our latest in pictures...

Honest to goodness, this was at MY dry cleaners! do you think it was staged or does the REAL santa actually go to MY dry cleaners? awesome! (audrey...it's delia's, you go there too right?)

trying to get some shopping done at Ross...blake decided UNDER the cart was the best place to be during our extremely LOOOOONG wait in the REEEEEEALY long line...

at Fry's...they love the car carts...

they also LOOOOOOVE their daddy and everyone wants a piggy back ride from him when it's time for bed...

went over to a friend's house for dinner and i made cupcakes...i've never seen anyone this age get THAT messy with frosting! it's awesome!

hope your run up to Christmas is great and stress free.  sending lots of love out to you all....

To Do: To Make: To Bake

so my To Do list, like many of yours is getting longer by the day...and WHAT do i get for Christmas for my parents who already have everything? sheesh! just a good thing i don't have to mail it this year or it would be woefully late...whatever it ends up being.... this fabric is destined for the table tent for my kids for Christmas...good thing only ethan can read and i don't let him read my blog on a regular basis:) it's cloudy today but you get the picture...

i am excited to get it cut out and sewed up! along with *ahem* a few other things:) the problem is my energy runs out by nighttime but that's the best time for me to sew uninterrupted...we might just have to go for interrupted this year and see if i can get it done! covertly of course:) i see banana bread in my future and in the future of some people on my "to give" list...i have WAY too many bananas in the freezer...also frozen cranberries...so maybe some cranberry orange bread too! yahoo! and yay for rain today and yesterday! i really love the rain, i'm from WA state, so you know..."it rains 9 months out of the year in Seattle! i know! i do NOT want to move to Seattle!" name that movie!

hi friends...

whew....

times are busy and i still want time to just stop some days. yesterday was 2 months since Christian passed away.  There. i said it.  i actually noticed the other day that i avoid saying the actual words...so i am trying to at least think or write them. it's true. it's a fact.

acceptance is the hardest part.  i totally don't want to be a downer, but i just want to say that this is hard. the hardest thing i have ever done.  ever.  the time when we had Christian with us seems like a completely other life.  i don't know how my brain manages to do this, but the feeling is pretty interesting.  like the time has passed super fast and it was years ago...but at the same time, minutes ago.  does that make any sense? probably not.

grief is interesting. i have read several people's blogs that have lost children recently (how do i keep finding these people?) and the stages of grief that we are experiencing are much the same. i know it's a documented fact that grief has stages and you need to hit most of them to fully have closure or whatever, but it is interesting in actual practice to see it played out.

but we keep going. ethan has strep throat, pray that no one else gets it!  yikes!  but we got him some antibiotics today and i have every thought that he'll be able to go to school tomorrow.

yesterday some sweet friends brought us this precious little tree...

it has a "C" pin on the top, with pictures of him in the ornaments, it's so sweet and i love it.  i can't believe (but i can because we are blessed with wonderful people around us) how much people are loving our family and being so kind to us.  i feel so blessed and really, the prayers and love are making it so i can function and take care of my family.  thank you all.

GroopDealz Today

if you feel so inclined, GroopDealz today is for a digital file of an awesome quote but every bit of the money spent goes to this sweet family who had a very premature baby that passed away in November.  my heart goes out to them so much.  

oh yes, we did....{with edits!!}

{the edits are...links to wreath tutorials, some commentary on my wreath making experience and a picture of the bunting i said i was making at the end}

i saw this idea online and decided to try it! since we still had two pumpkins on our front porch:) we painted them with acrylic paint, and i am sure it would be smoother and without orange peeking through if i used spray paint, but i am really trying to not buy extra stuff, especially for "just for fun" crafts. the kids loved helping with it and i like our little snowgirl's bows:) they don't have scarves yet...we'll have to see what we have in that department...

best white elephant gift EVER! thanks jamie!

another craft i've wanted to try for a while, i love the yarn ball wreaths and i like how this turned out:)  this is another instance of using what we had on hand...the balls are actually glitter ornaments i bought last year that i didn't really like this year, and i also made some balls out of stiff magazine pages...if you want to make your own there are tutorials all over the place...one here, here (with ornaments...very pretty colors), and here are some.  i think my wreath would have been a little easier had i used a flat piece of cardboard for the back or a flat wreath form...i used a rounded wreath form and it was harder to get the balls so stay.

