Surprise Grady!

Yesterday we took a day trip to the Children's Museum at Indianapolis. It was well worth the trip. We were there looking at dinosaurs alone for 2 and a half hours before we ever looked at the clock. I would reccommend a visit to anyone with curious kids.

I held out one little piece of info from Grady about the museum. They recently put the Bumblebee Transformer in the Welcome area. As soon as you came in, you not only saw two giant dinosaurs peeking in the roof, you saw one of the 'stars' of the Transformer movies on a rotating platform. It's size was something else! Of course, my little man was left open-mouth stunned!

I would add more pictures, but for some reason I cannot get pictures to upload on Blogger very quickly. If you have a free day and a kid that would love to see all that this place has to offer, I would say GO!! Maybe a weekday though, the place was packed on Sunday!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Hey Mom!! Look at This!!

I MADE PAUL BLART MALL COP!!

I CAN SIT UP!!

Happy Valentines Day

Hope your day is as bright as mine will be with these two big smiles!!

Holy Icicles!!

What a storm we have rode out in the last 24+ hours!!!

We lost electricity about 7 pm on Tuesday and didn't get it back until 430 am today, Wednesday. Grady got his wish to be able to camp out in the garage. Not so pleasant for Momma, but Thank GOD for our wood stove out there. Otherwise, we would have frozen in our house. The thermometer in the house read a crisp 57 degrees when we came back inside. Brrr!

Chris had bought some cots for he and Grady to take camping, so that was my luxury bed last night. Isaiah got to try out his playpen for the first time too. He did pretty well for his first camp out. I have to say that this is not how I had envisioned letting him go camping.

I hope and pray that anyone affected by this storm is safe and warm by now. This winter has been brutal. I am not going to say I am ready for spring, but I am ready for this winter weather to go somewhere else!

Going out on a Limb

I am trying something I have never done before. I signed up online for a quilt swap. The quilt is called an I-Spy. You've heard of the I-Spy books and game.....'I spy with my little eye....' This quilt is along the same lines. Printed fabrics sewn in any pattern you want. I chose some really fun fabrics to send and can't wait to see what ones I get in return!! To see some sample I-Spy quilts, click here.

6 Years!!

It is so hard to believe that my little bitty baby boy is 6 years old today! This past year has been a whirlwind for me and I'm sure for Grady too. Especially the last 3 months!!

This year Grady has:

• Visited Florida for the first time
• Played T-Ball
• Learned to ride his bike without training wheels
• 'Graduated' Preschool
• Started Kindergarten
• Rode the big yellow school bus
• Made new friends at school
• Learned how NOT to wreck his 4 wheeler (i.e. don't speed up when turning!)
• Lost his first tooth
• Learned to spell, read and write lots of words
• Played Soccer
• Last, but certainly not least......Became a Big Brother!!!

Grady, your mommy, daddy and baby brother love you to pieces!! I sure hope your next year is as exciting as the last one has been!!

My Newest Hobby

It seems that after becoming a mother of two, I have been overly ambitious. I don't know how I am going to keep up the act, but I fully intend to.

For starters, the Christmas after I had Grady, I asked my mom and dad to buy me a sewing machine. I toyed with it, but never really did anything with it. After five years of the sewing machine being hidden in a box and me getting pregnant with Isaiah, I had an epiphany. I was going to make a quilt.

I found a pattern and some really cute fabrics at Wal-Mart for a baby quilt. Since I wanted him to have something of his own and not all hand-me-downs from Grady, I decided this is where I would begin. This is the finished quilt top for Isaiah. It is at the quilters now and will be done sometime early 2011.

Then, I signed up for a quilting class with Anthea Zumbahlen that started one month after having Isaiah. Crazy, right? Well, I thought so too, but was ambitious and knew with a little help I could do it.

I intended on keeping a secret from my mom that the quilt class project was her Christmas gift, but that didn't happen. It was actually easier knowing that she knew and liked the fabrics I chose and the pattern I was making. With Anthea's guidance, Mom's babysitting services, my Grandma Ferguson's knowledge and help on some of the cutting and binding and the grace of GOD I got the quilt done in time to be quilted and wrapped for my mom to have a finished quilt for Christmas.

To fan the flames of my ambitions, I decided with 20 days until Christmas that I would make my one and only niece a rag quilt. She is 13 and is hard for this mom of boys to buy for. She loved it and I think another rag quilt (probably for Grady) is in my future.

Next was the idea for a gift for my mother-in-law. She loves chickens. I found this fabric and couldn't really decide what I wanted to do with it. This started out a table runner, but I ran out of time with the impending holiday season and it became a pillow.

I hope to add some more quilting projects to my resume in 2011. That is if my ambitions aren't bigger than my free time slots!!