Pioneer Day

...was like a week ago. I've been BUSY, okay?! I had to finish the Harry Potter books #5, 6 and 7 before I saw the movie again today, and that's like 2,000 pages of reading, folks. My housework has been ignored. Children cast aside. Mail unopened and blogs unread. And it was highly worth it. I suppose I'll be posting about that soon, because it's my blog and I can talk about HP however much I want.

Anyway....Madelyn's dance studio had a float in the Pioneer Day parade on Monday, so we went down to the Main Street Park to watch. My sister Maria came with her hubby and chunky monkey.

First came the fire trucks, blaring their sirens and honking their horns.

 

This was Luke's reaction. 

"I don't know why they have to make so much racket. There's not even a fire!"

Pioneer-y floats

Teeny horses! They might have been ponies, but I dunno. They were cute.

Em loves giving the stink eye

Kazoo band

FINALLY! There's Madelyn waving from the back. And way to slouch there, purple ballerina... 

 

Gotta love small town festivities.

 Madelyn had to get her dollar's worth out of her bouncy house.

Then it was back to blowing bubbles in the kids' favorite box. It was quite the day.

Old projects, part III

Back during the holidays in 2006, I got the extremely ambitious desire to make Madelyn a set of custom alphabet blocks. We were only weeks away from our big move to Albuquerque, so of course crafting was my #1 priority....

 

Here's what I actually ended up making: TWO full sets of alphabet blocks (the other set went to my nephew Nathan, I think), canvas bags to hold them in, a set of Christmas blocks that spelled "Noel" and a name plaque for my friend Liz Jowers. I can't believe this is the only picture I have from back then. 

The blocks were made with maple planks we got at Home Depot...Mark took them up to his parent's house and used their power equipment to cut and sand all the pieces.

 

Then I painted each block with two or three coats of tole paint on all sides, let them dry for a few days, stuck large alphabet and number stickers on them that I got at Robert's (this was before the days of everybody and their dog having their own vinyl and Cricuts/Silhouettes), and then sealed everything with a few coats of Mod Podge. It took forever...

 

 Then I stitched up a canvas bag for each set with a decorative panel and a tie attached at the top.

 

Luke calls all the blocks "A". At least he knows the general category! 

Madelyn made a path with them the other day...

 

I think they're pretty fabulous!

I might have to see if I can get a better photograph of the other set I made....I'll keep you posted.

Old projects, part II

I don't know if you remember me posting about the flower fairies I made last August:

 

They were so cute, but not exactly durable for everyday play. So I made them into a mobile....it's been so long ago I don't even remember when, but here it is:

 

 

 

 

 

 Whenever Luke sees these, he blows/swats in their general direction, because he likes to make them move and dance. Most of the time, he's about five feet too low for anything to happen. (Or he tries blowing at the picture on the computer screen.) So then, he climbs on the bed with a toy in his hand and tries again. He's sent a couple of fairies flying off that way...

 They look so cute with her fairy quilt (a gift from Grandma Carolyn from TJ Maxx--I sure didn't make that one). Girly girls are fun!!

Old projects, part I

I haven't finished any projects lately (unless you count a gigantic pile of mending and altering, which I don't). So I've decided show a few projects I did in my pre-blogging days.

When I got pregnant with my first born, the first thing I did after managing to reenter civilization post-"morning sickness"-that-really-lasts-all-day-every-day-for-approximately-97-weeks was start to plan for a boy. I was drawn to everything nautical, green or blue and went so far as to design and make my first quilt:

 

And then I had my ultrasound and got the alarming news that I wasn't pregnant with a boy at all--it was a GIRL. What?!?!??! My maternal instincts had betrayed me! So then I had to buy fabric for a girl quilt, which to this day sits in my garage untouched, and all Madelyn got was a wall hanging which I threw together at the last minute.

When Luke was born, he started using this fabulous little Irish chain crib quilt his Auntie Sheila made for him. I don't know how she knew what colors I liked--she's just a quilting genius.

Aww!

Then a couple weeks ago when Luke switched to his toddler bed, I realized that the time had finally come to use the bigger quilt I'd made him.

 

I love it when my children are sleeping. They make so much less mischief.

 

I got all sorts of warm fuzzies that first night he slept with it. Seven years' wait! It was worth it. :)

A breath o' fresh air

I have been reading Harry Potter so much lately that my thoughts are starting to sound British.

This rounds out a week that has been the pits for me and the kids--Luke fell ill (see??! I can't stop myself!!) last Wednesday night, Madelyn on Friday night and me on Sunday night. Mark figures we had viral stomatitis, but with poor Luke it blossomed into full blown hand, foot and mouth disease. We all had fever, aches, chills, sore throats, headaches and fatigue, but he also had a blistering rash all over his extremities. Blech, blech, blech. Luckily, I had Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which is an EXTREMELY long book, to take my mind off things, and lots of ibuprofen. Except sick kids can be awful whiny and needy--have you noticed?? They kept interrupting my reading and napping attempts.

So on Sunday, we'd had enough misery and since we couldn't go to church anyway, we figured we'd go get some fresh air. We ended up packing some sandwiches and heading up Cedar Canyon. Every time I go up there, I can't believe that I live 15 minutes away from such mountainous paradise.

 

There's a picnic spot right off the road where we stopped for lunch.

 

Madelyn couldn't get enough of the wildflowers--there were bluebells, buttercups, asters, sunflowers, big dandelion-like puffs and scarlet sage blossoms everywhere.

 

I love these aspen and pine forests we have up here. They feel like the real deal to me--rather than the scrub and juniper "forests" that dot the otherwise bare rock that I'm used to in southern Utah.

 
If you concentrate really hard, you can almost convince yourself you're traipsing around Liechtenstein instead of eastern Cedar City...

 

 

We had to leave fairly quickly after eating because Mark was out of cell phone range and he was (is still) on call. That always seems to happen when we actually manage to get out of the house and go somewhere...

 

Back down to town...

 Cheese.

We stopped at East Canyon Park to let the kids let off more steam--we normally wouldn't on a Sunday, but they'd had such a dreadful week.

 

 

Madelyn showed Luke where the overflowing water fountain was--which kept him entertained for quite a while...

 

Some of his choicer blisters scabbed over from his rash :/

 

Coal Creek (?) runs through the park

It's always rather amazing when we go outside this time of year and it's not 1,000°F, like it always is where I grew up. It's usually a respectable 85° or so here. Which almost makes up for our horrible winters.

Now that I'm feeling mostly better, though, I've got a lot of things to wash and children to feed and the entire house to Clorox and such. Better go...