So Much To Report

I hope you have a few minutes today. I'm so far behind, that I'm just makin' ONE bigger post about all the stuff that's been going on here.

Hmmm, where to begin. I suppose I'll start with my baby. Miss Sara turned 14 years old yesterday. I can't believe it. What a kid. She's totally her own person, which drives me crazy sometimes. She loves shopping and make-up and doing her hair (other traits that drive me crazy). Here she is with her presents. She got a T-shirt, Cosmic Brownies, Hot Topic gift card, girlprops gift card, and tickets to the Warped Tour this summer.





Here she is ready to go to Semi-Formals. I told her to wear pretty heels. She said NO. She wanted to wear her Chucks to be comfy. She said afterward that she got all kinds of compliments. So, I guess Mom doesn't ALWAYS know best. :) She borrowed the dress from her buddy Emily (gotta love FREE stuff!). Gilbert, the froggie backpack, went along to hold her stuff....whatever that might be, camera, make-up, phone, etc.






Here are a few pictures Sara took while she was in Washington, D.C. She had a great time. She's even excited about going back when we head out this summer. She wasn't all that excited about the bus ride, since it was about 20 hours each way, but she survived. They went to so many places.....Mt. Vernon, Washington, Jefferson, Vietnam, Korean, Lincoln and WWII Memorials, Arlington Cemetary, Smithsonian Museums, Potomac River Cruise, ESPN Zone and stopped at Gettysburg on the way home. :) I'm so glad she got the opportunity to do this with her class.





















BREAKING NEWS......We just found out both girls made Dance Team for the '08-'09 school year. BUT, a couple of their friends didn't make it. Anisa is really torn. She wants to be on the team but one of the girls who didn't make it is one of her best friends here. Poor kids.





Ok, back to our lives lately. Every spring when the babies are all being born or hatched, I see the baby geese and I always want to take a picture of them. Well, we were on our way out of town the other day and I swung into a parking lot where several goose families had their babies out to eat and swim. Here is a little family out on a stroll.

OH MY GOSH! There is a new place called HuHot in Green Bay. It's a Mongolian Grill Buffet joint. It is SOOOOOO good. Next to Titletown Pub, it's now one of our favorites. They have buffet stands set up and you fill your bowl with meats, veggies, noodles and sauces then they grill it on this huge grill. The guys dump your bowl full of goodies then they go around the grill chopping, mixing, and turning the food. One of the desserts offered is the S'Mores platter. Here are Sara and Emily enjoying their S'mores.

Remember my little teaser? It's done. Here it is. The pattern is from Bareroots which I love. I don't think I'll do this little table topper the same way again. All the pieces are hand appliqued on with a blind stitch. IF I do this project again, I think I'll do fused applique, just cuz the pieces are so small. The little topper is about 21" across. Now I have other projects to work on! :)

One more thing to report. As I told you before, my friend Haley (Hi Haley! :)) and I have been working our butts off - literally. We've been faithfully going to the Y every weekday (well, skipping one or two for various reasons), and trying to eat healthy and watching our calories. I'm very excited to brag on myself that I've lost between 9 ~11 pounds. I say "between" because I had an eating weekend (Olive Garden is evil!) and when I weighed myself last Friday I was down 11 pounds. I weighed myself yesterday and had found 2 of those lost pounds. Not a biggie. I am back on track and have a goal of losing about 10 more. Then.....SHOPPING! I had to buy a belt because my pants/shorts were getting too loose. :)

That is my life in a nutshell over the past, oh, few weeks. Sorry to you all for boring you and not updating my blog. I hope you're all having a spectacular day and getting to do something fun. :)

Mailbox LOVE!!

Isn't it great to have that kind of friend who see something silly and knows you will squeal with delight if she buys it for you? Yeah, even the little things.

I have one of those friends. Monica is that kind of friend. :) I went out to my mailbox two days ago and found a squishy pack. I was so excited to see that it was from Monica. I couldn't imagine what it would be. I thought maybe a homemade bag since she's getting lots of sewing done. Enough, in fact, that the magazines are practically knocking down her door! hee hee Ok, so back to the squishy pack. I opened it and found these!! Recycled and reusable grocery bags from FRED MEYER. Oh, we miss Fred's (heck, we miss practically everything about the PNW). Now, every day when I go to the grocery store here I can take my Fred bags and shop happy. Yeah, and when Sara got home, she squealed with delight and yelled, "OH, FRED MEYER BAGS!!"

