OH MY GOSH!

Okay, so apparently I have issues. Apparently I am stupid. Apparently I thought I put my phone in my purse before I got in the car, but I really put it on top of the car instead. Apparently I got into the car and didn't grab my phone. Because, apparently it flew off the roof of my car while we were going 55 MPH on SR-198 halfway between Spanish Fork and Salem. Apparently it either had an extremely rough landing on the ground, or it got run over.

Oh I wish I could take a picture. My poor phone! It is so sad! We flipped a U and went back to look for my phone. Oh it is so sad!! There it was, laying in the middle of the road. My brave husband got out of the car to rescue it. The battery wasn't on it. We couldn't see it. He wasn't willing to risk his life for it. Oh I am so sad!!

Mike said "Don't you have a spare phone?" No, I gave it to my frister Jenny when she lost her phone. "Don't we have my old V710?" No, you sent that in during the Motorola class-action law suit. "What about your old V710?" No, we gave that to Colton, and Angel needs to keep it because of the voicemail. "Well I'm sure we have an old phone somewhere?" No dear, we don't.

So, I took it to the Verizon store at the mall. I wanted to find out if it actually worked, and had all my info, before I filed a claim with the insurance company. Fortunately I have insurance on my phone. Well, they don't carry the battery in stock. Luckily one of the girls who worked there has the Juke. She took her battery off, and put it on my phone. *TADAA!* It works! YAY! My contacts and pictures and everything are still in there!! So, all I need to do now is buy a battery. Well, no one in the region: Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho ... has one in stock. This means Mike has to order it online through the employee system.

Well. Mike left his work computer at the office. WHAT THE HECK?! It has been living on my coffee table for the last 4 months, and now he decides to take it to the office? So confused about that one. He won't be going in to the office until Monday. It takes 2 days to ship the battery to me. So, this means I am phoneless until next THURSDAY!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

I don't know what I am going to do! I can't live without my phone! Not even driving down the street to the KFC to pick up a bucket of wings! 5 minutes! Not even 5 minutes! *sigh* I guess I will just have to deal.....And look really really hard for a spare phone that has a charging cable!

It just gets better and better!

Remember the flowers that I did for my cousin's bridal pictures? Well! Turns out she HATED THEM! What the heck?? Apparently she has totally forgotten about the conversation we had when she initially ordered the flowers. I told her that I wouldn't be able to get her lilies for her bouquet for the pictures, but that the wedding bouquets would have the lilies. I also told her that the picture bouquet was really just a representation of the colors, and may not necessarily have all of the flowers in it. Well, when I delivered the bouquet to my cousin, she didn't seem too happy. So, I called my mom and told her she might have to help out on damage control. I told her what had gone on with the getting of the flowers, and that I couldn't get the lilies or the exact roses (I did have plain yellow, instead of the Konfetti which have a hot pink/red tip). I also told her how hard it was to actually get the delphinium in in time.

My mom called me today. Turns out that my cousin and my aunt absolutely hated the bouquet I made and so they ran around town (at about 5:30 PM, just an hour and a hlaf before the actual picture taking was to begin) to find the right kinds of lilies and roses and then REMADE the bouquet! Again: WHAT THE HECK?!

As if I already wasn't having a pretty crappy day, I get this news. It makes me really nervous about doing all of her flowers now. I will just have to do my best, and hope that she likes the other 2 bouquets (temple and reception) because they will have all of her flowers. Oh I have a headache just thinking about it all now. UGH!!!

Glad to be home

Saturday after we got home, Mike and Marshy crashed on the couch. (See, I told you the polo looked good on Mike!) All Marshy wanted to do was lay down on the couch with his daddy.

And then he decided it was time to get off the couch and go to bed.

Lincoln Logs

While we were packing to go on vacation, Marshy discovered Lincoln Logs. He loves to open the container, dump all the pieces out and then put them back into the container.

He hasn't quite figured out how to put the pieces together to form the house, but he likes to watch us do it, and then knock it over and laugh.

