Ten on Tuesday

1. I should be working =)

2. We took an impromptu trip to Durham, NC this weekend, we went to see the Alabama game. I was looking at the schedule and looked at stubhub to see what ticket prices were and realized it was probably the only Alabama game where we could afford tickets. =)

3. It was Dash's first game, and even though my Auburn heart is crying a little, he looked awfully cute.



4. While John and Dash were at the game, Kate and I walked through the Sarah P. Duke Memorial gardens. They were so beautiful. I'm jealous all the Duke students get to lounge around in these gardens when they aren't in class. We found this huge butterfly on some Lantana and stopped to take a pic.



5. Duke's campus is gorgeous, all the buildings are huge and gothic and beautiful. I was looking for the chapel and saw this big pretty building and thought "is this it?" but I didn't want to ask anyone and look like an idiot. Then I turned the corner and saw this sucker...



And realized that no, that wasn't it. This chapel is huge!! There was a wedding there when we were there (right smack dab in the middle of the Alabama game, you know the groom didn't pick the date). What a lucky bride.

6. Dash and I got my mom a hummingbird feeder for Mother's Day. She subscribes to Birds and Blooms and in there they suggested putting a red ribbon on each feeder, and that the birds would just come up to it while you were holding it. Can you believe that? I couldn't either.



How cool.

7. Here's a video, too, it reminds me of dance with the hummingbirds or something. =)

8. I tried my hand at Applique the other day, I was impressed with how easy it was. I was SUPER intimidated. I found a website though that walks you through it step by step (same site that showed me how to quilt) and thought it didn't look that bad. Here's my finished quilt square, one of my online friends has been diagnosed with cancer and all of the girls are putting a quilt together for her. She has four daughters, all blond beauties, so I came up with this design.



9. Seriously, that was easy. I drew out my pattern on some double sided fusing, temporarily stuck it to the fabric and cut it out, then stuck it to the base fabric and ironed it on and that made it a permanent bond. The sewing is just to keep the edges from fraying, but those suckers are stuck on there when you sew. Then it was just a matter of following the lines, which was hard around the curves but I used the manual dial a lot and turned it every few stitches and it worked really well. Then I just embroidered the faces on.

10. I have a four pillow designs from Don't Look Now, that's next on the agenda for Kate. And here's the tutorial on how to do the applique, I know a bunch of ya'll are crafty. =)

Frog Lifecycle...

As I mentioned yesterday, we had some tadpoles hatch in our swimming pool. =) Chlorine, shmorine, although from these pictures you can tell there wasn't much chlorine in there. =) By the time we saw them, they were pretty big, we only came across them probably 2 weeks ago and they're already turning into frogs. So here is the froggy lifecyle, as witnessed by the Dixons. =)

This is how big they were when we found them.



Seriously, it was like some scene out of probably Roz's worst nightmare since she hates frogs. =) There were TONS of them swimming all over the place. Dash thought they were awesome.

I think this was taken early last week, maybe late the week before that. They started sprouting legs...



This is what our pool looks like now, half of these suckers, full frogs but with their tails still out, and the other half are frogs. They climb up the side of the pool and hop to freedom, and every morning we go out there and see how many we have left. This morning we probably had 20 tadpoles left and there were probably 20 frogs on the side of the pool.



And finally...



(Excuse the color, it was dark out and I was just trying to grab a shot before Dash brought him in the house. I might be a tough girlie girl but I'm still a girly girl. I don't think I could handle a frog in my house.

This is from a few days ago, John got two of them in his hand...



You would think with all those frogs we would have a ton of them in the yard but either we don't or they're hiding. We even have a pond, and I don't see any in there. Of course the pond is covered with hyacinths and a lily pad, so they have plenty of places to hide.

I'm going to miss these little guys when they're gone for good, we've had a good time watching them. =)

The Fair

We went to the fair in our area Thursday night. They had a petting zoo and Dash is all about some animals, so we'd thought he'd have fun. Turns out Dash was all about EVERYTHING, even the giant slide. He won some prizes, fed some goats, and went on a few rides, most by himself, but some with John. We had a great time.



This was the oddest petting zoo I've ever seen. They had turtles, a porcupine, an alpaca, a baby deer... just odd things you usually don't see at petting zoos.



I don't know how I got to be 30 and didn't realize porcupines were so freaking big.



Kate had a lot of fun, too, Dash won two balls and she got to play with one, and she just enjoyed taking in the sights. And being cute. =)



Dash on the boat ride...



