Meet Yoshi

Meet Yoshi. Our newest family member. We are still not sure if we will keep him, but for now he is ours. He's not the most exciting animal ever and he's not cuddly, but he is pretty funny to watch running around when he's out of his tank.
Enjoy!

It All Started With This...

I love dresses. As a little girl I hated them. I would have worn shorts or levis to church every week. I was so glad I was not born "in the old days" because they worn dresses everyday. But now, now I love them. So feminine, so cute, so comfortable, did I mention cute? A few weeks ago I was looking for a new dress. I found the one pictured above. LOVE IT! I was in love. The color, the fit, well what's not to love about it. But alas, it was sold out. I set out on a mission to discover what type of dress this is and if I could find a pattern for it. I have since discovered it is called a shirtwasit dress. These were the common house wife dress from the 40's to the 60's. Finding a pattern was quite the process, but I finally found one I love. Thank you ESTY.
I tried to size up my pattern with a method called pattern grading,
But my experiment dress top was extremly too big. :(
Over the past few days I have been searching and reading and searching and reading and finally I have found a new love. I want to make my own patterns. I have played with the idea of it for the last year or two and finally I think I am ready to make the jump. Wish me luck...I think I'm gonna need it!

My little Princess

Little Miss Sadie Ann has been to two princess parties in the last few weeks. She was in heaven! I would so love to take her to Disneyland this year. I think we will try to make that happen. She loves all the pretty things in life. Right now she is sitting and stringing beads. She has been doing this for at least the last hour.
The boys are well boys... Mark is working on a science fair project. Tommy is trying to love reading... we just haven't found that book that has clicked for him yet. Spencer is trying to be more patient. They each have thier challenges and I love them each for who they are and am pround of all the amazing things they have done. They all still give lots of hugs, even when I walk them to school. I keep thinking I'm going to loose that, but I don't think Mark will out grow hugs for a long time. The other two boys? Well we'll see.

So... I guess it's been awhile...

I really have nothing to share. I do all my journaling in my well journal. But since most of the people who will read this will probably never read my journal, here I am! If you'd ever care to read my journal please come over. I'm sure you will find it to be quite humerous.
I love that our kids are just as happy playing with plastic containers as they are with all the expensive toys they are given. Can some one please remind me why we all spend so much money on said toys?
The End.

I want to do only the easy things!

I was talking to my sister the other day and she told me about her daughter... She has been taking piano lessons for a while and the other day she told her mom she didn't want to do it any more. My sister initially said that's great, no one is going to make you do this. But out of curiousity she asked her daughter why... the response was that piano was hard and she only wanted to do the easy stuff. Well, guess who's still taking piano lessons?

I was thinking about it more and you know... I only want to do the easy stuff too. Sometimes it just seems like that would be the way to go. But where does this take us? My guess is that life would actually turn out to be a lot harder. It's funny how the things that seem so hard when we are doing them are the things that set us free. Life would be so dull and unrewarding if all we ever did was "the easy stuff."

Our Father in Heaven has given us families, jobs, church, friends, homes, and the list goes on and on... and it's all hard work. We have to work everyday to keep up those things. Is it easy? Sometimes yes... and sometimes it's so hard I want to dig myself a hole and hide for a year or two. But most of the time it's fun and it is always worth it!

So enjoy life... learn from it...

Speaking of learning...

We went to NYC last week. What an adventure! I feel like I learned alot about people, our country, myself, art and everything inbetween.

I'll just give you a day it a time...So here is a shot looking up. It looks alot bigger in pictures than when you are really there. Is it big? Yes. In NYC everything is big... including the rats! And yes this is our friend we made the first day... luckily he only stayed just long enough to get a picture.It's not as big as I thought it would be. Everything was kinda spread out. But over all I loved the trip! It was refreshing to spend some time without kids. And it was relaxing.

This is Times Square. Wow! This place was busy everytime we through it (and we walked through it alot! It seems like everyday at some point we would end up here...). So many people and the stores were always open... I have got to find out what their hours are. So that was day number one...

Sing your heart out!

I made some bread last week... It sang! It was the most amazing thing ever. And it was almost the perfect loaf... I didn't actually make the dough a friend did. And the recipe she uses doesn't have any sweetener... I like my bread with sugar or honey in it. So I made some of my own with sweetener (I used honey) and my bread didn't sing... the crust was almost as crunchy... but it sure tasted good anyway, and it still wasn't the perfect loaf. I guess I'll have to try it her way and see if I can get it right.
Bread makes me feel good. I love to bake bread. There is just something about having bread at some point in the making... it make my house smell good... and just looking at it can be comforting...
So bake some bread this week and just see how good it makes you feel!

What did your kids do today?

This is pretty much everything in Sadie's room. Spencer and Sadie shut themselves in her room this morning. They were being so nice to each other and I was busy with things around the house so I just let them be. When I went in to make sure they were okay I saw that they had had lots of fun piling EVERYTHING onto her bed! They were not so excited about having to put it all away. But then who can blame them? Most people I know don't like cleaning up either. I would cook and sew all day, everyday if I didn't have to clean up after myself (and if I didn't have kids:).