Olivia's Quilt...

A couple of weeks ago, I went to my sister Elaine's house to quilt for the weekend. We had such a fun time. She has a new darling sewing room...I really should have taken pictures of it! I will have to take some next time I head over there. She was inspired by her Heather Bailey fabrics and Heather's sewing room (check out Heather's blog at hellomynameisheather.com).

We worked on some quilts, ate, shopped, ate and quilted more. We really had a fun weekend together. We even spent about 2 hours in an antique store buying all of their sewing notions (buttons, threads, & ric rac). She had been complaining about her iron not working well enough for quilting...it kept shutting off automatically and wasn't hot enough half of the time. She saw an old antique iron (barely new enough to have an electric plug) in the shop and bought it! We took it home and it worked perfectly. It looks cute in her room too.

We made some adorable pin cushions out of her Heather Bailey scraps (the pattern is on her blog). We used our antique buttons that we bought that weekend.

While we were there, I made two quilts. One was for my new nephew Thomas (who was blessed today)...I will post pictures later.

The other one was a quilt for Olivia. She is one of my favorite little girls in our neighborhood. She is one of Nathan's friends. I had found some "Olivia" fabric at The Corn Wagon and I couldn't resist. We pieced it together that weekend and even took it to one of Elaine's friends to quilt on her cool machine. We added some of our antique buttons (oh, so many uses for those) and some ribbon to the quilt.



I brought it home and bound it myself. It allowed me to practice binding...I have always dreaded that part of quilting in the past. I would beg my neighbor, sister, mom or mother-in-law to help me. By the end of the Olivia quilt I had it down. However, the beginning is another story. Let's just say that I hope it washes up and doesn't fall apart!


Nathan and I took it to her today for her birthday.
I think she liked it...

Sally the Kitty...

Sally has been such a joy to have around this weekend. At first she was just snuggling all the time with Nathan. I started to think something wasn't quite right with her. But, soon enough, she started to get down and play. She is adorable, jumping and pouncing on shadows, chasing strings and climbing up anything she can get her claws into. She especially loves chasing Nathan down the hall.
We woke up to snow today! We put her out to see what she thought of it...didn't like it at all! I hope she doesn't get too spoiled. She will stay in the house until it gets a little warmer (hopefully soon).

We went and visited friends today and took her along. Boston, Ashton & Olivia loved her too!


This is a very well-loved kitty...I think she is going to love it here!

Nathan's 6th Birthday....

Nathan had such a fun Birthday! He woke up to Andrew, Janessa, Harrison, Mom & Dad singing "Happy Birthday" to him with breakfast in bed. The kids always get to choose their Birthday breakfast the day before. He put in his order of pancakes, "double-eggs" (two eggs fried together), and bacon. We also gave him his birthday present...a brand new kitty cat! Needless to say, he didn't eat much of his breakfast!
He named her Sally (it is Jimmy Neutron's girlfriend). She is adorable and has been snuggled more than any cat ever has! Nathan didn't want to leave her to go to school, but we promised that she would be O.K.

Nathan's school class got to go to the Bean Museum at BYU, I chaperoned them. He had so much fun with his friends running around seeing all of the animals there. He even got to pet a snake! We had cookies for treats on the way home from the museum.

Once we were home from school, some neighborhood boys came over and Rick, Sytske and I took them all to the Discovery Gateway Children's Museum in Salt Lake City. They had a blast! It was a little hard to keep an eye on 9 boys, but we didn't loose any of them! They got to even play on a real life-flight helicopter! We had cupcakes out on the deck next to the helicopter.
It's a really good thing that my friend Sytske came with me...I could have never done it without her! She is such a cute mom with her boys!Austin...Daxon...Tayson...Parker...Chase...Matthew S...
Oakley...Matthew H...& Nathan...


When we got home Nathan and I flew his new kite at the park for about an hour. Parker and Matthew S. joined us. We then had macaroni and cheese (his favorite dinner), snuggled Sally more and went to bed!

What a perfect birthday!

Where is Spring?

I'm sitting at home today looking at pictures. I ran across these pictures taken of Andrew & Nathan this summer. They looked so cute coming up the street hand-in-hand. Sweet moments like that don't happen that often in our family! Aside from the adorable kids in the photo, look at that grass!!! I can't wait until our grass gets green. This has been one of the worst winters that I can remember. I am more ready for Spring/Summer to come than ever.


