A scarf and a bucket hat

I made these for Emily. They turned out pretty cute, and the bucket hat only took me an hour and a half. The scarf however, tricked me. It looked really easy and so I stayed up trying to get it done. I thought maybe by eleven. . .ha ha! I was up until 12:30. Can I just mention here how very annoyed I am? At about 11:30 my doorbell rang three times very fast, a very desperate ring. I thought for sure someone was in trouble. I ran downstairs only to find no one there. Now I'm pretty sure that it was a few of the kids in the neighborhood who's parents are just uninvolved. I was scared for hours though thinking up all of the possibilities.

Camera Thieves

Yet another episode of Julia stealing my camera without me knowing and taking really silly pictures!

Glazed Cake Donuts

The internet search engine is my friend when it comes to recipes! I find myself craving something but unhappy with the recipe I have for it. I'll type it in and search until I find one that looks good. Sometimes, I'll just go right to Food Network.com (which is definitely my favorite place to find recipes). My other favorites are recipezaar.com, and allrecipes.com. I found my cake donut recipe on Food Network. If you want a copy of your very own, click here

Newest creation

I made these for my wonderful sister-in-law Jenni for her birthday. They were a lot of fun to make, and I think they turned out rather cute. They are dishcloths, and I think they will be fabulous because of their texture. They will probably be the best dish washing apparatus ever! They are made out of a beautiful 100% cotton yarn. I didn't know until I got back into crochetting, but that cheap Red Heart yarn you get at Wal-Mart, is mostly acrylic, and now that I have been spoiled by better yarns I can barely stand to crochet with that other stuff, it hurts my fingers!

Together forever

We were all eating our special treat of homemade cake donuts on Sunday. As we set there laughing and talking, everyone being kind, obedient and polite, it became one of those moments. One of the moments Elder Ballard talked about in conference. One of those blissful moments. A sparkling, shining moment. I just had to snap a picture. It was then that I knew just how glad I was that our family could be together forever!

A place of her own

As you can well imagine, with four siblings, Hadley can scarcely find a place to be alone. This week, she found one, and she spends a great deal of time alone in her cupboard. She has even learned how to close the door behind herself so nobody knows where she is.

FINALLY!

It feels SO good to be done with this one! No one be too in awe of my greatness, it didn't take me a couple of days to do this one. I started this in 2007 while I was pregnant with Hadley. I kept trying to find things to take my mind off of my pregnancy. Well, it worked alright until I got into the endless monotony of the red and white stripes. I finished this today for Scottie and he loves his new afghan!

Third grade singing program

The third grade class presented a Texas singing program. They sounded SO good and did such a fabulous job. Ryan even had a speaking part, but I couldn't get a picture of that because Hadley was attempting to break my camera.

More creations

Here's the poncho I made for Emily for her birthday. Needless to say, I wouldn't have picked that color combination, but she loves it, and it actually looks good with her skin coloring and hair color. It also brings out her eyes!
Sorry mom, I couldn't resist. The package with this blanket in it for baby Jude will most likely arrive on Monday. My brother and his wife had a beautiful baby boy, and this is a blanket I made for him. It is actually a replica of a blanket my brother Derek had when he was little and loved to death. I'm hoping that baby Jude loves his blanket as much!
Here is an adorable sweater I made for another one of Emily's friends having a birthday. It turned out so cute that I'm tempted to keep it for us and go and buy her friend a Polly Pocket or something.

More Birthday

Here's Haddie with her ladybug antannea on. I for one think she looks absolutely adorable!
Here we are playing put the spot on the ladybug. I think I look incredibly skinny!
Getting ready to blow out the candles.
Gee, I wonder who ate her ice cream to fast? Can you say "brain freeze?"

Emily's Ladybug party

Here I sit waiting for guests to arrive at Emily's Ladybug party. I feel sad, because I've already been informed that two of the three guests we invited are sick and will not be able to come. Poor Emily, she's a little heartbroken. But I'm hoping that it will still be a great day for her. There are not words to describe how grateful I am that she was able to come to our family 6 short years ago. She is such a calm and peaceful girl, with such a beautiful heart and soul. She was accepted, as a kindergartner, into the gifted and talented program at our school. She is bright, happy, fun and the favorite friend of each little girl in her circle of friends. What a blessing she is. Happy Birthday sweet girl!

