My New Baby!

Luke Christopher

Well, I've been a slacker at blogging for quite some time now, and now that my new baby is here, I figured I'd share some pictures with you. Luke Christopher is what we named him and he came 3 1/2 weeks early but the doctor thought he looked like a 38 week baby. Now he's already 6 weeks old! My life is busy but fun.

Hedgehog Halloween

So I figured it was about time to get blogging again. I was super sick for the last few months and super busy. My boys wanted costumes that simply were not invented yet which caused me a bit of stress and too much thinking. Our neighbors have a Wii and they saw that Sonic the Hedgehog has new friends and wanted to be them so bad. So after make-shift patterns and a bizillion fixes, here's what we ended up with. It was all worth it seeing how happy they were, but next year I want to settle for just buying them.

I'm Having A Boy!

So I'm sure that most of you have heard by now that I'm 1/2 way through my 4th pregnancy, and YES, it's another BOY! Chris and I really couldn't believe it, he was so sure it was a girl. I was pretty bad already thinking about how I was going to paint the new nursery and such, but instead of pink it will now be blue. He is super healthy and perfect so far. In fact he's already measuring 10 days ahead of schedule, which is normal for my kids....They've all come at least 2 weeks early. So I'm thinking I've got until just after mid-March to get all the things in order. You'd think that having 3 boys already that I should have everything I need, but the more I look at everything--it's all pretty hammered so I've gotta get new strollers/carseats and all that good stuff. My neighbor told me a great quote about boys so I'm gonna share it, "Son-up through Son-set, my life is filled with joy!" That's my new motto. No pictures of my fat belly yet, just the baby for now.

Wisconsin Trip

This was Drake's 1st time on an airplane. The other boys have been a couple times and they think it's like a rocket ship. So at takeoff, they countdown 3..2..1 Blastoff!!! And then they start laughing their heads off while everyone around us just smiles. Yep, lots off junkfood for a 2-3 hour flight, that's how we managed.

Grandma Locy has a HUGE swimming pool in her backyard. It was a freezing 66 degrees only when we jumped in, but by the time we left it was up to 80! These next three pictures of Drake make me laugh so hard.

Yes, I know how white I am, but give me a break...it's been raining for practically the WHOLE summer so far. This was the first sun my shoulders and legs have seen.

Carter's pose is awesome! He loved these purple goggles so much and his lifejacket (muscle man) swimsuit.

Then we headed up North to Aunt Peach's cottage on a lake. It was beautiful and so relaxing. These are the steep stairs coming down to the dock.

Here is our fishing "expert" of the day. He caught more fish than anyone...all by himself, so Cameron called himself "an expert fisherman".

Carter was happy to get one for himself. Way to go buddy!
Uncle Keith told Carter to tell everyone that the fish he caught was THIS BIG....but Daddy's was this small. The sad part was, it was actually true!

They had a paddle boat to cruise the lake in. We took races against the canoes. Off course the boys won us back to the dock.

As the day went on, we caught a turtle swimming by the shore. Poor little thing, some wacko had painted his shell all white so they always knew where he was. No more camoflauge for him. I don't know if you can see it, but he had some pretty sharp claws that were digging into me while I waited for this picture.

At the very end of the day we saw a HUGE bird fly over us and land in the trees across the lake. Chris and his mom and aunt paddled over there to get a better look. Sure enough, it was a Bald Eagle. Another one came to join him while they were there. It was pretty SWEET!

Here is our family having a cookout with Great Grandma Locy. We stayed at her house the entire trip. She is the expert "card player" but somehow Cameron won his share of UNO games that would last over 1 hour! It was so good to see her and all the family. Thank you so much for all the wonderful memories!

Here is Great Grandma Semrow (Griffiths) in the white shirt. Her husband (Chris' grandpa) passed away when he was just a baby. He only had one surviving sister and this is her in the pink...aunt Dort and her husband. We had a wonderful BBQ with the Semrow side and the kids couldn't get enough bubbles or birdwatching with all the birdhouses out back.

This is Mason and he is my boys 2nd cousin (in the brown). There's only two 2nd cousins on this side of the family, but the other one couldn't make it. Mason and Drake had a great time trying to ride these pretend geese and playing tag.

It sure was hard to come home to real life and get things going again, but life moves on. Thank goodness for vacations!

