Please forgive my absence.

Sorry it has been so long since I posted but a lot of changes have been going on in my life lately. I'll write more about those changes later, but I will say that sometimes you have to take a step back, look at your life and decide that you are not living life the way you know in your heart that you should. Then you have to decide if you have the courage to change those things or are you going to ignore what you know is the right path and stay on the easy path. After much soul searching I have decided that I must take the path that I know is right. It will not be easy, but in the end I truly believe that it will be better off for all involved. Please send your positive thoughts my way, I can certainly use them.

A tooth Finally!

Well my sweet baby girl finally got her first tooth on Sunday. Hallelujah! She has been working on that tooth for over a month.

Recently a friend gave me a stack of her old shirts that she was going to give to Goodwill. She knew that I like to recycle old clothes into clothes for my kids. Last Friday I was able to make a t-shirt and a pair of shorts for my son and an a-line tank top for my daughter. I was going to take a picture of them together in their new outfits, but my son got sick on Saturday and threw up on his new outfit before I could get a picture. You can see the top on my daughter though. I embellished it with a pooh patch and ribbon that I got in a set at the cheap fabric store for 65 cents. It turned out darling. I have several more t-shirts that I am going to probably recycle into similar tops, I even ordered some cute ribbon online yesterday from Les Bon Ribbon to embellish them.

Tonight I was reminded once again how important it is to have the right tool for a job and how important it is to do the prep work correctly even if it is tedious. A week ago last Saturday I decided to paint my small entryway powder room. Piece of cake I thought, I already had the paint left over from painting my daughter's bedroom. So I go into the bathroom and get started. I was out of plastic for the floor but I figured I'd just put down some towels and go at it. My painter's masking tape was also a bit old and not sticking well but I decided to just forge ahead anyway. Within minutes my son had gotten paint on the tile and i had to stop and clean it up. I also dripped paint a lot and kept having to clean up paint. Then I got the walls mostly done and started to work cutting in the ceilings and such with a paint brush. this was not going well with the brush I had but I kept at it. Finally tonight I gave up and went to the Home Dept and bought a special corner paint tool and a tool for painting edges. It took me minutes to redo the painting that was taking hours and it looks sooooo much better. I think that I might actually be done painting, I'll have to look at it in the morning when its dry. I wish I had just taken the time to go get the right tools in the beginning, I would have been done days ago! I guess that life just needs to give us these kind of lessons every once in a while. So the moral of my story is, don't struggle with something, find the right tool for the job and use it!

Checking in

Things have gotten so busy around here. I have started an internship at work that has added an 8 hour work day to my week. Plus, I need 100 more hours of education to qualify to take the test so that has been taking up time also. Luckily the internship is paid and after I take the test in July my work schedule should be much better. On top of that Little Girl is Teething. She has two teeth coming in on the bottom and is not a happy camper. Needless to say, I haven't been getting much sleep lately.

The weather here has gotten hot overnight. When I worked Sunday I needed a sweater to walk from the parking garage into work. This morning I put the same sweater on and when I got out of the car to go into work I was hot! When I got off work at 3:30 it was warm enough that I went home and put on a tank top and shorts. I have been looking forward to the warmer weather, but I am sure that in a month or so I won't be quite so happy about it.

Quilting wise I got the finishing touches put on my show quilts and dropped them off on Tuesday. I will go to the show on the 17th and take pictures of them hanging. I will also volunteer that day like I always do. I have 3 other quilts in the local historical museums quilt show also. That show runs through May 28th so I will get out there on a free Saturday to take some pictures. Now that the show prep is out of the way I have been working on the next clues for my guilds mystery quilt. When I get that done I think I will make up some shorts and t-shirts for my son for the summer. It is so fun to see him wearing something that I made for him.

Here are a couple cute recent pictures. One is of my son sleeping with his car in his hand, too cute. His favorite "car" right now is the tractor from the movie "Cars". He went nuts when I got that one for him, talked about it and played with it nonstop for two days. I was glad that he liked it so much because it was hard to find (actually a friend found it for me). The other picture is of my son and one of his friends playing on the wall next to a fountain at a local mall. The weather was great that day, cool enough to wear pants but warm enough to wear a short sleeved shirt.

