2007 is an Odd Year... Perfect!

I know this year is going to be great. I can feel it. How can it not be? Potty training is all done ( Yeah!!!!). Dog is house broken. (Which is amazing considering we have only had her for about a month and she is only 4 months old.) Rick is doing great at work. There may be some changes for him in the year to come. We'll see what happens. I, after many years of wandering...lost, have finally settled into a domestic routine.

I'm not gonna be obtuse and say it's pure bliss but it's pretty good so far.


Christmas was humbly satisfying. We are still able to make our children happy with the little things. They don't want for tons of stuff so we can get by on our small budget. Less than a dozen gifts for each and they are content which makes me happy. You never know how long that will last so I am enjoying while I can.


New Years was great. Rick and I had a Mexican theme for the night. We had enchiladas and some special recipe mexican dip that Rick loves. (Thanks to Mom for that.) What would a mexican theme party for two be without a bottle of tequila and some margarita mix? We started drinking a little early and watched Fifty First Dates, my favorite movie. By the time the movie was over I was so stuffed and a little more than tipsy. I was ready to hit the hay. Rick was not having that so I stayed up with him and Abby. We all shared a New years Kiss.


Abby was so cute. She couldn't understand why we had to kiss. She kept asking why everyone on tv was kissing. "Ew, I don't like watching that." So funny. To be fair, some of those people could have backed off the tongue a little bit. I didn't really enjoy watching it either. Ella conked out early but I'm sure she would have felt the same.


We made cupcakes for Santa. He loved them. It's a special recipe. I'd give it to you but theres magic involved so... if you're not into that kind of thing don't even ask.

Wow! Don't get to excited about it there, Abby.

Cute stuff. Nice chocolate face.

Rick's Brother and his family came up from Alabama for a few days after Christmas and we had a great time. Shelly is so much fun it's rediculous. I feel completely at ease with her and I have only actually met her like 3 times. I guess that's what family is, huh. We had lots of fun drinking some beers and singing karaoke with the whole family in Hawaii. Just kidding, it just looks like it's hawaii. It's really Rick's Moms basement. They went all out with the Hawaiian Huki Lounge theme.

Mick

Shelly


Rick



Butch, Kalle and Judi



Jason is the bald head. He's Kalle's boyfriend and the kids love him.

We also took advantage of everyone being together and took some group photos.

Kalle, Rick and Mick.

Kalle with Jason and her sweety-pie kids.



Mick and Shelly with their two boys.



Rick and I with the girlies.

Butch and Judi

With all the grandkids. Abby was not happy because her sister kept pulling her hair with her toes. What a little stinker that Bella is.

And finally everyone together. I think it took longer for me to post all these than it did to do the actual pictures.

How's that, Stacey?

What can I say?

I haven't had time to do any blogging.

I did pictures with Santa for Abby's school this past week. It was fun to be able to do that for all of them but I am not happy that some came out a little blurry. I turned off the flash on the second day because Santa literally started to tear up. Unfortunately that made the auto-focus a little off and about ten of the pictures came out blurry. A few were so blurry they are unrecognizable. EEK. I feel horrible about it. Poor kids. I wish there was a make-up day.

All of the children were so cute! They were in total aw that Santa was sitting in front of them. Some of them would rub his fur when they were telling him what they wanted. A few held his hand and played with his nails or his beard hair. There were only a couple that didn't want anything to do with him. Abby wouldn't go up without the wonderful Ms. C by her side. Another little girl didn't want to talk to him but she got her picture taken with him. They all made my week. It was great to be there!

I started and finished three purses. Two for my nieces and one for my sister. They don't usually read here so I don't think they will see this but I want to wait to post pictures just in case.

All of my packages and cards have been sent out. That's a lie I still have a few stragglers in the out box. I will have to remember those tomorrow.

We have a lot of painting coming up because the living room is not making us happy anymore and we switched rooms with Abby and Ella so we now have aqua walls and they have brown walls. It will probably take all Winter for us to get it all done. We are also still renovating the downstairs bathroom so that should be another thing we have done before the Winter is over. Not going to be another boring Winter for us!

A blog isn't complete with out some pictures so here ya go.

Abby and Ms.C with Santa. Doesn't Abby just look like the happiest little girl in the world!!???


Had to get one of Santa. He was a fun guy to talk to all day. He was really good about staying in character and I even found myself telling him stories as if he were Santa. He was very convincing. His wife was also very lovely and sweet. She kept him in line when he got a little feisty.


Our Stockings in the morning sun.

Trees

I am in love with a tree. A bunch of trees actually. I saw these trees on Colorfool and fell in love with them! She got the pattern from Little Birds. They are addictive they take a few minutes to make once you get the hang of sewing in a circle. Took me a few tries but I am an expert now!

I numbered them so it would be easier for my Mom to pick the ones she wanted.

Pow Wow

I totally forgot to tell everyone about Boog's Thanksgiving Pow Wow. Her class invited one parent from each family to enjoy some Pumpkin Pudding and few songs. The children were the indians and the parents were the pilgrims.

G-man was totally diggin' that hat.

Can I just say that I don't like sharing the fun stuff at Boog's school with the man but I am reasonable and since it was on his day off I let him go. It was my Thanksgiving gift to him. ;)

They even made center pieces.

