Baking with the Girls

I invited Cleo and Regan over to have a baking day. I made them these adorable aprons for our special day. It was Cleo's idea to put their names on them.

Hard at work

Cleo

Regan

We made sugar cookies and cupcakes and had lunch together. We were going to make another batch of cookies, but this was enough activity. The girls wanted to have time to play together, too. Cleo had to head home and then we took Regan on a long walk to work off some of that sugar overload.

I loved having the girls over and it was such a fun day!

Sewing

I'm trying to remember to take photos of my sewing projects, but I don't always remember. The following are table runners that I made for Christmas gifts. When I took my little R&R trip to the beach I found the sweetest fabric store and bought a simple pattern for this table runner. It proved to be a great way to practice my quilting skills on a small scale. I was very happy with the results and now feel ready to move up to a larger project before heading to a bed sized quilt. My favorite table runner I forgot to take a picture of before sending it off! It was a cute design of chickens and eggs in yellow and black. It might be worth a trip to Cannon Beach again just to buy some more of that fabric to make one for myself!

I made skirts for Cleo, Regan and Campbell (Regan's sister). I think they turned out adorable!

You can't see these as well, but I made flannel Christmas pants for the baby boys and a reindeer applique t-shirt for Koen (who thought it was silly...and also insisted on wearing his tie with his t-shirt... Oh, four year old boys!)

This one ended up being our Christmas card

The photo shoot to get our Christmas card photo was very funny! We did it the evening of Mario's birthday party and all the parents were behind my friend Cindy, who was the photographer, and I could not stop laughing at them all trying to get the kids to smile.

Little Monster

This has got to be one of the cutest outfits that Leoben has received (thank you Kelly!) so we were thrilled when he grew into it and we had to take lots of photos!

Mario's 60th Birthday

One of Mario's teachers made him this cake!

 This is when Mario opened his box of 60 letters written by friends and family of memories they have of Mario. It was a gift that Mario appreciated so much. It was wonderful to watch him react to reading all of the letters later that night.

Chunkey Monkey

He's now over 18 pounds, beginning to laugh and watches everyone around him. 

Every time I change his diaper I'm still amazed at those chubby legs!

Grandma makes another pair of pants.

He really does love me.

 I've neglected my blog for so long and my camera now has over 400 pictures on it. I misplaced the camera for awhile and panicked, thinking I'd lost all of those pictures. It's time to load them onto the computer and do something with them!

On Thanksgiving I got serious about finding the camera and offered $10 to whomever found it. If it wasn't found that day I was going to buy a new one on Black Friday. Emilia was the winner.

Oh, you want to know where the camera was? In my car the whole time.

It also seems weird to post such old pictures of Leo. He is so tiny here and as of today he weighs a whopping 17.2 pounds.

This one cracks me up.

 These photos are from a photo shoot we did with my friend Cindy from
Garage Studio Photography.

Leo is snuggled into a wool sack I knit for him just before he was born.

Beautiful.

It is the most amazing process to watch my daughter become a mother. It began with watching her give birth, which was nothing like I expected it to be. She really did have a difficult labor and I was in awe of her strength. Now that she's been mothering Leoben for 12 weeks I am in more awe of her. She is calm, loving and strong in her convictions. She researches everything and makes informed decisions about his care. Everything she does it seems that she has a confidence that I feel like took me years and years and a few children to have. I'm incredibly proud of the mother she is. Leo is a lucky boy to have her looking out for him.