I haven't blogged in so long...wow! I've been bad! Really, really bad! Just when I was *almost* caught up too...I've let it all slip again. Part of my problem is that Brent and I have an obsession with cameras. We seem to be collecting them. We now have 4 cameras!!! {How did that happen?!?} So downloading the pictures off of all those cameras takes SO much time, that I just don't want to do it. Urgh. One of the cameras is from my new ipod touch that I got for Christmas...the pictures aren't that great, but it's so small that it fits in my pocket, and I take it everywhere. So thus, it captures a lot of daily things that I normally don't capture. So I'm going back through the year to post the {very} best of, hopefully it won't be boring!
12/25/11 - a really great video of Ollie and I on Christmas Day...my kids request this little clip over and over so we've watched it a lot, and we always laugh! Hopefully the grandparents will enjoy it!
1/11/12 - funny pictures of Toby with a bubble beard:
I was washing pans and letting Ollie touch the bubbles and pick up handfuls of bubbles, and Toby came along and joined the fun! He made himself a little beard. Lovely! I really love how these pictures, and especially the last one show Toby's personality. He's a sweet, playful guy with a funny sense of humor...most of the time.
1/21/12 - Wilamette Falls after several weeks of very heavy rain, looking as full as I've ever seen it:
1/23/12 - a stroller ride through the woods with a bear and an owl:
...And later that day, it is revealed that Ollie has truly entered TODDLER-HOOD:
This is what it looks like when you leave your toddler along for 3 minutes with a bag of powdered sugar...haha! Thankfully our powerful Dyson vacuum got that stuff right out of the rug. And I'm really grateful that Ollie doesn't often make messes of this magnitude...he hasn't made one quite like this ever since.
1/24 - This is what it looks like when your toddler starts eating food from his own plate with a fork, and doing a good job of it:
1/26 & 1/30 - Some pictures from our backyard swings:
Gotta love Instagram.
1/27/12 - a free night at the Oregon Symphony and the band Arrival (a completely authentic and absolutely fantastic Abba cover band from Sweden), gratis of my sister Lara and her groupies (she always knows someone in the music industry...this time it's actually her in-laws who do sound/lights and sing backup for the band):
backstage with the band
2/4/12 - our first really nice day of the year...signs that spring are on the way:
1. Joshy finds a little garden snake sunning itself on the rocks in our front yard.
2. A trip to the park (it's finally dry enough) reveals the first daisies of the year...so pretty!
3. The first time all three boys ride the tire swing together...it didn't last long! Ollie was slipping through the hole.
2/5/12 - Ollie's first day in nursery:
anyone in our LDS (Mormon) faith knows that 18 months is a big deal because your baby grows up and goes into the nursery, and you finally get to sit through your Sunday classes and enjoy them! Ollie really enjoyed playing with the toys and eating snacks. He's having a hard time staying there without me though...but it's getting better. He's my first kid to have a tough time staying...my other kids didn't even look back to say "bye mama".
3/1/12 - Ollie has his first major owie. :( Sad! Sad! I was pulling a big, heavy homemade pizza on a pizza stone out of the oven and he ran up and grabbed the wire rack I was taking the pizza from. I was shocked because he has shown in the past that he knows "hot" and doesn't touch it. I'm guessing that he forgot because he was so hungry! Poor boy!
I called his pediatrician and she told us to bandage it once a day and watch for signs of infection. So we did a sterile gauze pad with triple antibiotic ointment, followed by sterile gauze wrap and a self-adhesive coban wrap every night before bed. It never got infected. The doctor said it would look worse than it really is for a lot of days and then suddenly the skin underneath would be ready and the burn would be better. I googled burns and learned everything additionally that I needed to know (or re-learn)...that it was a second degree burn, which takes 2-3 weeks to heal, how to treat it, bandage it, watch for infection, etc. It is time like these that I am really glad I took a semester long first aid class in college and worked in the OR (operating rooms) for a year, because I know all about bandaging and sterile fields...and I'm not at all squeamish (although it is much harder to see your baby's wounds than it is to see someone you don't know under a sterile drape). Anyway...Ollie did fine with it. It was sensitive for him and he treated his hand with care. He would point to it when I said 'owie'. He would not touch ANYTHING when his bandage was off. And he really only needed a dose of ibuprofen at night to take the edge off for a week. Sure enough, right at 2 weeks and 5 days the skin looked better! It was quite the transformation. And now there is barely even a scar to remind us of the ordeal. I'm so glad we got through that in one piece!
