What A Tripp!

And the winner is…

megan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:21:34 +0000

Jen of hawleyfocus. Congratulations! I’ll do my best to get the purse in the mail to you tomorrow before we leave on vacation. Hope you enjoy it. And thanks to everyone for your wonderful comments.

Gratitude Giveaway

megan — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:40:09 +0000

In honor of Thanksgiving, and my desire to express my gratitude, I’m having another giveaway! This is a blue purse that I made for the craft bazaar that I participated in a couple of weeks ago. It obviously didn’t sell (not much did) so I’m passing it on to one of my friends/family.

It has a magnetic snap closure and a couple of pockets inside. It’s about 15.5″ across when laid flat. If you’d like to win this bag, just post a comment by Thursday (the 20th) afternoon. I will randomly choose the winner that evening so I can get it in the mail Friday, before we leave on our trip to Washington.

In other news…
Caemlyn participated in another swim meet last weekend and is steadily improving her times. She even swam in her first IM. Way to go babe!

50 Free

50 Breast

I tried my hand at another homemade craft that has turned out quite well. I made cloth curlers for the girls. I tried them out with Caemlyn first with lovely results.

I only made 10 so far, so not enough to do all of the girls at the same time, but they’ve worked well in Ada’s and Kezia’s hair as well. Didn’t take pics of their curly hair yesterday though, sorry. They are all begging me to make more though so they can all have curls more often.

Halloween

megan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:47:42 +0000

We had a very nice Halloween, and the kids looked cute as ever in their costumes. Thursday night we went to the ward Trunk or Treat and chili dinner. Friday night we decided to skip our annual Trick or Treat at the hospital and stuck to the Trick or Treat on mainstreet. After dinner, the older kids also did a loop of our neighborhood. We have way too much candy! More importantly, on to the pics…
Tyghe as the Big Bad Wolf

Ada as Belle (I made her entire costume from scratch - no pattern at all. Pretty proud of myself.)

Kezia as Little Red Riding Hood

Zephram as a sage (totally his idea)

Caemlyn as a black pixie (she made her tutu and we both made her wings - that don’t show up too well in the pic)

I was glad when it was all over as I had lots to do to get ready for a craft bazaar that I was participating in yesterday. Didn’t sell much, but I do have orders for several items from friends. Not sure what to do with some of the extras (that aren’t going to the kids) - maybe anther giveaway???

Way Behind

megan — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:54:55 +0000

I’ve gotten way behind on posting. Sorry. Too much going on and not enough time to document it all. Here’s a brief re-cap…
Kezia finished her first season of soccer and had a fun time.

Zephram finished yet another season of soccer and still likes it.

Zephram competed in his first cub scout push cart races - super fun!

I took 3 of the kids to a super lame pumpkin patch at a local elementary school. Sorry, I won’t pay $15 for a pumpkin.

Not in pictures…
Caemlyn competed in her first swim meet of the short course season and did well. The meet was in Abq the same weekend as Zeph’s last soccer game and pushcart races, so she, Kezia and Justin (he swam too) and stayed the night while I stayed home with the rest of the kids. The same weekend I ran in the annual Yum Run 5K and got a new PR. Zeph and Ada ran in the Yum Run 1K.
This last weekend we went to Abq so Justin could swim in 1 race and then took the kids to the zoo. Just happened to be their annual Zoo Boo, so it was packed with kids in Halloween costumes - but at least all the kids got in free and got to TorT for candy too. I think Tyghe enjoyed his first visit to the zoo. Friday, Justin got the last of our concrete walkway removed and our 60 foot spruce is now in huge pieces in the backyard. The amount of light now coming in the front of the house in the morning is amazing. Then Sunday the kids had their annual primary program. The kids all did a great job with their parts and singing all of the songs. Very different to sit through most of sacrament meeting with just Justin and Tyghe. It’s crazy watching the kids grow up. Watching Caemlyn on the stand, I kept trying to figure out when she got so grown up - then I watched her bounce back to her seat after saying her part and knew she’s still my little girl.

8 things

megan — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:34:40 +0000

Due to popular demand, I am caving in and attempting to do this one tag. Forgive me for all of the blanks, but I don’t do well with these types of things.

