This year's creative outlet.

There are some great fabric stores/quilting stores here in the area. I have fallen in love with fabric (Most of the time it takes second to my family). It's been fun to try different techniques and styles. Here are some of the projects I've had fun with this past year.

Christmas Table Runner

Americana throw size quilt.

Reversible apron.

Spring Table Runner.

Fall Table runner.

Quilted Wall hanging.

Baby girl quilt (no I'm not making any announcements, I just loved the material).

Rag quilt.

New looks...

Someone's blog had a link to a great website with great ideas for girls hair. (now I can't remember who's blog had this great link, but thanks!) always want to do fun things in my girls hair but 1st, my girls usually won't let me and 2nd I can't think of anything to do. When I showed Autumn some pictures from the website she was unimpressed until I spent a lot of time doing Trinitie's hair one Sunday. Of course by the time I was done with Trinitie's hair there wasn't much time left to spend on Autumns, but she insisted she needed a fancy do also. This is the one we found that could be done quickly. Also, How do you like her shiner (it doesn't really show up in these pictures)? She was playing with friends at one of James' baseball games and fell and hit her eyebrow on the curb. The actual goose egg and scrape were up by her eyebrow but it turned black and blue along her lash line and eyelid. She thought it was great when her friends dad asked her if she was wearing makeup.

Here's Trinitie's do. I should have taken a picture of the back but of course I didn't think about it as we were rushing out the door to church. It was really fun to create. Also, as a permanent new look, Trinitie now wears glasses. She kept telling me she was having a hard time seeing things but we had her eyes check a couple years ago and glasses weren't needed. Finally, when she couldn't read the stove clock that was only 4 feet away I decided we'd better have her eyes checked. She got her glasses the beginning of May. Just in time for summer. 8) She was funny the first day she got them. She kept walking around commenting on how great it was to be able to see the things she couldn't see before.

What happened to spring?

Winter was great! There was definately more snow here than where we lived in Colorado, but it was all good. The kids had fun sledding, James had fun snowboarding, and I really enjoyed the snow covered ground. But I have to say "Enough already!!". The first day of spring was perfect. It was 60 degrees and beautiful. Now that we have had that nice tease of spring weather I'm done winter. --- At least the snow should be melted by tomorrow afternoon.

The lengths our kids go to avoid doing a job!

It really was an accident, but I have to laugh because I had just asked Trinitie to move the stools out of the kitchen before she went to play with a friend. She was working on getting the first stool and somehow knocked the stool over. The seat of the stool landed on her pinkie toe and that was as far as she got with moving the stools out of the kitchen. (After we got ice on the toe and Ibuprofin taken, mom moved the stools and swept the floor.)

Her whole toe was purple and swolen in just a few minutes. It was obviously broken and we knew that there wasn't much you could do for a broken toe. I was determined we were not going to waste our money on a trip to the doctor. I rented some crutches so she could get around but by the third day the whole right side of her foot was bruised. Jim and I were afraid that maybe her foot was hurt worse than we thought. She wouldn't put any weight on her foot and it really looked bad. We caved! I took her to the doctor the next morning and found out that our diagnosis had been correct. Her little toe was broken but that was all. They did encourage her to wear the boot and use her foot more so that it would heal faster. All this for a pinkie toe.

Three teeth in 24 hours.

Just after Christmas Autumn had gotten one of her top teeth so loose that it was almost sticking strait forward. It stayed that loose for the next 6 weeks. She also had two teeth on bottom that had started getting loose at the same time as the top one but she had left them alone and we didn't think about them much. I guess I was getting tired of seeing her tooth sticking out so mentioned that the dentist would probably pull it out at our next dentist visit if she hadn't. She had a dentist appointment in 10 days and decided she wanted control of the situation. We had been encouraging her to pull it during the past 6 weeks but suddenly she had it out within 1/2 an hour. I felt kind of bad. The front part of the tooth still had a fairly big root. Oh well, it's out now and I'm pretty sure the dentist would have pulled it.

Now for the bottom 2 loose teeth. The next morning she was messing with one of her bottom teeth. She says she just pushed down on it and then pulled and it was out. Much less blood than the top tooth and the root was definately ready. Before I knew it she had done the same thing with the other bottom tooth. She kept the Tooth Fairy busy last weekend!

Am I ready for this?

Thursday I took James down to the DMV to get his drivers permit. I thought I would have a hard time with it. Especially since they get to drive a year younger in Idaho than I was planning on when we lived in Colorado. Instead I found myself somewhat excited. It's hard to watch my kids grow up so fast, but I'm finding that I truly enjoy each phase we go through (some more than others). I am really enjoying this phase of life. I wanted to post a picture of James' permit but they keep it to give to the Driver's Ed. Teacher to keep until James finishes the class.

Midnight Madness

Friday night was "Midnight Madness" in Rigby. It starts out with a light parade at 6:00 that welcomes Santa who rides in on a firetruck at the end of the parade and I think the kids got to go sit on Santa's lap when the parade was over (I'm not sure, my girls were busy at the Mini Nutcracker Balet). A lot of the businesses on Main Street stayed open until midnight for shopping, hot chocolate and other goodies. This year they also started a new tradition of a Mini Nutcracker Balet.

Both Trinitie and Autumn were able to participate in the Nutcracker. Trinitie was a Russian Candycane Dancer and Autumn was the baby mouse in the scene where the nutcracker and the mice fight. It was really cute! They did a great job. There was limited seating to watch the nutcracker so they ended up doing two performances. The nutcracker took up the girls whole evening so they missed santa, the parade and shopping but they had so much fun they didn't even notice.

James went to the parade with a friend and they met some girls from school there. They were supposed to meet us at the nutcracker but they got sidetracked getting hot chocolate and cookies at the stores. Somehow they didn't quite make it before they shut the doors for the first performance.

Jim and I walked around and checked out some of the stores while we waited for Trinitie and Autumn to finish their second performance. We kept running into James and his friends, so we got to keep an eye on them without really trying to. It was a lot of fun! I am loving this small town community!