Successful Shopping

This post is mostly for my mom, who I told about our awesome shopping deals. So! If you decide you want to read all about our fun shopping expedition, then go ahead. Otherwise, just skip on down to the next post. Thanks for stopping by!
I bought 3 pairs of really nice pants at G.H. Bass, and I got them for like 50% off. Wow! What a great deal! I really needed pants, too.
This is the cutest shirt ever! I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy it, but Angel talked me into it. It was kind of pricey, at Dress Barn, but it is definitely worth it.
I also found this really cute pair of earrings that match perfectly with the shirt. And they were 60% off! Wahoo!
And some cute shirts for me from Geoffery Beane. 4, to be exact. Two short sleeve, and 2 3/4 sleeve shirts.
I love the neckline on these shirts! It's so cute, and it looks so good on. The green one even matches a skirt I have, that I wasn't even thinking about when I bought it. I just liked the color. How good am I?!

Now on to Mike's great deals. He needed some new clothes for work. The dress code at his office, which he rarely has to go in to, is "business casual" but they really don't care. Usually he wears in shorts or nice jeans, and a t-shirt, but he has decided to dress it up a bit now. He told me I could re-design him, so I had a lot of fun with it.
We got the basics, some short sleeve button up shirts that he can wear buttoned, or open with a t-shirt underneath.
Two really great sweaters. White and orange. The orange one is really soft and cuddly. I might have to borrow it from him! Just kidding! He won't let me, since I've shrunk both of his soft, cuddly orange hoodies in the past few years. Don't ask me how, but I managed to shrink them from his size down to mine. I think my sub-conscious was sabotaging the laundry or something! Honestly!
I got him this great plaid long sleeve shirt and a nice flannel lined shirt coat for when it gets colder. He isn't out of his car much during the winter, so he doesn't really need a lot of heavy warm clothing.
And finally, 3 more button up short sleeve shirts, and 5 tshirts to go underneath. I also made him try on some polos, and we bought one that is a light blue with navy blue stripes. It looks so good on him!

We didn't get anything for Marshy, because he is growing so fast, it seems stupid to spend a lot of money on clothes that will only fit him for a few months, so we will be doing his shopping at Wal-mart this fall. Besides, they have really cute clothes. That's where we bought all of his summer clothes, and they have held up really well, so we are looking forward to their cute fall and winter lines.

Deer Valley Fun

We had so much fun at Deer Valley this year. I didn't take as many pictures as I would've liked, but here are the few pictures I did manage to take.

The kids making their valentine bags. We did a holiday theme for each day we were up there. It was lots of fun for the kids, and they had lots of fun crafts to do.
Danny and Lola's legs. Danny was so cute! He would walk around the condos, following either of his parents around. He doesn't look like he's big enough to be walking, but he is. He is only 6 weeks younger than my baby. I know, hard to believe. Hey, Lola! We need to get a picture of the two of them together to illustrate the difference sometime!
Gabby drinking her root beer float (I think....I'm pretty sure I took this on root beer float night, so that would only make sense). She spent most of the week with Grandma Angel while Lynsey was at home getting things ready for baby Jax's arrival in a few weeks.
Marshy discovered that the air pump we used to inflate the air mattress is really fun to play with. He would put it in his mouth while it was blowing, and it would puff out his cheeks. So funny to watch!
Marshy with the air pump in his mouth. He even had it figured out how to hold it so he could flip the on/off switch easily with his fingers while the blower was in his mouth. He is one smart little tot.
Mike enjoying his root beer float. ShhH! He doesn't know I snapped this pic! hehe :)

Marshy still enjoying the blower. Please note that yes, he is in his pajamas. He had a really hard time going to sleep at night, because the sun shined right through our windows and made it so light that even with the blinds shut as tight as they could go, it was still like being outside at lunchtime. So, Marshy got to stay up quite a bit later than normal.

We had a fun time swimming in the pool. We bought Marshy a flotation swimming suit. We thought we bought a medium (30-45 lbs) but turns out it was hung on the wrong cardboard insert and was really a small (20-30 lbs)!! What the heck? Well, he didn't really float anyway, and he would rarely let go of my arm. In fact, half the time he tried to climb up my body and out of the water. After a while he really enjoyed swimming, even though the picture makes it look like he is miserable. It's only because he saw his daddy come out by the pool, and he wanted to go play with Dad.
Baby and dad out by the pool, just chilling.
Marshy enjoying some refreshment after a swim, with daddy by the pool.
Danny and Lola out at the pool. Danny didn't really like the water, until one night Lola took him into the pool, and he and his dad got to play with some of his little toys in the water. It was funny!

So, as you can see, there was lots of fun had by all! But, we are still really glad to be back home.

SUCCESS!!