I don't know if I mentioned this on here... We have a swimming pool, just a cheapo metal frame one that we put up and take down each year, and this year it sprung a leak. John couldn't find it, the water got WAY low, and after some rain it got kind of wuggy. Dash wasn't super interested anymore so we just let it go. I came home from work one day and John told me to go out there and look in the pool and when I did, there were 100 tadpoles in it. I guess a momma frog got in there and thought it would be a good spot to have some babies. Dash has had a BLAST watching them turn into frogs, and so have I. I need to do a post on the whole thing, everytime I go out there they're further along and I grab a few pictures. About 75% of them have turned into frogs now and are climbing up the side of the pool and jumping off to their new life. I'm going to miss them when they're gone, they've been fun to watch.

Here's a picture I took last week, when I noticed they had sprouted legs...



And for good measure, here's a pic of our friendly outdoor hummingbird. We have three that visit our feeder and they have no problem with me coming out there and taking pictures of them. =)

One on Wednesday

My conversation with Dash last week:

Me: Dash, can you name some of the planets?
Dash: Um.... uh....
Me: What planet to we live on?
Dash: Uh... Earth!!
Me: Good job buddy! Can you name some other planets?
Dash: Uh... who lives on Penis?
Me: (laughing) you mean Venus??

The End. =)

Long time no blog...

Blogging has gone on the back burner, sorry!!

Since May 27th, let's see. Kate turned one and started walking, not in that order. =) She got a little tykes house from my parents and a Melissa and Doug shopping cart and wooden fridge and pantry food from us so she was a happy camper. I love the shopping cart, it's super sturdy and doesn't tip easily. Dash loves it too.

I'm just going to start posting pictures. How about that? Everyone likes pictures. =)

These are from her invitation shoot, and I totally sent out zero invitations. =) I didn't get them in time. At least I have them though.





Her cake:



Her cupcakes which I'm super freaking proud of. =)



Her shopping cart:



My birthday girl:



I made that hat, too. Super freaking proud of it as well =)

Dash wanted his own birthday cake and we got a smash cake for her anyway which I wasn't super eager to use. I'm just not a big fan of the smash cake. Kate would have made a mess of it too, she's all about using her hands for stuff. I didn't want to mess up her dress nor did I want to make a mess at my parent's house. And since Dash wanted his own cake, he got the smash cake instead. He was stoked.



I've posted this next picture on facebook and pretty much everywhere I can post a picture so I might as well post it here, too. =) My new favorite picture of my kids...



I think that pretty much covers the last two months. My external drive crashed and burned and I lost a crapload of pictures, but I think I can get them all back. I've sent it off to a friend who has a magic adapter and as long as the drive can still spin we should be ok. I had most of them backed up anyway but not quite all of them. Lesson to me to back my stuff up better. Now it goes from card to computer to DVD to drive. And it's not getting deleted off the card or computer until all of those steps are done. Live and learn.

John's leg is doing awesome, he has his last PT strength test next week and a doctor's appointment right after that and then he'll be released.

Weight loss is going good, down 35 pounds and about 35 more to go. Hopefully by this winter I'll be back in my normal clothes and it'll be like neither of my pregnancies ever happened. =) Minus the two rambunctious kiddos running around.

I'll try not to go another 2 months without blogging, I know Kate is going to change so freaking much in the next 6 months and I want to document it, and if you think my blog is neglected, you should see her baby book. =)

Quilts!

Finally. Sorry. =)

First, the finished one...



And then the next one I'm working on, this one was quick and easy...



And finally what's coming up next...

http://dontlooknow.typepad.com/

Specifically this one for Kate's bed.

And John's surgery went fine and he's recovering well. It kills him in the morning when he's gone several hours without pain medication but it's manageable the rest of the day. Says the wife not going through it. But really, I think he's doing well. His mom's coming to stay with us this week, she'll be here today to help with the kids. And I turn 30 this week! AHHHH! Not ready for that one.

Little Girl Standing

This has always been my favorite time ever in my kids' lives. I love the stocky baby, footed jammies, crawling/sitting/standing time. I love snuggling her and having a good amount of baby to hang on to. And I love their independence. Kate started crawling for real on February 10th, about a day after I posted that "almost crawling" video, and started pulling herself up on things she can get a grip on the next day. She uses the wire tracks at the top of this toy to pull herself up. And doesn't she look proud of herself!