Siennah

Siennah

I hope you don't get tired of seeing my practice pieces on the blog. I pulled up an old picture of Siennah and sharpened her eyes then made it into a b&w & colored in the bow. I did this on two of them and they turned out so-o-o cute.

Best Family in the World

A rose from Duke Gardens

Rachel

Rachel

I ran a texture filter on the background of this picture called "rusted metal". It made it look like a painting and kind of blended in the old wood of the barn.

Game Summary

**Note** Start by reading the first entry titled "Long Faces", then work your way up the blog. The following entry is the last in the series.

Jared scored three points, blocked 4 shots and grabbed 2 rebounds in about a quarter's worth of playing time. Not bad for his first game. His three points came off a jump shot and the subsequent foul shot.

Block, part II

Jared records his second block.

First Block

Jared records his first block.

Defense

Jared overlooks his first defensive assignment.

Check'n in

Jared checks into the game for the first time in his varsity career.

Warm Up

Jared dunks during warm up

Long Faces

Last night, I came home to a long face. I could tell something was wrong just by the look in Kristin's eyes. What is it, I asked. Jared has been moved up to varsity, was the reply. Not good. Jared has been having so much fun playing on JV. He likes his coach, his teammates, the games. Why spoil all the fun. Soon after Kristin broke the news, Jared came bounding down the stairs. Trying to act excited, I said, "hey, you made varsity". Another long face. Hmm, this is more serious than I thought. We'll just have to make the best out of this, somehow. I decided to chronicle Jared's first varsity game. See pictures and captions.

Happy Birthday, Rachel

Rachel

I keep playing with Rachel's pictures. Here's a couple more

Jared joins the Slamm'n Jamm'n club

The game was nearly over. Grapevine was up by 8 points. Jared had his normal solid game. 17 points, 12 rebounds and 3 blocks. Grapevine was trying to run out the clock, but the pesky Keller Central team was pressing and trying to get the ball back. With time about to expire, Grapevine's point guard was trapped by three defenders on the left side of the key. He somehow got the ball out of the congestion and passed to a wide open Jared. Jared dribbled once and elevated. SLAM. In Jared's own words, he clung to the rim to "savor the moment". He was a nano second away from getting a technical for hanging on the rim. Jared's first dunk in a game was very impressive. The Grapevine crowd erupted in cheers and an impromptu ovation. Jared certainly added an exclamation point to a solid game by Grapevine.

Steve & Kristin

I came across this photo of Steve & Kristin when I was looking through some old files. It's a good picture so I thought I would post it.

Rachel in the loading chute

Rachel

Ever seen a knitted monk?

Here's one. I've been fascinated with monks ever since my mission. I guess it was all those cloisters I visited on P-days. So when I saw a pattern book for knitted gardens, one with monks, I had to try it out. My finished version is smaller than what was in the book, but if you look closely you'll see a vegetable patch, and an herb garden with poppy and fennel and others. There's also a row of lavender. The monk's name is Cadfael, after my favorite literary detective. I started this project a couple of years ago, got sidetracked, worked on it some more, got sidetracked, and finally got it out after Christmas to finish. Since Christi was doing show and tell, I thought I would too.

Quilting Retreat

I just returned from an amazing weekend at the beach with my quilting friends. Each year this group that I have been quilting with since I moved here takes a few days off and heads down to the beach. We rent a beach house and quilt like crazy! We have been doing this for four years now and this is my second time. We always stay up too late, eat too much and laugh a lot. It's kind of like college! I managed to finish three quilt tops while I was there.

The first quilt I finished the very first night I was there (Thursday night). The squares were already cut for me and I cut the sashings (the white pieces), cornerstones (the little black squares) and borders (around the outside) before I went to the beach so all I had to do was sew them together. It was a really easy pattern so it zipped right up.

This quilt is a pattern called "yellow brick road". If you have had a baby in the last 5 years my mom has probably made one for you. They make a really cute baby quilt. I have used this pattern many times and it turns out different every time. This quilt will go to Chris's resident at work whose wife is having a baby girl in April. I made this quilt on Friday.

This quilt was the "mother" of all quilts at the beach. No other quilt there was this labor intensive. To be fair, I started making the "flying geese" blocks two years ago. I got the pattern from a quilting magazine and the pattern is called "rhubarb crisp". I fell in love with the pattern and immediately pulled out some fabrics from my stash. It has 480 "flying geese" blocks so it has taken me two years to want to get back to it. I was determined to finish it, however. I stayed up until 3:30 a.m. Monday finishing it. I wanted to go home with the top done. I must say, I love it and it is not leaving our home once it's finished.

