Cutesie Girl

I finished the skirt for Laina! I was having a bad day a week or so ago and I decided I needed to make something. I had wanted to get this skirt done by Valentine's day, but it was not to be. I did get it finished for Church on Sunday and she looked so darn cute in it!

I used some leftover fabric from the Valentine skirt I made Aria last year.

I don't know what it is, but once I start cutting out fabric and sewing my whole body starts to relax. I could feel the tension releasing as I started rolling my rotary cutter. I get in this kind of zen zone when I am sewing. I mentioned this to my sister in law and she looked at me like I was a bit crazy. I know sewing stresses out a lot of people, but for me the whole process of creating is so soothing to my soul. The only time it is stressful is when I am trying to unpick stitches with a baby on my lap! :) Hopefully for my sanity there is lots of more sewing time in the near future!

Happy Birthday Mike!

Mike celebrated his 39th birthday on Friday. He took the day off so he could have sometime for himself. He was able to eat lunch with Aria and got to fly his plane with Chase. We went to dinner that evening up at Sundance with our friends the Grays. They will be moving back to Australia soon and we wanted a night to go out with them, have a nice dinner, and some fun conversation. Mike got the Australian Lamb Chops and I had a very tasty Grilled Salmon with a Pineapple Vinaigrette.

When we got home Mike opened up his presents. The Petersons brought over a bunch of treats from Kneaders.

Hunter and Chase were ready to jump in the box.

We gave him some new shirts, some candy, and a movie.

It was a nice mellow birthday and I hope he enjoyed his day! Love you Mikey!

The Good Will Ambassadors of Carpet

Mike works with the scouts in our ward and often helps out with their Eagle projects. Twice now Carpets America has donated the carpet for two projects. The first one was to replace the carpet at the Provo Mayor's office and the second was to replace the carpet in some portable classrooms at Westridge Elementary school in Provo. Mike, the scout, and volunteers go in and rip out all the old carpet and then glue down these new carpet tiles. It has taken up the better part of a Saturday to do this each time and Mike usually comes home covered in carpet glue and in need of a serious massage.The Dad of the scout for the Elementary school project sent us some of the pictures they took to document the day.

They first had to clear out all of the classrooms. Here is one of Tate doing some heavy lifting.

Next they had to tear out all of the old carpet. Mike is using his sweet knife skills to cut the carpet against the wall.

After that they spread the glue out and placed the carpet tiles down.

It's hard work, but I'm sure all of the boys and parents who helped were happy to put in the hours for the kids at the school.

Mike came home the other night with a big envelope full of thank you letters from the students. We read them out loud and loved every one of them.

They all mentioned things like hard work and lots of effort. I'm thinking maybe the teachers gave them a little coaching on what to say. :) Mike said his favorite part of the whole experience was reading those letters. It always feels good when you can use your job and skills to help out when it is needed.

All We Need is Love

Happy Valentine's Day!

I decided to be a little creative today and make a cute little shirt for Laina. I appliqued the Love wording on her onesie and it turned out so cute! I was trying to make a skirt to go with it, but I only got it cut out. Hopefully I'll have it done by Sunday for church. Isn't she the cutest little thing! I just love her to pieces. She is sitting up so well now and loves to be able to see what is going on around her. She rolls everywhere and has even attempted the army crawl. She is saying Da, Da, enjoys shouting and loves to babble. She continues to impress us with her raspberries and usually ends up spraying us at dinner time.

Hunter and Michela made a funny Valentine box for Hunter to collect his cards and candy in. It says, "Feed me Loves Bub!" Hunter named him Fred. These two have such a silly sense of humor. I am always surprised at what they come up with.

I was a bit on the grouchy side about Valentine's day this year. It might be the fact that I have been dealing with sick kids for the last 2 1/2 weeks and I haven't had one decent night of sleep during that time. It also might have to do with me feeling like a beached whale because I can't seem to find the time to exercise. I have no energy and since Laina is so sporadic in the nap department I never know when I'll be able to have a stretch of time long enough to throw on my workout gear and get moving. It always seems like by the time I get dressed and get down to the basement she has woken up and her screams are blasting through the intercom. I can't wait for Spring so I can throw her and Aria into the stroller and go for a walk outside.

We ended up having a nice dinner together, Mike brought home Costa Vida, and we had a fun Family Night. It's funny how Valentine's day has changed over the years with the addition of kids. Personally I kind of like it. Hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Yummy Science Fair Project

First off let me just say, yes, we are still alive over here. We have had almost two weeks of croup, runny noses, coughing, fevers, and pretty much anything else you could throw at us. Next year I will be making sure we all get flu shots! Aria is the only one that did and she came away with just a couple of nights of croup and a little bit of a stuffy nose. Mike described it best when he said, "I feel like I got run over by a bus."

It is science fair project time around here and of course Michela totally procrastinated her project and ended up having to switch it at the last minute. She ended up going with what would happen when you baked cookies right after making the dough and when you let the dough sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. This project was right up our alley being a family of total sweet tooths. The best part was that we got to be the taste testers. :)

We used an ice cream scoop to scoop out the dough.

This made perfectly shaped cookies. Mixing the peanut butter cookie dough, I'm drooling just looking at it.

After doing this project I will forever be refrigerating my dough. Just two hours in the fridge resulted in puffier and moister cookies. She did chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies.

The cookies on the left were the ones made from the refrigerated dough. The peanut butter cookies were the best I've ever had. Yum!! And the chocolate chip cookies were so perfect and looked beautiful. After doing a little research we read an article about how all the famous bakeries refrigerate their dough for like 36 hours! I don't think I could wait that long, but maybe we'll have to try it some day just to see.