Here is a picture of the bunting that i finished this afternoon for my bench...very festive huh?

spice rack....

 could be an ornament display...

 or a toy garage...

 but really it's going to help contain this mess on my sewing table...

 like this! (remember it used to look like this scroll down to see the picture again) the yellow dowels are for my bobbins to sit on...(although right now the dowels are too big around for my bobbins...i measured at the fabric store but i guess the bobbins i measured with were not the same size as mine...oh well...it's still pretty:)

and blake and avery found new uses for the laundry hampers yesterday...looks fun to me!

comedy of errors...

the first part of today went well, i put food in the crockpot (for these pulled pork sandwiches! so good) and i took the kids to the park, went to a primary presidency meeting (that's right...i'm the assistant secretary now:), got ethan to school and B and A down for naps....

then ethan came home and wanted hot chocolate...then avery and blake woke up and wanted hot chocolate, which is totally fine...then we had to go through the stirring and cooling off and blowing on and then i turned away and blake spilled his (mostly) full mug of hot chocolate all over himself, the chair, and the floor (that i just cleaned yesterday). i am just thankful we had cooled it sufficiently and he wasn't burned! but that was a huge mess...then i declared to kendall on the phone (with blake running around with no pants and just a diaper) while i was mopping up hot chocolate from the chair and table and floor, that i NEED a new table and chairs because these don't clean well and they are always looking dirty and scruffy and i don't like them!!!  (i've felt this way about the chairs for a long time...i'll amend on the table if we can't find a bigger round one...)

so then i get everyone cleaned up, reclothed and shoes on so we can go to Joann's (which i've been trying to do for two days but never seem to get there) so i can finish the spice rack turned...you thought i was going to tell you! gotcha! anyway, that's always a hectic trip because choosing what i need there actually requires mental attention but then avery has to pee, blake is running toward the thread pell mell or else, trying to fling his leg over the side of the cart to escape that way...then ethan starts running circles around us, then avery joins in and pretty soon all three are doing a circuit around me while i'm trying to decide which dowel size i need and if the 50% off remnant of fleece is big enough for the secret-for-christmas-blankets i want to make the kids....we get out of Joann's in one piece (barely, but not without a stern talking to the children by me and one older couple commenting on all the "help i have with my cart" aka three kids trying to steer it in different ways than the way i want to go).

go home to shred the pork for the deliciousness i have been looking forward to ALL.DAY.LONG and lo and behold, when i turned it to "low" around naptime...i actually turned it OFF! are you kidding me????? add on the fact that kendall went out to Chandler on his way home to get a super-secret-present with training wheels for avery and the PEOPLE WEREN'T HOME...imagine i'm not doing too well in my mental state.  then i heard blake banging something on the counter and i went over to have a look...it's my CAMERA! and then he got down and about 2 minutes later, grabbed a KNIFE off the counter...then 2 minutes after that ran into a wall and hurt himself.  sheesh man...give me a minute! i have the kids clean up toys...and kendall gets home while i had taken a moment to read to the kids because i was so frustrated with dinner i didn't want to make anything yet...(it's getting close to 7pm)...blake's practically crying for food and so i make breakfast burritos (which were tasty but not pulled pork)....and we get the kids in bed.

the people emailed after that about the super-secret-with training wheels present...kendall goes back to get it (saintly person) and the pulled pork is on "high" again in the crockpot for tomorrow...sheesh, i need a nap!

but i wouldn't trade it for the world.