There were more pictures but I don't want to put other peoples kids on the internet. I don't think that's to kosher.

Pretty Penny Is Her Name

Remember me saying we had a special surprise for the girls for Christmas. Well Christmas came early because you gotta strike while the iron is hot. Miss Penny is a cute little black Lab and she is so sweet!

The girls were very excited. They weren't quite sure what was going on. Boog is blurry but I like the picture because you can still tell she was very excited.


This was The Girl's reaction when she realized why I was acting weird. She was just as excited as the little ones. Very cute!


Penny


Penny sitting pretty.


It took me about a half an hour to make this blog. Normally I would have had to stop every five minutes and do something for one of the lovely little ladies so it would take me about an hour or longer. Apparently not anymore. They are so quiet and enthralled with the new addition of our family. Woohoo! I wonder if it will last?

Bears

A few months ago Boog asked me to make her a bear. UM... Ok. I can do that? I winged it, of coarse. Sylvia is what came out of that little adventure. She is a little awkward at best.


So I decided to take my time and make a pattern for the next one. Which turned into two because you can't make one without eventually having to make two around here. Their bellies, eyes, ears and nose are all velvet. They were fun to make.


I put a little insignia on their butts. A roman numeral two, of coarse.

Purses

The finished Marilyn purse. I am happy to report that The Girl loved it and many of her friends would like their own. Their gonna have to pay for it.


I got very ambitious with this one and put in a zipper. I used buttons to protect the corners from wearing down.


This pretty one was supposed to be a Christmas gift but the person I made it for is a surprise ruiner so I sent it out already. I loved this Japanese material.

A couple of works in progress.

I am working on a few things right now. One I am not going to post pictures of one because it's a gift for someone. The other is a purse The Girl asked me to make out of a Marilyn nightie top she found somewhere. I haven't gotten far but it's going to be cute. I convinced her to use red on the outside to make Marilyns' lips pop.

We did lots of Christmas shopping this Saturday. Rick wanted to beat the holiday rush so the majority of our shopping is done. All that is left is a few things that I am making for people, something I want to get for The Girl and gift cards. It feels good to have it done. We usually are scrambling the week before to get everything bought or made.

I have been having trouble managing my children lately. I get alot of back talk from both of them. They don't go to bed when we put them in bed. It takes threatening to take things away and just all kinds of arguing before they will just give up. It's harder on me than it is on them, they think it's funny, I wanna cry.

Potty-training sucks my big toe. As a matter-of-fact I just gave up on it. It is like torture for both of us. She doesn't even notice that I haven't been asking her to go to the potty or anything. She doesn't go on her own at all. It's like the past month of intense potty training didn't even happen. I'm exhausted and a little angry about the whole thing.

Yesterday was, hopefully, the last time we will rake the yard. The backyard really gets alot of leaves because we have three very large trees that cover the whole yard. ( I have been trying to convince Rick to cut at least one of those suckers down but he likes the shade the generate. I do not.

Anyhoo... I took the oppurotunity to take some pictures.

Pretty leaves

Abby being still

Ella can not sit still... well neither of them can.

The G-man

HA! I got her.

These might be blurry

Something I Don't Want to Forget.

A few weeks ago Boog informed that she had a new word for "duh". I was intrigued. I had to know. "What is the word?" I asked. "Doyo." (pronounced Doy-yo.) "Did you come up with that all by yourself?" "Of coarse, Mom."

There you have it people.

What Being Frugal Can Do For Your Creativity.

Boog is not easy on clothes. She can not wear a pair of tights for more than an hour before they end up with a gigantic in them. Most of her shirts need to be bleached or stain treated as soon as they come of her back. As a matter of fact Bell doesn't get many hand-me-downs because her sister can really tear up some clothes.

I have been thinking about what I can do to extend the life of her clothes without making them look like they have been doctored up. Today I decided to try some stuff out.

I traced a cookie cutter onto a piece of cardboard (so I can keep it and do many more without using my cookie cutter everytime) and then used the that as a template and traced the shape onto some scrap fabric. Then I used some Heat-n-Bond to bond it to the shirt and pants. Last, I appliqued it with embroidery floss.

Drumroll Please.....

Falling Leaves

The only thing I had planned to do on Friday was rake leaves in our front yard. It ended up only taking about an hour to do the whole yard. We don't have any trees in the front but our neighbors have a few so we get some of the fallout.

Anyhoo... since it didn't take long I played with Bell and took some pictures.


I'm excited about a special Christmas present we are planning for the girlies. I will give out more details when we are sure about it.

Halloween

Halloween was excellent. Boog and Bell were very excited about getting out there and getting some candy, of coarse. Boog was a cute little witch and Bell was a puppy. (Everyone kept calling her a sheep.)

The amount of candy they got is unreal. Way more than last year. I think it's because Boog was way more into it this year and she made sure we covered twice the area we did last year. Bell was not into it. She went a block and then wanted to be carried home. Her costume didn't even make it over to Grandmas house. She insisted on taking it off before we got a chance to go over there.

On the Potty training front we are doing very well. She won't go on her own all the time but she does about half the time. #2 is still eluding us so I am doing a lot of dunking and swishing. ugh.

I started volunteering at Boogs school once a week. It is so much fun. The children are so excited to see you. I always get " I've seen you before." or "You're Boogs mom." Yep. That's me.