Happy Halloween!

A nice sunny day arrived just in time for Halloween. As I speak, the children are stuffy their little mouths with candy. The sooner it is gone the better, is my motto. We had a fun night!

Have you ever seen a cuter princess and little chicky baby?

New baby!!!!!!!!!!

NO, not me!

My little sister had her first baby today!!!!!!  He is just a few hours old.  I must echo what a friend of mine said a few weeks ago.  Families weren't meant to live this far apart!  I want to hold that baby.  I want to kiss his little warm cheeks and run my hand over his wet little head of hair.  I want to hug her and clean for her and take a meal to her and hold the baby for her..........

But for now, I was only able to stitch my love into this quilt.  It is traveling to the hospital right now with my mom---so now I have license to post a picture of it.  Becca will see it in a few hours.  You must see it in person.  The blues and browns are amazing.  A lot of the fabrics are wovens--it is so textury ( I know that isn't a word!) .  Not quite the same in the photograph.

I love you Becca!  I can't wait to see more pictures of that cute little babe!

As for birth statistics---I won't rob Becca of announcing that on her blog!

Run anyone?

The Cable Bridge Run is coming up---December 19th, 9:00 am.  Is anyone in for it?

I am.  I have got to have some cold weather exercising motivation!  Who's in?

I think it was $14 last year for early registration which includes a long sleeved t-shirt.

Smiles

Love these portraits!  Finally posting them.  Do you see the crocodile tear pouring down Eliza's cheek?  She wasn't quite into the photographer, the lights, the new place--oh well.  We will chalk it up as a memory.  I am sitting to the left, because Eliza kept jumping out of the picture!

6 month old picture

Got it taken

3 weeks till you can pick it up--7 months old by then

and a few more weeks until I get one scanned!--8 months old tomorrow!

I won!

On a whim, I entered the contest for a Centennial Logo for my city.  It will be used on letterhead, t-shirts, mugs, flyers, etc. --during the centennial celebrations next year.  I win $100, since it is for the 100th celebration.  My favorite entry is the one right below, but it looks like they will use the simpler version below that.  I haven't done much graphic art, but it was a fun project!

New Family Members

Oh, to be a child again!  Matthew and Nathan got new hamsters today.  It was the thrill of their life.  They have been saving their money up for a long time, expedited by Matthew's new paper route last month.  And today was the day...........we headed for Petco.

And now let us introduce "Hammy" and "Gophey".  I am just glad they don't have long tails, that would be too mousey for me.

Roller Fun

We went roller-skating today ("we" meaning me + 6).  WAVA (Matthew's Washington Virtual Academy) has family outing days every other week or so.  This time it was roller skating for FREE.  Can't pass that up!  Even Eliza got to skate a few rounds.  By the end of the two hours, the boys were really getting along well, flying around the rink.  It was a great time!

I dream of designing quilt fabric for Moda. There.....I said it. One of those crazy ideas I have. But since that cannot happen right now ( little lacking in the time department), I will just let others do the designing and I will buy their beautiful fabrics to quilt with! On that note, I love the twice yearly QUILT MARKETS that only designers and store owners can attend---you can follow along on the fun online and see the amazing new lines of fabric! Go to PamKitty's website to see a list of everyone that is blogging about quilt market......

Hooray for the first FROST!

Our garden frosted over the night before last.  We were happy to find lots of pumpkins after the canopy of leaves had withered from the frost!  This is our first time being successful with growing lots of pumpkins.  Hoorraay!

Not to mention.......I was very happy to pull out and empty all of my flower pots today.  I have to admit that the frost only singed them because they were close to the house.  But it was reason enough for me to dump them all today and replace the front porch of flowers with pumpkins!  It is a weird phenomenon.  In the spring, I can't wait to be out planting, watering, turning the earth.  In the fall, I can't wait for the flowers to freeze, and for my watering to be over..............till next spring!

Saturday Fun

We had a very enjoyable and productive day. Today was the first of two days of our church's semi-annual conference. We get to watch 4 two hour broadcasts during the two days. We get to watch it live online these days. Technology is amazing, I must say. I used to dress and take the kids to the church to watch over the satellite every session. Now we get to stay home and watch online. We hook our computer up to our stereo system for good sound, and we can really enjoy and hear it. We had an omelet bar breakfast with all the fillings to choose from. We love to hear the words of our prophet at these conferences twice a year. And we love having two full days home together as a family.

And in between conference today..........the basement! JOY IN THE JOURNEY, I keep telling myself. It will be done before I know it, and I will look back and think it never could have taken as long as it really did! Between yesterday and today we got all of the drywall up!!!! That is worth quite a few exclamation points. I may never have mentioned that back around Labor Day we finished drywalling the ONE wall that was flood damaged. But as we checked the others, two more were black with mold when we pulled off some sections. So down came the rest of the walls (right when we were making such progress!). I am glad to be getting all of the mold out. It turned out that one of the walls had its drywall attached with glue instead of nails or screws--with no studs to do so. That wall definitely had to come down. Drywall should never touch concrete, what were the builders thinking? No wonder there was so much mold! So we had to add the wood, and more wall. By the end of this project, we might have to go professional because we will have so much experience!

These first two pictures are in memory of our POPCORN ceilings. We love popcorn, but not on the ceiling! Two years ago we scraped it all out of the house. But we found some more in the basement when we tore out our built in shelves because of the flood. Today, I scraped the last of the popcorn out!

Painting the concrete to SEAL in any remnant of mold from getting out. The boys love painting! Good thing there isn't any flooring to ruin right now.

And up goes the new wall. In case you didn't know (as I didn't), GREEN drywall is, nicknamed "greenwall" is the MOLD resistant version of drywall. We decided to try it.

And now, since I have had a little break--I am going back down to finish mudding and taping the "greenwall". Texturing and paint soon to come!