Sunee's Baby Shower

We had a great time at her shower. Thanks to everybody that came and helped out so much! Cara did so much work to make it nice for us, she has a beautiful house to host it in too. Sunee's having a boy in about 6 weeks or so. Here's some photos I took. The recipe for the Chinese Chicken Salad I made will be coming shortly.

Super cute diaper cake...over 100 diapers!

Here's my towel...yipee, she thought I bought it!

Gotta have the diapers and a Bumbo...necesseties. ( I really want one of these if I ever have another kid!)

I love the flannel blankets! Cute fabric too!

School friends together again. It's so good to see everyone!

Froggy Hooded Towel

Well I do have to admit, my 1st hooded towel turned out pretty good. Sunee's baby was my guinea pig though. I knew Sunee loved frogs so I found a picture of a froggy hooded towel on ebay. To my dismay I was outbid and there were no more. I thought that maybe I could just make my own and that it would be simple. Well, I was right and wrong. Simple, yes now that I made my own pattern. Hard, yes because it took me forever to figure it all out. People assume that I'm a good sewer cause my mom is. NOPE! I'm way bad compared to her...my seams are all uneven and crooked, but hey...it's a towel for a baby so it's okay. I needed to post the steps on here before I forget (mostly to help myself remember for next time)...yeah, I think there will be a next time anyways.

So I had coupons over Memorial Day to get fabric 1/2 off, so I found that JoAnn Fabrics had terrycloth for $5.99/yd. I needed 1 1/2 yards of yellow, 1/2 yd of green, one white wash cloth and scraps of black fleece. Tip: wash fabric and dry before cutting it out. The yellow towel measured 45" square (pretty big for a baby, perfect for a toddler). The next are the patterns I made for the eyes, self explanatory..cut 4 of green, 2 of white and 2 of black. I allowed just enough to zigzag and turn over. The big mouth was going to be sewn into a tube but I ended up just zigzagging over a new cut thin smile and it was better.

Sew the eyes in the right order. Zigzag edges of black onto white (don't turn under). Then sew white onto 1 green. Zigzag back and forth to make white sparkle. Right faces together, sew green parts. I never made a pattern for the hood, but the triangle dimmensions are 14 1/2" from the top point to left corner and 14 1/2" to the right corner. Along the bottom I put it on a fold to make 23" inches across. Vertically from the top point to the bottom center should be 9" when folded in half. Shoulda make a picture, sorry (these ones are not folded but opened all the way). The mouth is just a curved strip of black fleece 9" by 1/4". Line up eyes (a couple inches down from top point) and mouth onto triangle. Using pins or pen marks make 1/2' tall lines for the nose holes. Zizag with black thread. Zizgag over mouth.

After I sewed both eyes, I stuffed them with foam leftover from my window seat. You can find it at the fabric store or just use batting. Pinch bottom of eyes closed and fold over (see above picture) and sew to triangle. Now fold the green triangle in half (with fold along the bottom) and sew up the edge of the left side and over to the 2nd eye. Leave an opening for foam insert. It's okay for the seam to show, it will be covered up with binding in a minute. Now insert foam. Sew hole closed. Pin onto yellow square, lining up corners.

Using the extra wide double fold binding, pin starting at top of head an follow all the way around towel. I purchased 2 of these packages and only had 6 inches left over..perfect! When you get to the corners, just overlap it a bit to make a crease. Finish last inch by turning binding under and sew. Last of all, hand stitch the eyes at the top by just tacking it to the hood not all the way through to the yellow. Put hand inside the hood to help guide you.

I had to have a baby model. Drake cooperated somewhat! Tell me what you think. It would have been a lot easier to just buy a towel from the store and rig the dimmensions how I wanted, but oh well.

Kindergarten Rodeo

Congratulations Cameron! We made it through kindergarten. His class put on a program for the family about a boy that cried, "Bear! Bear!" (instead of wolf). But when the bear really came to the ranch, all she wanted to do was the Conga Dance. The kids broke out in song and dance and made us all start laughing! They sang Home on the Range, You've Got a Friend In Me, and Happy Trails with awesome soloists and had super cute actions that kept us all smiling. Too bad we didn't have any real cowboy gear for him to dress up in.

He's practicing riding the horse.

I liked the saying on the Bear Cave, "BEWARE of the Beef Eatin' Bear!"

I'd say that's a pretty good bandit face! LOL!

The proud brothers! Carter can't wait to be the star of the show this fall. Drake just wants the stick horse to keep.