8 Things I did yesterday
made Ada’s Halloween costume
finished reading Inkspell
laundry
ran
carved a pumpkin
made brownies for FHE treats
took Zeph’s scout fundraiser popcorn to school for him to distribute
took care of Kez while she stayed home from school

OK, so listing what I did yesterday was the only one I could do without stressing my brain too much. I’m currently looking forward to the elections being over. We don’t go out to eat very often and have even fewer restaurants. We did eat at a pretty good Indian restaurant in Santa Fe on Saturday though. I watch whatever Justin is surfing past on TV. I wish that doctors could figure out what’s wrong with Justin’s dad and treat it and that Mike’s cancer would go away. I also wish we lived closer to family. I look forward to watching my kids grow up (and hope they make good choices). I’m also looking forward to my next big race - whatever it is.

I’m obviously not tagging anyone since I couldn’t even follow the rules myself. Oh well - I tried.

But had I been tagged on the 4th picture thing …

A huge sunflower plant that grew in our front yard in 2004.

blankets

megan — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:48:10 +0000

I made a couple of blankets lately that I’m quite proud of. First is Josh & Courtney’s baby blanket…and a matching hat. Since they don’t know the gender of the baby, I thought sock monkey colors were quite appropriate.

And a close-up of the hat…

The other blanket is actually a duvet cover I made yesterday for our old duvet. We got a new quilt for our bed and decided to let Caemlyn use our queen size duvet on her twin bed. The navy blue cover we had just didn’t seem right, so I looked through my fabric stash and came up with this…

close-up of the flower applique

I’m quite pleased with how it turned out and Caemlyn is as well.

Winner

admin — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:15:41 +0000

Thanks to everyone that commented on my blog’s anniversary. Congratulations to Jamie! Ada drew her name out of a box as the winner of my fabulous crayon roll.

It’s fun to make stuff and give it away, so I think I’ll have to find excuses to do this more often.

Happy Anniversary!

megan — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:47:33 +0000

I’m a week late, as I didn’t realize I’ve been blogging for a whole year. Oh my! Where has the time gone? Anyway, to celebrate my 1 year anniversary of blogging, I’m having a giveaway. Since I mostly blog about my kids, I’m giving away something for the kids - a CRAYON ROLL.

To win, just leave a comment and the winner will be picked at random on October 5, 2008.

Homecoming

megan — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:12:12 +0000

This past week was the high school’s homecoming. Not such a big deal since we don’t have anyone in high school right now, but it’s tradition here to let all of the kids out of school early on homecoming Friday and have a parade. Small town parades are great. The kids were encouraged to wear high school colors (green and yellow/gold) to school, so I did their hair cute and added the requested green and yellow pipe cleaners. I did Ada’s as well so she would match her sisters at the parade. We were at the beginning of the parade, and the amount of candy the kids got was insane.

I got a glimpse of what it will be like as the girls get older when a “float” filled with pee wee football players went by and several boys were yelling to Caemlyn and threw her a small football. Thank goodness she’s still clueless about it all.
Now that Zeph is in cub scouts, he got to join the local council and walk in the parade.

Zeph also had his 3rd soccer game of the season on Saturday. He was excited that he got to go in as goalie for the last few minutes of the game.

And not to leave my baby out, a pic I snapped of him this afternoon after he had snagged a couple of pacifiers (probably ones he had thrown out of his bed) and was laying on the floor with his monkey.

Such a good looking little boy, if I do say so myself.

Destruction

megan — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:18:32 +0000

We’ve been going through our share of destruction lately, so I thought I’d share a bit of it with you. As you may recall, we were recently affected by a close lightning strike that fried our phones, satellite and some computers. You may also be aware that we have a very large spruce tree in our front yard. This tree is about 60 feet tall and causes a fair amount of destruction to our yard and property. Due to this, we have been getting estimates on having this tree cut down. One service came today to check it out, and noticed something we hadn’t seen before.

A fresh lightning scar. This tree is only about 10 feet or so in front of our house. I guess this explains the damage we experienced. Thank goodness the tree didn’t explode or crash down on our house, causing greater amounts of destruction.

Next on our list, is our front walkway. We have had a rather thick slab of cement in front of our house that served as a ramp/walkway. We’ve been in the process of attempting to remove this cement ramp, but due to the thickness of the concrete, it has been a slow, difficult process. Justin recent came upon a product that is somewhat like liquid dynamite - minus the explosion. It’s not cheap, but if it worked, we knew we’d save a large amount of time and energy. Last week, the product arrived and we mixed and poured it into the many 1″ holes that Justin had drilled into the slab. It took a couple of days, but it worked!

At it’s height, the slab was 16+ inches deep. We’ve only done a few sections so far, and still have plenty more to do before getting it all out. But, the results were impressive.

Last of all, I thought I’d share a bit of minor destruction we experience on a daily basis.

We don’t always remember to put the wipes boxes where Tyghe can’t reach them. lol