Thank you, Monica, for being that kind of friend!!! :) I love you chick.

My New Job

Ok, my dear, talented friend Happy Zombie is going to Market (to market, to buy a fat pig.....um, wait, no, that's not right). She is part of THAT lucky group who gets to go to the International Quilt Market. Oh, yeah, LUCKY!!! So, since I am not part of that group, but I like to have my nose in everything, I thought I'd help her shop for what to wear. She came up with the idea of the lovely dresses here, but I didn't think it quite fit her personality. So, I came up with this. I think it's "HER". She's wild, fun & crazy. So, if you're in the market for a Personal Shopper, look me up! :)

Prom 2008

Last night was SBHS Junior Prom 2008. Anisa went with her girlfriends. They had a good time getting all dressed up and pretty. They met up with more friends there. Afterward, was the Post Prom Party. One of my friends was in charge of organizing it so she called me (among the others) to help. I told her I didn't think I could stay up that late (party started at 11:30 p.m. and ended at 2 a.m.) but I could help set up. I ended up staying most of the party. I talked to some of the kids, then another friend came in and we chatted and watched the cliques. It was pretty fun. Here are some Highlights.....
Anisa, Katie and Ski.

I love this picture of Anisa and Katie

Anisa and Katie playing Guitar Hero
The three chicks with their pretty mixers for the Post Prom Party Party.

My Baby Is Gone

Well, I just got back home from watching Sara's bus drive away to WASHINGTON, D.C. Their 8th Grade field trip is a 20something hour trip on a big coach bus to our capital. I'm so happy for her, but a little sad. This is the first BIG trip she's taken like this. It's like when Anisa went to New York a couple of years ago. I wanted her to go, but I wanted to go protect her. Luckily, she's got 2 moms on the bus with her that she LOVES and Renee is out in the DC area in case of emergency.


Here is my girl with some of her friends. When they get back, I'm sure she'll have tons of pictures to share. I left her little love notes for each day in her backpack. In most of them, I reminded her to take lots of pictures and take notes on where we HAVE TO go this summer when we drive out east.



Travis left this morning to go to Michigan. Sounds easy enough since Michigan is right next to Wisconsin. Unfortunately, Lake Michigan is in the way. So, he had to drive down south through Chicago, IL, then a little through Indiana and he just called and he's just about over the Michigan border. He'll be doing some work up there for a couple of days then he'll be home just about the time Sara gets home. Anisa and I have the place to ourselves. Which is nice.

That kind of leads me to my next subject. My dear friend Haley and I have been working our butts off (literally). She was telling me she needed to start going back to the gym to get her summer body back (you know, that winter blubber layer). We've been going every week day for the last 2 weeks. I have also added seriously watching my calorie intake. The results......I've lost 6 pounds!!!! I'm so happy. I tried on a pair of pants I bought last summer that were a tad snug and now they're loose. I love seeing results. It makes it so much easier to keep it up. This week will be nice since I won't have to make dinner for the family. I can just eat what I need to eat and that's it. No pressure. I love that. :)

Thank you for being patient

Thank you all for being so patient. You've let me know that you want to see what I'm working on and now your wait is over. :) This is a baby quilt I made for Anisa's school counselor. She just had a baby boy. I still need to make a label, but here is the quilt.....FINALLY. :) I swear, I feel like I should be able to whip these things out, but since I don't work, everyone asks me to do stuff and my days quickly fill up. I'm not complaining, because I like seeing my friends, but I wish I could get my projects started and finished quicker.


Here is a teaser (since I have several friends who tease us...you know who you are) of my next (hopefully) finished project. It's got lots of small pieces to applique on, so it's taking me longer since I have to put it down after a while.