Boy wonder draws realistic portraits of everyone in the family:
Joshua drew these of Brent on 1/14 and Kate on 3/3
Are you laughing?? Cause I am!! Toby is crying...he's so scared.
Wow! No really, I think that Joshua has some potential and if he keeps showing interest in drawing we'll look into drawing classes.
3/4/12 - a spring time, evening walk through the wildlife preserve in our neighborhood:
niiiice and glowy!
3/13/12 - Where did spring go? We had our first snow day:
...and actually what that really means is that we had our FIRST SNOW of the entire season. That would explain why everyone was so excited.
3/14/12 - Ollie LOVES apples (well any food, really). I was shocked the first time he ate the whole thing...core and all, and handed me back the stem. It's a pretty regular occurrence now.
sitting in my sewing chair in the laundry room
3/18/12 - Mr. Potato Head? No, Mr. Ollie Head:
Well, I think that about does it for now. I have much more to catch up on, but this is a good stopping point.
Jefferies baby #5:
Brent has affectionately nicknamed this baby "Baby Bones" because its bones looked so amazing on the ultrasound! We had our ultrasound on February 14th, while the boys were at school...and we followed that up with a lunch date! This baby was so adorable and really putting on a show for us: waving, sticking tongue out, sucking thumb, and yawning!
We had decided not to find out the gender of the baby at the ultrasound for lots of reasons...
although we have a pretty good idea of the gender, as the ultrasound technician dropped a few accidental hints...and we may or may not have found out ;). Still, we're thinking it will be fun to keep everything under wraps until the baby arrives! I've been trying so hard this whole pregnancy to be focused on the baby as a person, and not as a gender. I'm still working on that. It's terribly difficult when you have three boys and your only girl is not with you...to stay focused on the things that really matter: that God is no respecter of persons, male or female...Acts 10:34, 2 Nephi 26:33. I felt God telling me this after I found out Oliver was a boy and I was very surprised about that (to say the least). And I received this message again during this pregnancy from The very intelligent
Women in the Scriptures Lady. So it must be something that God really wants me to think about. I know that God needs girls and boys on this earth, but He loves each of them unconditionally and he needs me to also. I've been doing a lot of deep pondering and spiritual searching this pregnancy, which a lot of it has been very personal, which is why I have been so quiet.
So just for fun, take a look at that ultrasound picture and tell me what your guess is...is Baby Bones a girl or a boy? Not that it matters... :-) We love this baby so much either way!
But if I've mentioned anything to any of you ;) out there, please don't spill the beans!
It seems like I've been doing a lot of sewing lately, which is fun and a much needed creative outlet for me.
I started with a baby blanket for some good friends who had their first baby a couple months back...a sweet little girl!
I love how pretty all the blues, greens and yellows look with brown
all of my blankets pass the Ollie test of approval...he LOVES these blankets and will try to carry them around the house and snuggle them when I'm not looking.
here's Joshy holding up the entire blanket
Next I give you:
My crowning achievement in blanket making thus far:
My first scrappy quilt (with many more to come...it was so much fun to make!):
This is a special quilt that I made for our new nephew Jackson who was born in December to Brent's younger sister and her husband. When I heard that their baby was coming to them with spina bifida I knew that I wanted to make them a special blanket. I asked her what colors she wanted and she told me to make it colorful! How fun! I got some of the squares from my friend
SewSara's etsy shop, and I cut the rest of them myself, added a border, backed it with some cuddly minky (which will probably be too hot for where they live right now :-o), and I used
SewSara's tutorial (this is a great tutorial!) for appliqueing Jackson's name on the bottom. I hope that he'll love this blanket his whole life!
here's a close up of some of the squares and the diagonal quilting I did with my machine
not great pictures...but another example of Ollie loving on the baby blanket!
Here is a sample of fabrics that I've been collecting, which I think will be gorgeous together in a quilt for my living room...for those days where you want to cuddle by the fire (I had a lot of those days this winter because I was SO COLD in my first trimester!)...and I have been needing a cute blanket which matches my living room's colors.
I'm excited about this project...
but first, I'm finishing a special quilt for Elsa...
it's been on my shelf for the past two and a half years and my heart needs me to finish it now.
(Pictures to come.)