So, I'm doing the flowers for my cousin's wedding next Tuesday. Her bridals are today, so I had to make her bouquet. Today was our first day back at work since we went on vacation, so we didn't have a whole bunch of flowers in the cooler. Angel ordered some hot pink roses (they're on our regular weekly order), and I used some really pretty and bright yellow roses that were left over from before we left for vacation. They were surprisingly still good. My cousin's wedding is using the Konfetti type of roses (we aren't getting the flowers from the place the link links to, it's just so you can see what the flowers look like!), pink Asiatic lilies, and blue delphinium. We couldn't get the roses and the lilies, so that's why I used the yellow and the hot pink roses instead. The delphinium came in just beautiful today. I was so happy with it. My fabulous sisters-in-law, Angel and Lola, helped me put it together, since it was my very first one I've ever made. I think it turned out really quite nice, and it will look bright and beautiful for my cousin's pictures.

I'm not sure if she really liked it or not when I delivered it to her, because it didn't have the lilies or roses. Of course, it's just a representation of her wedding flowers. It has her colors at least. Her wedding bouquet will be so big and beautiful though, once I get all of her flowers in it. Her wedding is on Tuesday, but I'm doing all her flowers Monday the 4th of August so that she can have them for the next morning.

I'm glad that my first run with a bouquet turned out well. A big THANK YOU to Angel and Lola for all of their help!! :)

Sad yet surprisingly happy

Tomorrow we go home from our "joyful" vacation. Yes, I am quite happy to finally be going home. No more sitting in the room bored out of my skull while my baby goes to bed, because he won't go to sleep unless I'm in there with him. No more only having 1 uncomfortable pillow to sleep on instead of 2 delightfully fluffy pillows (and please, no jokes about that one, okay Grandpa Neil?)

Back to our comfortable bed. Back to Marshy's lovely secluded room with his nice little crib that he sleeps so well in. Back to air conditioning.

Of course, we will be returning to the normal chaos of our lives....work, play, quilting, sewing, flowers, cooking, shopping, normal stuff. But at this point, I am totally happy going back to the chaos. So, maybe I'll upload pictures when we get home. Maybe not. We'll see.

Don't you love it when.....

You go on vacation and realize you forgot your medication, so you have to run out and get a refill minutes before the pharmacy closes?


You go on vacation and your child refuses to go to sleep so you have to go for a drive at 5 AM to get him to go to bed?


You buy a porta-crib so your child can sleep while you are on vacation, and he bawls and bawls and bawls and still won't sleep?


It's your birthday while you're on vacation, but you're totally exhausted because you've had like a whole 4 hours of sleep?


Oh, I am so hoping this vacation gets better soon. Seriously.

Worst Day EVER

I was told I needed to change the needle on my Gammill. I didn't want to. Lola didn't want me to. But I did it anyway.

Now, you need to understand why I didn't want to change the needle. You see, every time you change the needle, the timing goes off. Then you have to spend hours and hours and hours trying to get the timing back on.

Well, I changed the needle. I guess the needle I'd been using had been poking larger holes than normal. Turns out, not only was it incredibly dull, but it was a larger sized needle. So, when I changed the needle I put a smaller one on. Naturally the timing went off, so dear, kind Lola came over to help me fix the timing. We thought we got it. We didn't.

Mike, the dear husband that he is, took it upon himself to fix the machine. 3 hours later.....and 4 times of having "fixed" the timing...it was finally fixed. I started quilting again, until suddenly.....

DOINK!

The needle broke in half! AAAH! So, Mike came back over and helped me find another needle. This time we put the larger size back on. They break less easily than the smaller ones. I installed the needle, and Mike fixed the timing again.

I was also out of bobbin, so I wound a new bobbin, and then I started sewing again. Suddenly......

PLOP!

The needle fell OUT of the shaft! What the heck?! I am totally sure that I installed the needle properly. And, not only did the needle fall out, but I realized that I had forgotten to put the cone of thread back on the machine, so I was sewing with the cut off remnant. What the heck?! I seriously was losing it. Mike came back over, AGAIN, and fixed the timing. He is so good at it now, that it only takes him a few minutes. I re-threaded the machine, and was able to continue sewing. Of course, by this time it was almost 3, and I was totally out of energy.

I did manage to finish the quilt for a family friend, which we are binding while we are on vacation, and I did another sample for the Quilt Shoppe. I wish I had taken pictures, because it turned out so dang cute!

Basically, I am never changing my needle again, unless I absolutely have to.

