, they were really excited about sending presents to little kids who wouldn't otherwise be getting very much, if anything, for Christmas.
Emma, Noah, and Allie each got to send a box to a kid in their own age group, although we helped Allie with hers, of course. We went to Target and the dollar store and picked out a bunch of fun goodies to fill the boxes. After we bought the stuff, Emma and Noah drew pictures to put in the boxes, along with photos of themselves.Yesterday we brought our boxes to the drop-off place and watched as hundreds and hundreds of shoe boxes were loaded onto a truck. I'll be getting an email that will tell us where our boxes went and possibly some info about the kids who received them, so we're all looking forward to that. I already marked this on my 2010 calendar and am excited about continuing this tradition every year!

Ta-DAH!I mastered the granny square, so on Saturday morning Steve and the kids dropped me off at the yarn store and drove around while I browsed and picked out yarn for an afghan. I take my kids a lot of places, but going into a yarn store with a five year old, a two year old, and a one year old is not something I am willing to do. I can just see the employees ringing up hundreds of dollars worth of expensive yarn that my kids managed to unroll, tangle, and destroy in a matter of minutes.

Since I picked out the yarn, I have been granny square-ing as fast as I can, which is admittedly not that fast. I have stayed up way too late the past two nights, working on my squares, so hopefully it won't be too terribly long before I have a completed afghan! Hooray!

A couple weeks ago I had to run into an Eddie Bauer store to check and see if they had something, and while I was there I stuck my hand into a fluffy-looking slipper. The inside of it was so wonderfully, incredibly soft and fluffy that I immediately considered buying the pair. I talked myself out of it, mostly because I always prefer to have bare feet and therefore have never been a slipper person, and also because the slippers looked like they should be worn by someone who is about 98 years old. Several times in the next week or two, I realized that my feet were a bit chilly and I thought longingly of those warm and cozy slippers that I hadn't bought. Saturday evening I couldn't resist anymore, so we went back to Eddie Bauer and I purchased the slippers. I am telling you, these slippers are absolutely heavenly, and I've been wearing them nonstop since I got them. And if I happen to look like I should be shuffling around in a nursing home, so be it. That's a small price to pay for comfort of this magnitude.

Well, I never got the basement cleaned and organized (which probably shouldn't be a surprise to anyone) but I did make some progress in other areas. After studying various youtube videos last night, I made my first attempt at crochet. Are you ready for this? It's going to knock your socks off!Impressive, huh? Not sure why my stitch count seemed to be decreasing with each row, but it doesn't matter anyway, because I today I started another piece and apparently I corrected whatever I was doing wrong the first time. I know it's hard to believe I could create anything that would surpass my original work, but here you go:After that I was feeling confident enough to attempt a granny square. You might notice that there is absolutely nothing "square" about this at all, but don't let that bother you because I think I've figured out what I was doing wrong.Today I also managed to drag out and work on an old unfinished project,
as well as something new.Be ready for more crochet excitement to come soon! (And if you're asking yourself if crochet and excitement belong in the same sentence together, just wait!)

My mom came to visit this weekend, and just left this morning. Her visits are always so great that I feel a little down in the dumps when she leaves, but today is not so bad. Right now it's chilly and yucky outside but warm in here, I have soup cooking on the stove and bread rising on the counter, and (best of all) both babies are sleeping. We will also be seeing my family again in less than two weeks so that helps too!

The only bad part about my mom's visit is that she played Candy Land with Noah, and now that's all he wants to do. I strongly dislike Candy Land to begin with, but Noah's version mostly involves a lot of throwing the cards around, and guess who is usually stuck picking most of them up. For that reason, Candy Land is now hidden back in the game closet, and hopefully soon forgotten.I have not done any sewing or knitting in quite awhile, but lately I am itching to start doing those things again. My goal this afternoon is to get the basement cleaned and organized so I can at least get to my sewing machine without having to wade through mounds of toys and clutter. In addition to new things, there are many (many, many, many) unfinished projects that are calling my name. I also need to learn how to crochet because I want to do this. Of course, it's so easy to sit here at the computer and be inspired by other people's projects; the problem is actually finding the time to work on projects of my own. However, today I am vowing to make that a priority, so hopefully I'll have some crafty things to show here pretty soon.

On our first Valentine's Day together, Steve and I had been dating for almost a year. For his present, I made him a scrapbook of of our first year together. (I obviously didn't know him very well then because Steve doesn't care about that kind of stuff at all and, although he didn't say so at the time, I'm sure he thought it was a lame present.) Still, I really liked making it and I wanted to keep scrapbooking after that. I had good intentions and I still worked on scrapbooks after Emma was born, but by the time Allie was born five years later, I had about two years worth of scrapbooks and three years worth of photographs shoved in a shoe box. My last scrapped page was before Noah's birth, and the task of trying to catch up seemed pretty daunting - especially when I thought about the huge mess of scrapbooking stuff I had to drag out to do it.This summer I started looking at my friend Christina's blog, in which she posts pictures of her digital scrapbook pages. Her pages were so cute that I was inspired to give digital scrapbooking a try. It's cheap, fun, and best of all - no mess! I started scrapping current pictures and worked my way back and it didn't take me long at all to get several months finished. Once I had eighty pages complete, I ordered a photo book. I was so very pleased with how it turned out! The quality was excellent.
In addition to the first book I had printed, I now have almost two more complete. I am completely up to date, and have gone all the way back to when Allie was born. It's a great relief for me to get these pictures scrapped, and making the pages is a lot of fun for me as well.Right now, I'm feeling a little stuck because the next pictures I need to scrap are of Allie's birth. My friend Deanna took over 500 wonderful pictures during her birth and I need to go through them and pick out the ones I want to use. Mostly though, I am not sure how to create pages that can portray the emotions involved in her birth. I want to make them special, something more meaningful than just another typical afternoon-at-the-pumpkin-patch type of page.Anyway, I guess the point of this post is, if you are considering trying digital scrapbooking, I highly recommend it!