three years old

diane turned three today. i can't believe it. she has really hit a developmental/growth spurt lately and she feels so old all of a sudden. randy keeps scooping her up and telling her to stop growing. she's leaving that squishy toddler stage and starting to say more grown up phrases and act older. still a toddler, but barely. she is her own little personality and it's fun to see it as she grows up. 

these are a bunch of pictures from opening presents this morning. madeleine was right in there and we finally had to tell her she couldn't stand next to diane if she didn't let diane open her own presents. let's just say she had a hard time having the focus not be on her. this afternoon, she said, "where are diane's other presents?" at first i thought that it was a commentary on how many presents diane got and thought that was odd. i told her there weren't any more and she said, "no, the ones she opens at night!" then i realized that she was referring to how presents work on her birthday. i reminded her that not everyone's birthday starts with christmas presents and ends with birthday presents. diane gets all of hers in the morning.

madeleine showing diane the book she made her. it has a picture of diane and a number three on the front.

showing diane the mermaids (notice there are two? how convenient!) that madeleine picked out at the dollar store for diane.

diane showing off the bracelet and ring from the petersen family. i just like that she looks like she's singing "i'm a little teapot."

 

later in the day, we decorated diane's cake. i went to frost it and it started tearing up the top of the cake. frosting fail. so, the cake was really beautiful. fortunately, diane didn't seem to care one bit. she was just excited to put sprinkles on it.

i love the sheer joy on her face here. i made a dress for diane to match the one i made madeleine for her birthday. of course, they had to be twins today.

this was the finished product on the cake. the girls each ate about half of a little piece. none of us are big cake people and always end up throwing about 2/3 of it out, but the girls love the concept of making and decorating a birthday cake and then singing and blowing out a candle and insist on doing it for each other. cheap thrills.

 

i love this girl.

here are the two parts of her birthday video interview. it's pretty long, but she sings in it and is pretty cute all around.

star wars quilt

started: november 7th, 2012

completed: january 28th, 2013

dimensions: approx. 72"x90"

notes: back in october, my friend, robynn, was trying to pick out a quilt to make for her son's bedspread. i sent her a few options, including this one, and volunteered to make it for her since i love to quilt but don't have the budget to run out and buy a bunch of fabric right now. it was a win-win situation. so, i made up a pattern and got her a list of fabric requirements and she went out and picked out and bought the fabric and shipped it to me (fabric is much cheaper in utah than washington, plus i wanted her to pick out the fabric that she wanted). her son just got new star wars sheets, so the fabrics go with that theme, including the backing, which is an actual star wars print (of course, i forgot to get a picture of the back before sending it off). 

i got the fabric at the beginning of november and had the top pieced and pinned to the back in three days. it was a really easy pattern, with lots of strip quilting. robynn still had to pick out the binding fabric but we both got sidetracked by christmas projects, so it took a while for her to get me the binding and then it took me a while to get up the desire to sew again after all of my christmas projects. i started quilting it about a week ago and spent a lot of time sewing while chatting with my mom during her visit this past weekend. i really wanted to get it done so that my mom could take it back to utah with her. my mom was kind and put on the binding for me (she is much better at machine binding than i am) and we finished it up a couple hours before she left. it means that i didn't have time to wash it before i sent it off, so the quilt didn't crinkle up before these pictures, and i forgot to measure the finished quilt and take a picture of the back. 

i hope that the young jedi knight will enjoy his new quilt.

my mom visits

as a birthday present to herself, my mom came to visit us last weekend. i, of course, thought it was a marvelous idea. she came last wednesday and left monday. it didn't seem nearly long enough, but i'm sure that would be true no matter how long she had stayed. unfortunately, the day that she arrived, my kids all got nasty colds, so we really spent most of the weekend just sitting around and visiting. i didn't mind, and knowing my mom, she didn't mind either. by some miracle, she seems to have avoided the cold, despite having the kids climb (cough, and sneeze) all over her, so hopefully that stays true once she's home. 

her actual birthday fell during her visit, so we made a cake. she turned fifty-six, thus the five and six candles. the girls decorated it.

 we never did get a picture of my mom and all three kids, but did manage to snap them separately.

i would have liked to have hog-tied my mom and made her stay forever, but i'm pretty sure that she would have gotten sick of it pretty quickly and my dad would have been pretty upset with me. love you mom; thanks for coming to visit. 

bookend photoshoot

pictures of my bookends.

meanwhile, diane was napping. 

visitors

randy's parents came a couple days after christmas and stayed through the new year. it was so fun to have them here and their visit went by much too quickly.

mostly, we spent a lot of the time hanging out around the house. the kids talked their grandparents' ears off, and when they weren't doing that, bob and jeanie were reading to them or playing games with them. my kids were in heaven. 

 

we did manage to get out of the house a few times, one of which was to go to the zoo. for christmas, my in-laws got us annual zoo passes. i am really excited about this. they got a pass for me, as well as a flexible guest pass. so, randy can join us, but if he can't come, i can also take a friend, or grandma.

i think we'll use the zoo pass the most during the summer, but i want to make sure and get there in the winter too. the beauty of having a pass is that we can go and stay for a couple hours and leave without feeling guilty about wasting money.

we went on monday and it was pretty cold (although not as miserable as diane's face would suggest), but we saw some animals and then ducked into the indoor play area that they have and warmed up before eating lunch and then seeing a few more animals on our way out. while we were at the zoo, randy and his dad headed to pike place and got some seafood for new year's eve.

 

randy's cousin, jessica, and her family just moved to the area and were able to join us on new year's eve. it livened up what would have been a pretty pathetic excuse for a party otherwise and it was really fun to see them. the kids had a great time running around together, allowing us to catch up. we'll have to get together with them more often.

 

and of course, we ate lots and lots of delicious food with them.

we love having visitors. come often and come soon!