Running around all day

I ran errands for most of the day today and feel like I didn't get anything accomplished. I left the house shortly after 11am and didn't get back until after 5pm. I brought the baby with me so I wouldn't have to worry about getting back to feed her or bringing the breast pump. Unfortunately she is teething and likes to take a couple sucks and then pop off and chew on her fist for a bit and then repeat the process over and over. This has made for a bit of engorgement on my part since she is not feeding very effectively and makes it a bit more difficult to nurse discreetly in public. I really hope that these teeth come in soon.

Tonight I finished another knitted wool soaker for my daughter. Now she has a total of 4 soakers. I don't even bother to use the other kind of covers on her anymore, the wool is just so much better. I have two skeins of yarn that I bought at a local knitting shop that I think I am going to make some knitted shorts for the summer. I have decided to learn how to knit in the round in order to make the shorts that way.

I think that I am going to go to a quilt show/auction on Saturday. It is at a retirement community on the other side of town (60 + miles, the Phoenix area is Huge), so we will see how I feel about the drive come Saturday morning. I'll post pictures if I do go.

I have a couple of stamp sets for sale on ebay if you are interested. Here is a link:

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZneorn3QQhtZ-1

Sorry for the disjointed post but it is late and I am tired. Good Night.

Sidetracked

I had been making good progress on my counterpoint butterflies UFO, but got sidetracked with finishing work for two quilts that I am putting in the AQG quilt show. The quilts are the Oklahoma Backroads quilt that I started in September and the Stars over time quilt that was a UFO I finished last year. I have finished binding and putting the hanging sleeve on the Oklahoma Backroads quilt and I just need to put the label on. For the Stars over Time quilt I just have to put on the hanging sleeve. These are all tedious tasks that I would rather spend the time doing something else, but I enjoy having a quilt in the show so I must do them.

I am also going to have three other quilts in a show at the local historical society museum. This is not a judged show but I am excited to be able to say that my quilts have hung in a museum! The show starts on March 3rd so I will have to go and see them and take pictures of them.

I think that I will go reward myself for all the boring finishing work by working on the mystery quilt that I started last month.

Siblings

This afternoon my son was jealous of my daughter as I was holding ans nursing her. So like a toddler with limited coping skills he decided to hit her with one of his cars. Truly he didn't hit her any harder than he has in the past, but he must of gotten her just right to burst a blood vessel and gave her a lovely shiner. He was of course appropriately disciplined and made to apologize, but my husband and I felt terrible for our daughter. She was such a trooper though cried for a bit, but was fine after I finished nursing her. I have no doubt that someday she will return the favor and give our son payback for all the times he has been mean to her. It is so hard to make sure that you are giving equal attention to both kids. Since our daughter is breastfeeding and needs my attention so often it is easy to leave the care of our son to my husband, but that is not fair for anyone. Being a parent is harder than I ever imagined it would be.

In quilty news tomorrow I plan to bring a quilt to the hand quilters that work at the local historical society museum. This quilt was made by my great grandmother (I think, have to check on that) and passed down to my grandmother who gave it to me well over a year ago. I have been intending to bring it to them and have it quilted ever since. I have resolved to finally bring it in tomorrow (I even have the backing fabric in the dryer as I type). I was told that there was a 9 month to year long wait, but if I never bring it in it will never get done.

In other news my sister had a baby boy this morning. Both her kids are about six months younger than mine, so hopefully they can grow up close. I have attached a picture of the happy family.

I am such a girl!

Now I bet you immediately thought of something pink and fluffy, well I don't do pink and fluffy. Tonight I flexed my girly muscles and used an electric drill in the garage. I bought peg board for my office and the garage a LONG time ago. I installed the peg board in my office and love it to death, but never got around to installing the peg board in the garage. Well the garage has become a black hole of tools and anything else that gets put in there. I finally decided that I had enough and after I put the baby to bed tonight I went into the garage and put up the pegboard. I also put up a magic holder that I got at Costco a long time ago. It is for holding handled tools and it seems to work well. Eventually I will tame the black hole that is our garage.

The kids and I are on the road to recovery from our illnesses. If the trend continues we might actually venture out of the house tomorrow.