The other picture is of Andrew and his friend Spencer at the new park by our house. It is such a pretty view. I can't wait for it to be warm enough to go and hang out at the park in the evenings again.
I have some free time today, as I have broken my nose and just had surgery on it yesterday. It is a very painful recovery today. I'm trying to keep occupied so that I don't think about the pain. If I get brave I will post a picture of my face...but I don't know.

The accident was on Tuesday of this week. Nathan and I were reading stories upstairs when we heard Andrew open the garage door. We thought it would be really funny to lock the door on him...so we did. He was banging on it (sounded more like playing the drums) and we were laughing. After a minute or so, I un-bolted the door, opened it a crack and put my face right next to it, peeking around to see Andrew. He didn't realize that I was in front of the door and he shoved it open with all of his might! The door hit my nose and that was it!

Andrew feels terrible for breaking my nose, but I told him it was my fault for teasing him. When will I learn that you shouldn't horse around...someone's going to get hurt!

Chicago...

Chicago is one of my all-time favorite cities. I discovered it when we first went in 2005 and have been back about 7 times already. I especially love tagging along with Rick when he goes on business...any excuse and I take it!


When I go with Rick, I love to wander the city on my own and visit the art museums and shop while he is working. Then when he gets done with his meetings, we always go and eat at their yummy restaurants.


We visited Chicago a couple of years ago with our friends, Scott & Melissa Robertson, to attend a BYU Notre Dame football game. We had a great time with them for the weekend. We attended the Blue Man Group and walked all over the city.



My sister Karen and I were able to visit Chicago twice in the fall of 2006 to be on the Oprah show! We were a part of a special episode she did (her version that year of "My Favorite Things") where we got $1000 to go home with and spend on someone or something, video tape it, and then come back to report. It was a wonderful time with my sister before she went to Italy for 3 years. I feel blessed to have spent time in Chicago with just the two of us.


So, I do have a special place in my heart for Chicago. It is a beautiful city and I love to visit every opportunity I have. That's why I jumped at the chance to take Harrison and Nathan to see the big city. We had a fantastic time, despite the fact that I didn't get to have the peaceful trips to the art museum...and the shopping was mainly to stores like the Lego store!

The Art Institue of Chicago...

I took the boys to the Art Institute of Chicago, my very favorite art museum. They had fun. They were excited to see the originals of some of the paintings they had seen in many places. Their favorites were: A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Seurat, The Bedroom and self portrait of Vincent van Gough. They also liked American Gothic by Grant Wood. It was a slightly different trip than I was used to...we walked much faster and it was a lot nosier than usual...but I loved sharing those works of art with the boys.



On our last day in the city, we waled around a lot. We loved the bean in Millennium Park. It is a huge metal bean! You can go underneath it and look at yourself. The kids could have spent hours there!

All in all it was a wonderful and adventurous trip. The boys were angels and it will be an experience to remember all of their lives.

Chicago with Nathan & Harrison...

We had such a fun time with the boys in Chicago!

The first stop we made was to Giordono's Pizzeria. This is our favorite deep dish pizza place and we wanted them to get their first taste of Chicago there. They were thrilled! Harrison said that he could eat 2 pieces of pizza and we laughed! If you have never had deep dish pizza (and I'm terribly sorry if you haven't), you have to understand that you can't even hardly finish one slice, let alone two! I don't even think he ate all of his first slice!


Deep dish pizza was the surprise that we brought back home to the other kids. We picked up a half-baked pizza on our way to the airport and then we finished baking it at home the next night...it was wonderful!


We stayed at the Conrad Hilton, it was a beautiful, very fancy, hotel. We had a suite that looked out over the John Hancock building and the Chicago Tribune building. We had a balcony outside of our room that looked out onto Michigan Avenue. We were right next to the Nordstrom mall that had the Lego store...it was a wonderful location. Our favorite hotel of all of our stays in Chicago. They were so helpful and kind to us, especially when Nathan threw-up his dinner on the marble floor next to the 5-star restaurant!


The boys slept next to the window watching the city lights. The John Hancock building was green for St. Patrick's day. They watched it until it finally turned off it's lights and then they fell asleep.