The weather today is rainy, but not too cold. Perfect for sewing! Hope you all are having a perfect spring day!! :)

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

22 years ago! Yep, we got married 22 years ago. Travis has survived another year with me. :) We haven't killed each other. We still even LIKE each other most days. Our celebration wasn't super exciting, but we did get to go out to dinner all by ourselves. Anisa had a band concert, so we went to a concert THEN dinner. We plan to watch a movie in a little bit, maybe have some popcorn and Dr. Pepper. That's our exciting evening on our 22nd anniversary.

Hope you all are having a fun evening.

TJ is MAD!

This is what we woke up to this morning, April 12. A couple of inches of fresh spring snow. Pretty much everyone (except me, the crazy person) is entirely sick of winter and snow. Heck, I like it because at least it's not 95 degrees with 90% humidity outside! :) As I type, at 8:30 p.m. , the snow is pretty much gone. It snowed on and off all day, but the temperature was warmer (36) so it started melting when it hit the ground. The poor little robins are all confused. It's hard to get worms when the snow is covering the grass.




Oh, Oh, Oh! I made bagels! Thanks to Monica and friends who posted this recipe and how easy it was, I decided to go for it. And they turned out great! At first I was a little nervous because when you boil them, they're supposed to float and mine sunk. BUT, eventually they did float! Mine had cream cheese and TJ had jam on his. Yummy! Try 'em, you'll like 'em! :)

April 9

I got up this morning, April 9th, you know, spring, and this is what was outside. It rained yesterday, and then started snowing but it didn't stick because it was still warm and wet. This will probably be melted soon. No shoveling needed, and that's nice because Travis has decided to share his cooties and we are both sickies. Stuffy nose, cough, basic stinky colds. I just hope the girls don't get it again. They both brought the cooties in the first place. I'm going to finish my coffee and get ready for the day. I have bible study here at 9:30 this morning so I need to get off this computer! Hope you all are having a springy day.

Guests and Machines

This morning on our way to Travis' office, we saw this couple down the street, but when I got home, they were in MY yard! It was fun to watch them. They are so cute. We've seen lots of ducks and the geese are back, too. I love listening to them flying overhead.





So, I've got a quilty/embroidery project that I'm working on but I can't get to it right now. See this??






It belongs in HERE! Baby's been sick. She was leaking anti-freeze out of somewhere on her engine, not the easy place, her radiator. So we had to rip her guts out and HOPEFULLY fix her. While we're in there, we've been replacing gaskets and cleaning. She's got 192,000ish miles on her and she's been a faithful girl in our family for over 14 years.




Travis gets so mad when we have to work on her since there isn't much room under her short hood. He can't get his hands in certain places, but my smaller hands can get in there. All the grease, oil, chemicals and washing are doing a number on my hands....Which is why they look like this. How sad and embarrassing. I have boy hands! :( We hope to have her running and not leaking by this weekend. Then I can get more work done on my quilty project. Right now my hands are kind of sore so I haven't been able to do any embroidery, which is most of my latest project......stay tuned, pics will be posted as soon as I can get it done! :)

Spring Break 2008

The girls and I went south to go shopping for Spring Break! Both chicks went to Wisconsin Dells with friends early in the week, so we left here Thursday and came home Friday.

Our trip started out with good weather. We got just south of Milwaukee and hit the outlet mall and the snow started. Big fluffy, wet flakes. It didn't stick right away, but we had to run to the car to avoid getting all wet.
By the time we got to Gurnee Mills it was coming down. At GM, our first stop was Ruby Tuesday for lunch. We did some shopping there, then headed south to hit the Magnificent Mile in Downtown Chicago.

The farther we drove south, the heavier the snow got. AND, the more expensive the gas got! Here you can see $3.69 and you can tell it was snowing pretty heavily. People were actually driving pretty safely. Until we got to the Mag. Mile. The buses and taxis were CRAZY! I couldn't take my eyes off the road to even look for parking for fear that we'd hit someone!

We REALLY needed gas, so we got south of the Mag Mile into a not so good area. Closer to the freeway, it wasn't so scary and we found a gas station where I only put in a couple of gallons since it was $3.79 there. Oh my! The snow had kind of slowed down but it was cold and windy and wet.

We checked into the hotel and promptly went to 7-11 for Coke Slurpees! They were so yummy. We went off to find a Japanese market that I had looked up online, but got lost. So, we gave up on that and went to dinner at Chevy's. We brought back some salsa and chips for Travis.