Here's a little maternity t-shirt re-do/re-purpose whatever you want to call it:
I wish I had a before picture, but basically the little square graphic came from an itty-bitty maternity t-shirt that I bought online, on sale toward the end of Oliver's pregnancy. The website told me: one size fits most. Ha! Hahahahahahahahaha!! When I got it, it was more like: one size fits a teeny, tiny x-small teen pregnant mama. I'm telling you! There was nothing about it that was one size fits most! It was smaller than my non maternity shirts and was not at all stretchy to accommodate a bigger size! Seriously, I wear a medium or a large...so I consider myself to fit into the "one size fits most" category! Anyway...I had this idea many moons ago to re-purpose my kids most beloved t-shirts that they outgrow by cutting out the graphic and simply sewing it on a bigger shirt. Very easy! I never actually got around to doing it for my kids, but I went and bought a big old white maternity shirt from a re-sale store and I appliqued the graphic from that tiny shirt onto this gap t-shirt. Now it'll actually fit me at the END of my pregnancy, when I'm actually nesting. :)
Here's my last project, for now:
A big, old Eddie Bauer comfy, cotton dress that I bought on clearance at the outlets many moons ago, but never wore because it was extremely large. I just couldn't make myself get rid of it because I like the colors and the fabric is so soft. I always imagined re-purposing it someday into a maternity dress. Well, I finally did that by taking a few inches off the opening of the collar and gathering the bodice above the belly for a more flattering fit.
Before and after
I really wanted this dress to be a long, flowy summer dress...but alas, it is not quite long enough to be maxi-length. I think I'm going to have to hem it to just below my knees, but I haven't decided yet.
this gathering is really, super easy to do with that stretchy, elastic thread in your bobbin and regular thread on the top.
I wish I could say Happy Springtime, but where we are the weather has been so difficult lately! We finally got our first snow last week and we got some more today. Other than that it's been raining all the time. I feel jipped because when we came up here 5 years ago (!) to search for a house in March, it was so warm we were wearing shorts! That's the kind of spring weather I thought I was signing up for! Hopefully the sun will come out next week for spring break!
1/7/12-1/8/12
It has become an annual tradition for us to take a trip to the Oregon coast in January. It started a few years back because it turned out that we could get a condo through our friends the Mansius family for really cheap in January, since it's the off season. And surprisingly we always seem to get the best weather whenever we go in January! So we've kept up the tradition. This year we got a condo at Seaside again and we went at the same time as the Mansius family so we could all hang out together! It's a great little break after the holidays in the middle of boring January, which has nothing really going on anyway!
Well, the first day the weather wasn't so promising...but it got better!
Even though it was cold and blustery, we spent some time playing on the beach, taking pictures, and a few of us got up the guts to go swimming in the heated outdoor pool...no, not the ocean!
But the next day, we got this:
niiiice blue skies, sunshine, and warm temps.
(the view from our condo balcony)
Of course, it had to be a Sunday! Hahaha.
After church we enjoyed walking on the beach, taking pictures, and had dinner and games with our friends.
This is Tara and I with my new (to me) dslr camera. It is Tara's old back up camera and we traded about 50 pounds of free-range, grass fed, organic beef for it.
(I bought the 1/4 cow from a local farmer friend, but then I realized that we hardly EVER eat meat, especially beef...so I was happy to trade, and she was happy to get a bunch of very high quality beef...soooo...PLEASE send your favorite beef recipes my way because I STILL have a lot of beef!)
It was great to be out on the beach with our cameras together so she could teach me more about how to use the thing! (I did take a photography class in high school, so it's coming back pretty quickly).
Here are some pictures we took:
she took these of Ollie and I with her big professional camera.
...and I took these of her with HER big professional camera. Pretty great, huh? ^She's the professional, and I'm glad to say that I have a lot to learn!
Anyway, these are with my camera:
Here is my 15 week pregnant belly, just in case you were wanting to see it!
This camera does need a new lens...I'm excited to see what kind of pictures I can take when I get one! Hopefully I can get that all ready before this baby comes so I can get some great pictures! Yay!
a cute 'lil toddler!
This is what it looks like when you leave your toddler along for 3 minutes with a bag of powdered sugar...haha! Thankfully our powerful Dyson vacuum got that stuff right out of the rug. And I'm really grateful that Ollie doesn't often make messes of this magnitude...he hasn't made one quite like this ever since.