BEST VIDEO EVER!!

This is one of the funniest things I have seen in a while. How crazy and wild would it be if this happened to you?! TOTALLY AWESOME!

A Visit

So, you know how our downstairs neighbors totally hate us? Well apparently they called the building rep, and he came and visited us today. He was really nice. He is one of our next door neighbors, and he said that if we were truly being loud, they would hear us too because they share the entire wall with us. When we told him that we have a 1 year old, he was totally shocked that the people downstairs had a problem with us. He was really nice about everything, and said that because she (the woman from downstairs) had called him, that he told her he'd come talk to us. He said he's been in a similar situation, as the upstairs neighbor with a noise intolerant downstairs neighbor, so he totally understands what we are going through. I thought it was nice to finally have someone affirm what we already knew: That we aren't that loud, and the people downstairs are STUPID!

Favorite new blog

Okay, so Mike and I discovered this great blog: the FAIL blog. So funny. Anyway, here are a few of my favorites we saw today.


see more pwn and owned pictures


see more pwn and owned pictures

This next one is from Geekologie. But, I think that it is indeed Fail-worthy. Follow this link and watch the video. It's hilarious! And, if you look at the time stamp, it's only from a few weeks ago!

ENJOY!

Busy Busy

So, today was a very busy day. I quilted a quilt for the local Quilt Shoppe, and I did a wedding consultation for my cousin. I'm going to do her flowers. By the time I was done with everything, Marshy had had it, and we headed home. Of course, when I took the quilt up to the Quilt Shoppe, she gave me 2 more. So now I have 3 for her. So, if you don't hear from me for a while, it is because I am totally exhausted from working hundreds of hours in front of the quilt machine. Either that or we are on vacation. We'll see!

WHAT THE . . . . ???

Knox Leon? Vivienne Marcheline? What were they thinking?

I picked Marshall, and that is a mouthful for a little boy to say. Especially for a little boy who can't say his 'l' sounds yet. For example: color sounds an awful lot like car. "caw-war" Color. And car sounds an awful lot like color. "caw-war" Car.

I guess famous people are just weird and like to be different with kids' names. Let's see, you have Rumer, Scout LaRue (I like the LaRue part! Good taste!), Tallulah Belle, Shiloh, Suri, Apple, Pilot Inspektor, and lots others.

I found a site that lists some of them. Check out the comments at the bottom...one person named their kid Humperdinker! Poor child! One of my high school friends swore that when he had a son he was going to name him Commander. That way he wouldn't actually have to go to military school or anything to get the title. He would automatically be Commander Butterfield. I surely hope he was kidding!

Machine Quilting

Today I finished the 2 quilts I've been stressing over at the shop. One of my clients brought in 2 massive quilts that needed to be done by the 24th. Well, since we are going out of town on the 19th, I wanted to have them done by the 17th. I've been a little stressed about them. But, today I finally finished them! YAY!!

I also went to the new Quilt Shoppe today. It was fun. I had way too much fun, in fact! But, I only spent $37, so I consider myself lucky. haha While I was up there, I spoke to the owner about quilting, and if she ever needed anything quilted, I would be more than happy to do it for her. Right then and there she handed me two quilts to do! Wahoo!! And, another customer said that she might bring down a quilt for me to do. That makes me so happy.

I've been looking for opportunities to expand my client base, and now I have one. Hopefully I can get caught up, now. I seriously have a lot of quilts to do. I have 6. My mother-in-law has 20. I have 1 from Mike's Aunt Karen. 1 from Mike's cousin Melanie. 1 from a family friend. And another 1 from one of my regular clients. And now these 2 from the Quilt Shoppe. That makes 32 quilts! Of course, mine and my mother-in-law's quilts don't all have to be done right now. They can be spread out. But still, 32 is a lot! I'm excited to get more though. It will be nice if I can have a steady flow of work, rather than one month busy, four months dead.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get a couple of the smaller quilts done, and one of the bigger ones put on. Of course, that is what I am hoping to achieve. It seems like my schedule doesn't always let me achieve what I want to. Funny how that happens, isn't it?

Family Fun Day

Today we went to the zoo. Marshy had so much fun! He loved watching the giraffes. He walked right up to the fence and stuck his little face between the bars to watch what they were doing.
He also had to have his sippy cup with him the whole time. And, he was standing on his tip-toes!

