Cloud Nine!

This little machine is called a Silhouette.  This amazing thing hooks up to your computer and it does just about everything.  It cuts Vinyl, Paper, Fabric, T-shirt Transfer material, Tattoo paper, Rhinestones, etc. You can download designs for really cheap from the Silhouette store or you can create your own designs.  If you want words, you just use any font on your computer and it cuts it out.  I have been wanting this machine for over a year now.  Lots of craft blogs have done giveways.  I have entered them all and not won one....That is until today.  Today, my name was chosen out of over 1300 entries from the Happy Money Saver.  I am so very excited to recevie this little beauty and start crafting!

The other reason I am on cloud nine.....On Thursday this week (three short days) Bauer and I will fly to Sacramento, California for our annual girls weekend with my mom, my 3 sisters, 2 sisters-in-law and 1 neices.  Watch out, California, here we come!

P.S.  A huge Thank You in advance to Dan and Angela who have willing agreed to take Keagan and Deker for two nights and two days so that I can go to girls weekend and while Andrew will be at work.  You guys are the best!

Miscellaneous Pictures

I was going through the pictures I have taken in the past couple of months to organize them and found some that I wanted to put on the blog. 

At the beginning of January, Keagan and Deker helped me (with Bauer supervising from his bumbo) make cinnamon rolls and orange rolls.  We froze most of them so Andrew could grab a couple for breakfast when he is heading out the door to go to work at 3:00 in the morning. 

Pizza Night.  Keagan LOVES to put the toppings on his himself.  He told us that he was a great "Pizza Artist".  Looking at this picture makes me want to make pizza for dinner.  By the way, the small pizza with just cheese is Deker's, he is a simple man.

For Christmas this year, we made these drawing boards (inspiration found here on Infarrantly Creative) for my brother and his family and Andrew's brother and his family.  We liked them so much, that we decided to make one for us as well.  Keagan and Deker love drawing on it.

Our cute Bauer.  I took this picture the middle of January while he was playing on the floor on the play blanket that I had made last year.

Big Picture of the blanket.

We were blessed to have my Mom & Dad come visit us for a weekend in the middle of January.  We all thoroughly enjoyed having them with us for a few days.  Keagan and Deker especially loved all the books they read to him and having two extra people to listen to all their stories.  Keagan and Deker with Grandpa Smith.

Bauer with Grandpa Smith.

One morning while I was cleaning up after Breakfast, Keagan and Deker decided to sit down a read a book together.  They sat in the Blue chair with a pillow behind them, a blanket and a pillow to rest the book one.  They were being so nice to each other that I couldn't resist capturing this moment. 

One Final Picture.  Last week on Tuesday (Feb. 16) we had a record setting high temperature of around 63 degrees.  The following day it was A LOT colder with snow and hail falling.  Crazy weather.

McCall Winter Carnival 2011

Andrew and I decided that we wanted to go the the McCall Winter Carnival this year.  If you don't remember our fiasco of trying to go up last year, you can read about it here.  We learned a lot from it and this time we went prepared.  On Wednesday night, we packed a change of clothes for every boy (two for Deker in case he had an accident since we had just potty trained him the week before).  We put everything in the van so that we would be ready to go first thing Thursday Morning. 

I am happy to say, that this year, we actually made it!  I think Deker is going to be cursed with motion sickness because he threw up close to the same time that he did last year.  But since we actually went prepared, we (Andrew) was able to change his clothes, clean out the car seat and we continued on our way. 

We had a lot of fun up there.  After being outside for a little while, sledding and walking around, we headed back to the van to warm up and have lunch.  Saw more sculptures and then headed home.  It was a great spending the day together.

Here are quite a few pictures of our time there.

First up, Andrew taking Keagan and Deker sledding down the hill and almost onto the frozen lake.

From the top of the sledding hill.  Looking out over the frozen/snow covered lake, then to the mountains.  Beautiful.

 There were quite a few snow sculptures of trains.  My boys loved every one of them.

During the week, there is an ice sculpting contest.  The day we were there, was the last day before they needed to be finished.  Keagan and Deker were very entranced with watching this guy.  He was very nice and talked to them about what he was doing.

This was was quite the display.  There was a house, a mining car coming out of a mountain, an ice slide, snowmobile to sit on, lots of trees, etc.

 This was Andrew's favorite...A double outhouse with a guy sitting down reading the paper with his pants around his ankles. The other side where people could sit. 

 

Groundhog Day

We attempted to celebrate Groundhog Day.  I bought a book about Groundhog Day and gave it to the boys and then read it a few times.  That night, Andrew shaped and then decorated our meatloaf into what should look  like a groundhog.

After dinner, we made Groundhog cookies.  The idea came from Gourmet Mom on the Go.

We had fun, but I don't think my boys really understood it all.