Mother Daughter Enrichment

We did a fun Enrichment in our ward tonight. It was a Mother Daughter Relief Society Birthday Party. My girls loved that they got to come with me. There was a potluck dinner, several different classes (scrapbooking, quilting, FHE games) and they took pictures of the moms and girls. My favorite part was the slideshow they did of moms and their girls at the same ages. I was surprised at how much all my girls look like me. Kind of fun, so here are the pictures I gave them of us. The first is Hadley at 15 months, and they me at 15 months. Then me and Emma at 6, then Me and Julia at 8 (she's not quite 8 yet, but close enough).

Danger baby strikes again

This is Hadley's new favorite activity, climbing up on the coffee table in the music room. If you have the audacity to take her off of it, she throws a world-class temper tantrum. She definitely knows what she wants these days, and you better be prepared for some resistance if you dare interfere.

A baby and her bag

I was trying to get a picture of Hadley and her "purse". She found this gift bag I had been using to hold whatever crochet project I was currently working on. She emptied it of it's contents and started to carry it around like a purse. She even found various items to put into her purse. She was walking around with it on her arm and her hand bent all girly-like. Her daddy tried to help me get a picture by picking her up...then she just became crabby. So I guess this is better titled a crabby baby and her bag.

Recently

Hadley and Julia enjoyed playing car together. I wish I would have waited a little longer to take the picture. Not long after I snapped this, Julia (being the awesome older sister that she is) went all out and decorated Hadley's "car" for her. She even added a cushion for extra comfort.
I put Hadley on Julia's bed to help her wake up. What resulted was a most precious snuggling session.
Emily looked cute waking up that morning too!
Here's Hadley trying to steal the camera from me. I can't believe that we are already at this stage. My how time flies.

New Projects

This is another poncho, this one I made for cousin Lyvia's 4th Birthday!



I made this scarf for one of the gym teachers at the kids' school.










These are ponchos that I made for Julia's friends (twins) that just had a birthday, these were the colors they told me were their favorite!
And lastly, this is a baby afghan I made for one of my good friends in our ward.

Communication

My sweet Auntie Rebecca sent me a link to a website called Read the Scriptures. I have loved it. You go onto this website and choose what you would like to read, I chose the Book of Mormon, I am STILL trying to finish a quick reading all the way through. You also chose your timeframe, I picked 90 days. Then they will send you your reading "assignment" for each day. They even include an audio link so you can listen to it instead of read it. When you are done you click a box that says completed and they show your progress. I am currently 15% done.
Anyway, I found a quote on there that I love. It sums up so perfectly what I often find myself trying to explain to people, but have never been able to as well as I would like.

"'Words do not convey meanings; they call them forth.' I speak out of the context of my experience, and you listen out of the context of yours, and that is why communication is difficult."
--David O. McKay, Ensign, May 1996, Page 9

Because we all have lived different lives and have had vastly different experiences, we understand even the smallest most commonplace words very differently. I broke my elbow at the age of 6 (I think) and when someone says "elbow" just the words conjurs up memories of strawberry scented anesthesia, they put two pins in my elbow and everytime I bumped my arm they seemed to jam farther into my elbow, OUCH!, I had to wear a plastic bag over my cast to take a bath, when they took the cast off my arm had shrunk, it stunk and was COVERED in dead skin. But for someone else, the word "elbow" conjurs up different images. Maybe on your first date with a nice boy he took you by the elbow to help you over a think patch of ice and you were SO impressed by what a gentle man he was that you married him!
Stephen Covey says this, "Seek first to understand and then to be understood." The difference in how we each interpret words is why this is SO important. Before you draw inferences into what someone else has just said, you need to make sure you understand not only the content of what they just said, but the underlying meaning and the intent. I would say that 99% of the time people do not mean to offend, they are just trying their best to communicate an idea, or a thought and have no way to know that the words they just spoke in combination mean something so vastly different to us that it is offensive. Just ask a few clarifying questions and it will be obvious that they had no malevolent intentions.

Weight loss update

Well folks, I thought since it has been a little while that I would post an update. We've now been doing the South Beach Diet for two months, during which time I have lost 9 lbs. and Scott has lost 14 lbs. So, that means we weigh in at 139 (I'm SO excited to have broken the 140 barrier) and 191 respectively.