The next morning we finally found Mitsuwa Marketplace What a fun store. It kind of reminded us of Uwajimaya in Beaverton, OR. We bought candy, cookies, rice, various drinks in cute bottles, and even a rice presser thingie for little rice cakes. The sushi looked fantastic and fresh, but we already had lunch in mind....IKEA Swedish Meatballs!!! OH YEAH, BABY! I had to run to Ikea to pick up some kitchen organizers, and plus, just to look around. So first, we hit the restraunt for lunch. This trip was a lot about the food! :) After lunch, I shopped, the girls sat on a couch and listened to their iPods. I got what I needed and we headed to the Woodfield Mall. The girls both got new shoes. :)

Even Foxy made a new friend! At the hotel there was another Element in the parking lot. Of course, we had to park next to it and take a picture from our room. That's the way we are. :)

It was time to head north to go home. Our last stop of our trip was to Trader Joe's in Milwaukee for Mochi Ice Cream. We got a few other things along with our 11 boxes of ice cream. We filled the cooler with our treasures and lots of ice, and headed home. The ice cream and us girls made it home safely and now it's back to normal life.

April started with a bang, well, actually SNOW. :) Travis was MAD. He's so over winter, it's not even funny. Lucky for him it melted pretty quickly. Today is supposed to get close to 50 degrees. The animals and Travis should be happy. :)

I hope you all are having a wonderful, cool or hot (whatever you love) day. :)

This is Spring?

Spring hasn't quite sprung here. We woke up to SNOW. Of course, Travis was really mad. He's tired of the snow. I went out to shovel and it was HEAVY and WET. We got about 1.5 inches. Now it's 48 degrees and the new snow it melted and the old snow is going quickly. I thought I downloaded the pictures I took this morning and realized I hadn't put them into the computer and I already deleted them from my camera! Darn it!

I took the Foxy girl out to get her washed and I took her out for a drive to dry her off and I had my camera so I took some pictures of her. She got new seat covers, too.










If you haven't tasted these, THEY ARE GOOD! Lemon kisses.....mmmmmm. I bought them at Target for 50% off after Easter. I love sales.

Well, I hope you all are having a sunny day, even if the weather isn't perfect outside. :)

Banner and Friends and a Foxy Girl

It all started when I made little bookmarks for our bible study group. One of the ladies mentioned that "someone"(as she looked at me) should make some banners for our church since the walls are pretty plain. I must add, that our little church meets in the SB Raquet Club. Anyway, there is a picture on the front of the bulletin every week and so I copied it and made this banner. I used the crayon technique that my smart chick friend Monica taught us on her blog. I "colored" the little lines on the lighthouse. The rest is pretty much applique. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.


This is our little blue jay friend and his new squirrel friend. We're not quite sure if this was a young jay or just sick, AND, the next morning there were feathers in the yard, so we think he may have been eaten. He was sleeping all puffed up under one of our chairs, then he moved to under the tree and was eating. Travis went out to see him and he didn't fly away like they normally do, which is why we think he was young or sick. He was so cute!

We just got a new sticker for the Foxy girl. I go to an Element Owner's Club discussion forum and there was a thread about stickers on your Element. There are some CUTE stickers that we may have to get, but so far, this is what we have. The new one from the EOC is on the left corner. That's Anisa driving, going off to hang out with her friends.

Happy Easter!

I just wanted to wish all my friends and family a blessed Easter. What a wonderful thing we celebrate....Jesus is risen!!

We started this morning with church. Coming out of church, we had SNOW! Just small, little flakes. Travis was mad, and I didn't really care. I was having fun looking at all the beautiful little flakes falling on the windshield. Sara and I ran to get some movies and then came home and chilled for most of the day. We had a ham, taters, salad and rolls. Oh, yeah, and Dr. Pepper! :) Sara had some chick friends over and I watched Dan In Real Life. I liked it and I really liked the part where nobody in my house was talking during the movie! :) Anisa is down at Wisconsin Dells with some friends. Our day has been splendid and I hope your day was fantastic!!!! hugs and kisses to you all!!! :)

Egg Baby

Sara had to carry around an egg for a week for health class. They had to take care of the egg like they would take care of a baby, well, kind of. I thought it would be fun to make her egg baby a snow suit and a quilt (any excuse to sew!). Here are the results. This isn't actually her egg baby, this is my egg model. Doesn't she look nice and warm?