The zoo has a new baby giraffe. I don't know when it arrived, but it was fun to see it out and about.
Mike tried to get Marshy to sit on the bronze tigers, but he didn't really like it. He barely held still long enough for me to snap the picture!
After the zoo, we went to the Clark Planetarium. They have a display on the upper level of the moon, and one of Mars, and they both have walkways in them. Marshy loved to run around in circles on these paths. Here he is on the moon.
And on Mars (they are on opposite sides of the room, and the paths would connect if they were right next to each other, that's why he looks like he's running in a circle)
He was in awe of the ginormous Apollo mission spacesuit. He thought it was really cool.

Then he went back to Mars.
And tried to take some Mars rocks with him.
And then he decided to try to climb up the display case for the Apollo suit.
And then he went back to the moon.

We had a really fun time. Then we went to my parents for the rest of the evening. It was all in all a pretty fun day.

Oh the things that I do for him!

Oh the things that I do

For my Marshy-poo,

Like lay on the floor

And pretend to snore

So he will dream

Under the moon's beam.

Oh the things that I do

For my Marshy-poo

Like sing along

To his nursery songs

So he will dream

Under the moon's beam.

Oh the things that I do

For my Marshy-poo

Like hush his crying

Though inside I am sighing

So he will dream

Under the moon's beam.

Oh the things that I do

For my Marshy-poo

Like sleep on the floor

Right next to the door

So he will dream

Under the moon's beam.

Oh the things that I do

For my Marshy-poo

And because I love him

I'll do them again

So he will dream

Under the moon's beam.

Oh the things I would do

For my Marshy-poo

To get him to sleep

And not make a peep

And have a good dream

Under the moon's beam.

Oh the things I would do

For my Marshy-poo

Will sometimes be rough

And always be tough

So that he will dream

Under the moon's beam.

But the things I would do

For my Marshy-poo

Show him that I care

And that I'm always there

So that he can dream

Under the moon's beam.

The things that I do

For my Marshy-poo

Tell him "I love you"

So that instead of screams

He will just have sweet dreams

Under the moon's beams.

Quilt 4 progress, and Vay-cay plans

So, if you'll recall, I joined the Finish 5 by the end of July Challenge. I haven't reported very much progress on my 4th quilt lately, mostly because there hasn't been any. But, tonight I decided that it needed to get off of my kitchen table and into the pile of quilts that are awaiting quilting. I have come to a realization that this pile will never actually get quilted, but at least I realize it now, right? haha Anyway, here is my progress so far.

I don't know if you can tell, but there are two different sections in this picture. The main one, that I did some work on tonight, and a smaller one that I did in about an hour. The main section is the top of the quilt, and the second section is the bottom. I got tired of wrestling so much fabric on my machine table, so I decided to start at the bottom and work my way up as much as possible.
This is a bettter picture of what I accomplished in just an hour of straight sewing. I know, I'm so dedicated. Too bad that the only time I ever have to sew is late at night on a weekend! Hopefully I will have this done before we go on vacation, but I'll talk more about that later.
This is a close up of the quilt. As you can see, it requires partial seams, and I haven't finished them on the short edges of the blue rectangles. I will go back and do those all later. Right now I really just want to get the whole thing pieced together so I don't have to worry about losing any pieces. Hopefully I can get it all done tomorrow, and then work on the borders. My stupid instructions don't even tell me how to attach the borders, and I think they might need partial seams as well! Grrr! Oh well.

Vay-cay plans:

So, we are going on vacation at the end of next week. I am so excited. It will be super fun! I'm hoping to get a lot of sewing done, but we'll see. Marshy will probably want to swim the whole time. I don't even know if my swim suit still fits me! I guess I'd better check that one out, eh? hehe.

As for sewing on the trip, I just realized that I have another quilt I have to do! My cousin, Melissa, is getting married on the 5th of August. For some reason I had a brain fart and thought that it was further away than it really is. Today I realized that I don't have a whole lot of time to get her quilt done. I have the pattern all drawn up, but I don't have any of the fabric yet. Fortunately, the new quilt store in our area is having a sale, and I think some of the fabrics on the sale are the perfect colors! YAY!! When Creekside closed, she bought them out, and is now selling a lot of those fabrics at only $3.00 a yard! It's a great deal! She makes you buy 1 yard increments, though. This is alright, since I was planning on making 3 of this particular quilt, and I only need about 1/4 yard of each color for each quilt. Anyway, hoping to get that done on vacation.