For all you non-quilters, this little block is a flying geese block. Can you picture it? They flying geese, I mean. It measures 1 1/2"x3".

In other news, Chris was called to be in the bishopric the night before I left for the beach. The timing was impeccable.

Rachel

Rachel

Rachel

Rachel came to Beaver for the weekend and we did a fun photo shoot. Proof is in the pictures. She did the retouch herself and got hooked on "Photoshop".

Winter Salad

I don't have any fun pictures to post, although we did have a fun holiday season. The highlight, of course, was talking to Josh for a couple of hours on Christmas day. We enjoyed having Mom and Dad here to play games and do puzzles with us.
This salad was a hit at our Christmas Eve dinner. I also took it to a ward lunch group yesterday and the ladies loved it.

Winter Salad
1 head romaine, cut up
1 cup swiss or jack cheese, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 cup cashews
1/4 cup craisins
1 apple, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 pear, cut into bite-sized pieces

Dressing
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp poppy seeds
1 tsp mustard (I used Dijon)
2/3 cup vegetable oil

Number One

Number 1 is good. Number 1 in sports, number 1 in sales, number 1 teacher of the year, number 1 class ranking.
Number 1 is not good. Number 1 crime rate, number 1 in carbon emissions, number 1 in dropped calls (AT&T, not Verizon), Number 1 jerk.
Number 1 is COLD. The arctic blast made it's way all the way down to Texas. Several days ago, we experienced a low of 17 degrees, with a wind chill of 1. How unTexas like! Minnesota and all the states north can keep their frequent number 1 temperatures!!

Since Christmas

It's been so long since I posted. I have been meaning to post some Christmas pictures. We had a quiet and uneventful Christmas this year with no company. I really miss my family around the holidays. However, I didn't miss cooking all day. We had a nice, relaxing day and just played with the kids and enjoyed being together.

On Christmas Eve we made gingerbread cookies and decorated them. The kids really enjoyed that and enjoyed eating them even more.

We had some friends over to play games on New Year's Eve. That is something we haven't done in a long time but have since had two more game nights.

It was good to talk to most of you around the holidays. I love all of you and hope you are doing well. I am off to the beach this week to spend some time quilting and relaxing while my sweet husband takes care of the kids. Yeah!

This isn't even Jack's scooter but he had fun riding on it.

I tried to keep up with the paper but I have three ganging up on me now!

Get up and GO

The above video is Jared and his piano teacher, Karolyn Sorenson. We made the video as a part of a Christmas present for Elder Lowe. However, my video capturing and sharing skills were way behind my intentions. We were unable to send the video to Derek for Christmas. Video is a hobby unto itself. Take the above video for example. To post, I had to 1) shoot the video with a camera, 2) capture the video using Adobe 8.0 and save to the hard drive, 3) save the video to a different format (.FLV file), 4) open a photobucket account, 5) load the file to Photobucket and finally, share the video to the family blog. Whew. My next hurdle is to better preserve the original video - our camera shoots better video than what the player shows. The sound is OK, though. Soon, I will post clips from Jared's basketball games. Enjoy the music!

January Blahh's

I don't know why but I hate January! It seems like the holidays are so crazy busy and then January comes like a screeching halt. We had a really good Christmas down in St. George with Jason's family. We had an almost disaster on Christmas Eve though. Jason's family has the tradition of opening all their presents on Christmas Eve and when it was Siennah's turn, she opened a shiny pink tricycle from her grandma and grandpa Snyder. Little did my in-laws know that Santa was planning on delivering the EXACT SAME TRICYCLE to Siennah that night! We had to do some last minute shopping/scrambling but it ended up working out ok. Christmas morning we got to drive over to Cedar and open presents with everyone there. Besides being heart broken that Bretten wasn't there, we had a lot of fun. Of course, it all went by too fast and now its back to every day life.
Siennah has hit the terrible two's. She's very territorial and bossy. It's driving me crazy! If she sees another kid just looking at her she yells, "Hey! That's Siennah's!". It's really embarrassing! And I keep hearing that this is just a warm up for the three's. Great! It's not all bad though. Siennah is constantly making me laugh. The other day she was running around the family room and Jason was watching her and said, "look at you running in circles!" and Siennah responded, "No daddy, I'm running in ovals!"!! Haha she told you! She amazes me every day!
I hope everyone is enjoying the new year so far! Here are some pics from Christmas.

Poster edges

Michael

Siennah

My lesson for today.

Tristan

How about this cute picture of Tristan in the North Carolina snow?

Fairy

I ran quite of few actions on this picture and came up with about 30 variations. Here's a couple more

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