Here is the little bed Sara made for her egg baby and the quilt I made her. Heck, you all knew I was a little strange in the head! :) :) :) hee hee

Today I'm getting the church banner done!!!!! yippee.....when I get it done, I'll post the pics. Hopefully in a couple of hours. We had a dusting of snow last night, but it's drizzling now, just in case you were wondering.

no surprise

Well, it snowed last night. I'm not that surprised, since it's still "technically" winter. So, this morning when I went to shovel the driveway I noticed in the ice there were "snowflake" patterns. The picture didn't turn out that terrific, but I wanted to share. They're pretty cool.

Travis was gone the last couple of days in Chicago and Milwaukee. He's coming home this evening, so I must run to finish picking up the house. Just a couple of things, but the kids will be home from school in a little bit and I have some sewing I want to get to. :)

Have a terrific day!! :)

Random and Crafty stuff

I haven't been on the computer much lately. Actually, I don't know what I've been doing, but my week has flown by!

I've wanted to show you this building since I last posted. It's a building we saw in Minneapolis. Here is a link to the Newspaper Article. We were going to get gas and saw it and had to come back the next day to take a picture of it. It reminds me of a Disneyland Ride how it's all frozen.

Here is my latest craftiness. It's made with a Mix & Mingle by Sandy Gervais for Moda charm pack. At first, I didn't know what to do with it, so I just started sewing the squares together and cutting. Then, I really didn't know what to do with it. I knew I wanted something angled to go in the stairway. This is what I ended up with. I think I like it. :) It's not my normal colors, but I do like the purples in there. Today I'm working on a banner for my church. The walls are so plain right now and it needs to be decorated! :) I hope everyone is having a peachy day! :)

2008 UPA NATIONALS

What a great weekend we had in Minneapolis!! Oh My, it was so fun.

The girls started on Friday morning by dancing at their school with a group of guys. It was hilarious. They incorporated the guys into their funk routine. We were surprised....some of the guys did really well! Maybe they'll try out for next year's team. hahahaha

The parents started their morning by painting on the bus windows and our own vehicles. Here is the Foxy Girl all decorated and ready for the road trip.
After their assembly they loaded into the Big Purple Bus to the elementary schools to run through the halls and gave out flowers and poms to the younger kids.

Then they headed to one of the local coffee shops where one of the dancers works to fill up on caffeine and we were off to Minneapolis.

We got there, checked into our rooms then headed out to shop at the Mall of America for a bit. Another mom and I went to Chevy's for dinner and then went shopping. The girls were supposed to go to a pizza party that night but decided to skip it to play at the mall.

The next morning they had to get up early, get ready and head over to compete with their Pom routine. They did a fabulous job and took 4th place!

During the routine, one of the girls (the little chick next to Anisa) twisted her ankle really badly. It hurt, but she managed to limp back to the hotel when we were all done watching the other teams. She iced it and wrapped it and all was ok.....or so we thought. She decided to perform Sunday on her leg even tho it was still puffy and sore. She hurt it more (it's sprained with a bone chip) , but she wasn't going to let her team down. Another girl popped her shoulder out of place, and still performed on Sunday. They took 2nd place on Sunday! What a thrill! 2 trophies in NATIONALS!!
That night, the girls had a formal banquet to go to. They got to get all dressed up and sparkly. Don't they look beeeyyyyoooottteeefffuuullll??

Here is Anisa with her team Little Sister, Sarah. My girl is gorgeous, don't you think?

Now, I'm not exactly sure, but I heard the coach saying now they are qualified for nationals next year because they placed this year. Anisa has to try-out again so as long as she makes it I guess we'll be going again next year. Sara has also said she'd like to try out. We'll see! :) Exciting stuff in our house. Here is the link to the story in our local paper...Door County Daily News

Oh, and the quilt brought in about $400.00 for our team! I was so happy. The winner was the Middle School Principal. :)