Plus, I want to get all of my quilts bound. I have several sitting in the other room just waiting for binding. I'm such a slacker. I also have a diaper bag I've been working on that I would like to finish. And there are so many other designs floating around in my head that I want to do. Oh, so much to do so little time!

But, the main goal is to have fun, right? Hang out at the pool in all my orca fat-ness with my baby and get a tan on my pasty white body. That will be my priority. And maybe work out a little. We'll see. I'll take my running shoes, but I doubt they'll see much treadmill action. Who knows, though? Anything could happen on vacation.

Bathtime

Several months ago we purchased some nesting cups for Marshy at Ikea. He loved to play with them, but I grew tired of him throwing them from his high chair at me. So, since we were lacking in the bath toy department, I promoted the nesting cups to bath toys. HE LOVES THEM! They are his favorite bath toy, and he knows that when I get them out it means he gets to play in the tub.
Here he is, with all of his cups properly stacked. He is really good at putting them in the right order. Even if you pull one out of the set and hand it to him after they're all stacked, he'll put it in the right spot. You'll notice he is still in his baby tub. We haven't graduated to the big boy tub yet, because it is really deep. When I kneel next to it, I can barely reach over and touch the bottom, so this makes it a little easier for me. At least it raises him up a few inches.
Here he is drinking his bath water. Yes, I know it's gross. Yes, I tell him every time. But this time, before I said "No no, yucky!" I thought I would at least get a picture of it. It's so cute!

My baby would NEVER eat crayons!!

Electronics and Toilets don't mix

We have a really nice USB mouse for our laptop. I love it. It makes my job so much easier when I'm listing things on ebay, or I want to play a game on the computer. Well....we made the mistake of letting Marshy play with it once.

Now, every time he sees the mouse, he wants to play with it. Today he found it on the table, and went running down the hall. I didn't really think anything of it, until I heard the toilet lid slam shut! OH NO! I went running into the bathroom. What did I find?

Marshall's arms both completely soaked from hand to shoulder, the mouse dripping wet, and water all over my newly cleaned rugs. Fortunately, I had just barely cleaned the bathroom. But still!! There was water all over the toilet seat (he didn't figure out how to lift that part up), and all down the sides and all over the floor. I was on the phone with my mom, and I quickly hung up, placing my phone on the counter while I tackled the mess.

Not only did he try to grab the toilet paper I wiped the toilet down with out of the bowl while it was flushing, he tried to throw my phone in the sink while I was washing his hands and arms off!! Luckily, my phone didn't sustain any lasting damage. Buy my poor poor mouse. It doesn't work anymore :(

Lesson learned? Make sure that the bathroom door is always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS closed! At least we got the mouse for free, so we didn't lose any money!

New Club, New Friends, Work, and Quilting

So, I don't think I've really belonged to a "club" really. But tonight I joined one. It was really fun. Most of the ladies knew each other, and I knew some of them through Angel. It was fun to meet new people though. The 11 of us went to dinner and laughed and talked and ate...and ATE....and ATE!

Then we got down to business. We will meet every month, and we are going to be doing humanitarian work some of the time. It sounds like it will be very fun, and very fulfilling. We discussed several different projects we would like to work on: from tieing quilts and donating them to a local hospital to helping feed orphans in Liberia, Africa. All ideas were good, and the only thing we felt bad about was that we couldn't do all of them this year. Fortunately it looks like this club will be going on for a while, and we'll have plenty of time to do all of the projects we would like to do.

We have decided to meet once a month, and it will be fun to get together next month, and hopefully start working on one of the projects. We would like to start on the quilts for the local hospital. First, we need to find out what exactly they need. Then we need to figure out fabrics and stuff. I've decided to donate a roll of Hobbs heirloom batting, should the quilts be needed, and we proceed with that project.

Mike babysat Marshy while I was at the meeting, and when I got home baby was NOT happy! Apparently he had been crying for quite a while, and was very happy to see me....although he kept saying "Daddy! Daddy!" I think he really just wanted to not be in bed. Little stinker....it was almost 10 PM! I got him out and let him watch some Baby Einstein's on TV to calm him down. Surprisingly, it worked IMMEDIATELY! Mike was so tired and a little stressed, because he has to get up at 4 AM tomorrow to be on the road by 5. He is driving this week, and is trying to get as much done as he can. He has a new boss based out of Colorado, who he has never met, and his boss will be in town Thursday and Friday and wants to meet with him, so that means he loses two days of work. We go on vacation on the 19th, so Mike is really stressed about finishing his drives by then so he just has to process data at the resort.

