Water Play

It got warm this afternoon, so I set a plastic tub with about 2-3 inches of water in the bottom out on the deck and let the boys have at it. They played for quite awhile and were mostly happy...which is a blessing, since they have been almost non-stop bickering all week.

Fun Sighting

When we were visiting my parents this last time, and on our way home, we had to wait for the ferry for a bit. We walked along the dock and looked at star fish, jelly fish and all sorts of cool sea-ish things.
The coolest thing we saw? A family of sea otters, wandering around on the rocks of the marina!

Tarzan Baby

thought you might get a giggle out of this....he climbed up and swung off so many times and laughed the whole time.

Happy 2nd Birthday, David!

Today was David's 2nd birthday and we had fun celebrating it.
For birthday breakfasts, I usually make the boys pancakes with sprinkles in them. Today I added some pink food coloring.

We invited all the inlaws over for pizza, cake and icecream. The boys were both hungry and so I let them start eating before people arrived. David was screaming at me, "PIZZA! PIZZA! MOMMY, PIZZA!"
Once he had his piece, he was happy.

After pizza was present time. I was the one helping David, so I only got a few pictures, but he sure did like what he got!

And then it was time for cake and ice cream! I usually make a simple boxed cake in a 13x9 or two smaller pans, but this time I had found directions in a magazine I get for cupcakes decorated like the little aliens from Toy Story. They looked cute and easy, so I tried them!

A word of warning: if you are making these for small children, take the Mento eyes off before giving it to them. David choked on his before I realized! (thankfully, he coughed it out right away) The rest was gummy candy and black gel frosting, so just fine!

Progress so far

I thought I would share with you my latest squares!

This one is seems obvious, since I simply stitched the word...love is such a blessing to give and to receive:

Here's what it looked like up to the "love" square:

As you might be able to tell from the extra lines on the fabric, I've decided to put more squares on. I added an extra row and an extra column, making it 6x9 instead of 5x8. With my 4 double squares, I think this gives me a total of 50 blessings to do. A good number, I think.

So, here's what I've worked on since taking the big picture...

This one is up next to the cross on top.....and it pretty much sums up my faith:

This little cutie is for the birds. I am a big bird fan. I keep meaning to put bird feeders on my deck to entice them to come closer...but the procrastinator and cheapster in me keeps holding me back....but I do love this time of year when I can throw the windows wide open and hear them singing and twittering to each other all day long....their noises fill my heart with joy:

And this one is for gardens. I like to garden....I have a few container gardens out on my porch and can't wait for the day I have a yard or acreage in which to garden on a higher level.

So, there you go, now you are up to date! It's funny, I keep going in spurts....I will do two or three squares in a day, and then not work on it for a few days. Well, either way it's getting done, and that's what really matters.

Long, FUN weekend!

What a  weekend we have had! Such fun, for sure.

On saturday, Jonathan and Liam took a bus down to seattle for the NW Pinball Convention. They were both very excited about it and had a lot of fun.

David and I went to the park, and spent the rest of the day quietly at home. 

On Sunday, we all went out to my in laws house, were Jonny's Scout is currently residing, so Jon could do some work on it. The cab roof had to be taken off, the rust scraped off of it, and then painted with something called Rust Mort (or something like that.) 

We were there for over 12 hours, but Jon got alot of work done, so that was good

And finally, on Monday, I took the boys and met some friends at the zoo for the day. We had a blast. Got to see most of the animals, some even better than any of our trips before (especially the lions and jaguars! Yay!)

giraffes---one of my favorite zoo creatures!

The boys playing in a "fox den"

Posing with the bronze eagles:

Posing with the bronze gorilla:

Sitting on eggs (by the flamingo exhibit):

We had a great weekend! Hope you did too!

Movie Watching

I have noticed that this is David's preferred way of watching movies, and I thought it too cute to pass up taking a couple pictures and sharing:

7 squares!

I have been working a lot on my blessing project, just haven't remembered to keep up taking pictures and posting them, so I have a bunch to share with you today!

First one is a quilt. I made it all scrappy. I love quilts, especially hand-made ones. They hold such love and are such a wonderful, tangible reminder of the person who made them.
I have several my mom made---as do the boys...and I have one very special one made by a bunch of people who love me. So, quilts definitely had to be a part of this project!

Next is "chips and salsa". Those who know me, know how much I love a big bowl of chips and yummy salsa! I can and will make a meal of it, much to the chagrin of my husband, who insists it's only snack food!

My next square is a letter.....I love receiving real live mail. Letters send so much love to me, as I know the person who sent them has sat down with me in mind and written to me. With the coming of email, and such, letters have become much more rare and all the more special!

"Lolly pop, lolly pop. Oh Lolly, lolly pop!" one of my very favorite kinds of candy....especially ones of the "dum-dum" variety!

02-23-02.....my wedding day.

this one is my camera. A couple years back, I received a beautiful smokey-blue canon from my parents. I love it. I love how cameras help us remember moments in time.

And last of all in this grouping is "church". I have been blessed by so many churches in my life---from the ones I grew up going to, to the ones that hosted and helped my team in DTS, to the one I currently go to... and because there have been so many, I simply drew out a chapel-like church that stands for all of them. This is one of my favorites squares so far!

Faith and Rainbow

This square is for the blessing---and challenge of trusting. I stitched it on October 28th, when I was remembering Kaiden and all that.

Here is my second "double" square. I will have at least four of these doubles when I am finished with this project. Some of the blessing just demand more space!
This one is a rainbow.......in the Bible, God put a rainbow in the sky as a promise to Noah that He would never again flood the entire earth (Genesis 9:12-17). Many times in my life, rainbows have been signs of promise, hope and a future.