I put on the 2nd of one of my clients' quilts today. It is pretty scrappy, which makes it kind of cute. She used an interesting mix of brights and not-brights. It will look cute when it is done, though. I'm doing flowers in the scrappy squares, with fun vines and leaves and flowers in the borders. I hope she likes it! I finished her first one on the 4th. It was scrappy too, but mostly all brights (with a few random Christmas prints and non-brights thrown in). On that one she had done little rectangles, and then an almost solid blue fabric for the sashing and borders, and backing. As soon as I saw it I thought that it looked like a bunch of brightly wrapped presents. I've never quilted ribbons and bows, but I attempted it (totally prepared to unpick it all and start over with something else) but it turned out so dang cute! She told me that if using different thread colors looked good, to do that, so I did. I made the boxes face all different directions, and used 7 different thread colors. It turned out so cute! Again, I really hope she likes it! It was such a fun, scrappy quilt, and now it is a fun scrappy quilt with brightly wrapped boxes all over it! :)

I still have a few other quilts to finish before I go on vacation. One of them, Mike's cousin brought over for me to do. Her ward was tieing quilts, and she found a quilt that someone had pieced together, and she told them they couldn't tie it because that would ruin it. She asked me to quilt it for them, and I said I would. She brought it over yesterday. I'm hoping to get to it by the middle of next week. One of our close family friends brought me a quilt last week that I have to do before I can do that one. AND THEN! I get to quilt my 5!! YAY!! I'm really hoping to have them done by the end of the month, but if I can't, I'll settle for the end of August. I also have one more of Mike's aunt's to do, but she won't be back in the area until September, so there isn't too much pressure to hurry and get that one done yet.

Tomorrow I am going to see if I can talk to the lady who owns the new local quilt store about maybe helping her out if she needs quilting done, and ask her if she will let me put some business cards in her shop. I would love to expand my client base. That would just be awesome!

So, I just realized that this post was a lot to read....and I will try not to do another post like this without any pictures for a while. In the meantime, I'm off to try to get the baby to bed, and then I'm going to do some work on ebay. G'night!

No wonder it was shaking!!

So, lately my car has been shaking a lot. Last night it was so bad on our way home that we honestly thought the car was going to fall apart. Mike and I couldn't figure out what the problem was. We thought maybe the transmission fluid was all gone, and it was a tranny problem. Then we thought maybe it was an engine knock that had somehow developed. Then Mike thought that maybe it was the engine mount.

He got online and did some research. Turns out that some other guy on the forum he was reading had a '94, and they were telling him that he was long overdue for changing his engine mount. Apparently if you can stick a Bic pen in betweeen the rubber and the mount, then it is overdue for changing it. We went out to check ours, and we could fit 2 1/2 Bic pens in it!! We ran over to Checker, bought the mount, and drove over to Mike's parents' to switch it out. Here are some pictures of the mounts.

This is the one we took out of my car. Now, you tell me if you think we were well overdue??
Can you see the part in the middle that Mike is holding with the blue paper towel? Well, that was all broken and loose, and was almost to the point of coming out! No wonder my car was so noisy! My engine was rocking all over the place!!
This is the brand spanking new one all installed in the car. Yay! No gap!! I wanted to take a picture to show how bad the old one was, but Mike didn't tell me he was ready to work on it until after he had it installed. He came downstairs and told me to go check it out. I asked him if he fixed it, and he said it was okay, but that I should go find out. I went out and turned the car on, and I couldn't even tell it was on! I had to turn the AC down just to make sure that I had actually turned the car on!! It sounds like a brand new car now! I'm so happy!! YAY!!

Family Reunion

We had the family reunion yesterday at a local park. This lovely bug was waiting for us in the grass when we got there. At first we thought he was dead, but then he started to move, so obviously he wasn't. He must've just been scared or something.
Jake was too wussy to see if it hurts when he pinches you with his pincers, so he tried to get it to pinch a stick instead. The bug was too smart, and would have none of that.
Lola, and her baby, Turtle, and daughter, Tallulah-bell.
Scott, Mike, and their dad. They were talking about scuba diving and other fun things they want to do.

It was really hot, but it was fun to see everyone. Pretty much everyone had a great time! (Marshy didn't, he was hot and grumpy most of the time.)