We're Back!

We drove to Indiana to spend Christmas with my family. I have lots to blog about and plenty of pictures to share. Now if I could only find the time ...

The Times They Are A Changin'

For the past four years (almost to the day), I have been either pregnant, nursing a baby, or both. As of last week, unless something unexpected occurs, that phase of my life is over. (And by unexpected I mean the obvious as well as me changing my mind. A woman always has the right to change her mind.)

I've thought about this a lot this past week. In some ways I'm very happy and excited about this new phase ... and in some ways it also makes me very sad. I really enjoyed nursing my boys. There's nothing in life that compares to the bond of a mother and her nursing baby.

I'm a survivor though so I shall chug along accepting the change and will embrace the new phase I find myself in. My life is completely fulfilled with my boys and hubby and new job and I don't feel there's anything at all missing. I'm totally okay with never having another child. (Sometimes I feel like there's not enough of me to go around as it it.) And all those people who told me I would miss being pregnant .... not sure what they were thinking because I can promise you that I have not for a minute missed being pregnant.

And speaking of new phases, Brody also slept in his bedroom for the first time last night. All night long too! I actually had to go wake him up around eight. (we got a late start this morning) Brett and I actually had the bed all to ourselves ... well except for two or three dogs. :)

My Cousin Donny

Everyone please pray, send some well wishes or whatever it is you do ... for my cousin Donny. He got hit by a car while riding his motorcycle yesterday and was air lifted to a hospital in tampa. He is going to be okay but has a long recovery ahead of him. He had surgery on his leg yesterday and will be in the hospital for a while. Click on the title of this post to view another post from earlier this year that has a picture of me with some of my cousins (i have a ton of them) including Donny.

Houston Sings His ABC's

Fetching Update

DSC02185
Originally uploaded by celenam

I finished the left glove and have cast on for the right one. I love this pattern/yarn combo so much that i'm just going to have to knit some for myself. Either that or the intended recipient just might never receive these. Hee hee.

Swaps!

I recenlty participated in two knitting swaps and received both of my packages this week. I've already thanked my swap pals through the associated blogs/ravelry but wanted to show off what I got to everyone else.

The first package was from Heather who was my swap pal in The Hand Dyed Yarn Swap. She dyed some very pretty yarn for me in a pinkish-purple color that is just gorgeous. Can't wait to see how it knits up! She also included some other fun goodies. I used the Hello Kitty pen at work this week and it made me smile every time I looked at it. I'm always having to switch between pen colors for the work that I do and now I have a pen that has all the colors I need in one. Sweet! And the calendar is the perfect size to hang up by my desk with really pretty lighthouse pictures on it. Thanks again Heather!



The next package was from the Caffeine Addicts Swap on Ravelry. My spoiler was John from California and boy did he spoil me rotten! He sent me the coolest coffee mug ever, some great Christmas Blend coffee from Starbucks, some chocolate for the boys (so sweet of him), some coffee liquer (yum) and the softest yarn I think i've ever laid my hands on ... Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk DK. I can't stop petting it ... now I just have to figure out what is worthy of being knit with it. :) Thanks again John!

Christmas Update

So I just got back from Christmas shopping Gainesville. I have everything for the boys and almost everything for Brett so i'm doing pretty good. I ended up getting the boys a vsmile video game system which i'm pretty excited about. I was debating this one for a while ... on one hand I thought that maybe I shouldn't get them something that encourages them to sit on their hineys inside but then I thought about how computer oriented our society is and how it will probably be good for them to figure this stuff out early. And it's an educational game system ... no grand theft auto here! And as I was looking at them in Toys 'R Us, I ran into someone I work with and they were going on and on about how great it is with their 3-year-old and then someone else nearby chimed in and before I knew it there was a group of vsmile loving parents talking about how great this thing is. So I took that as a sign and put one in my buggy ... along with an extra joystick (for brody) and an ac power adapter (sick of batteries already) and a couple of games. And here's where you all come in ... anyone looking for something to get the boys can get them another game. I bought the Elmo and Go Diego Go games. There are several others in the 3-5 range that would be great. The boys are big fans of Cars and Nemo and they have those games too but the age range is 4-6 so I thought i'd start them off with the 3-5. There's still Noddy, Bob the Builder, and The Backyardigans that I wouldn't mind getting.

Next I went to Best Buy where I found about ten different computer programs I wanted to get Houston for his computer. I'm already at my budgeted amount for the boys so instead of buying any of these programs, I came home and added them to our Wists list. Look the the right in the sidebar to find our list. I've done some updating of the Wist list for Christmas anyway so if you are looking for ideas go check it out. Yes I know, there is the possibility that you will buy something from there that somebody else has decided to buy but I really don't see a way around that unless you want to tell me what you are buying so I can take it off the list. This time of year I get about ten different phone calls from people wanting to know what to get the boys. I've been ahead of the game this year and have been adding items to the list as I think of them. The list is much larger now so the odds of you picking the same thing as someone else should be a little smaller. And hey ... there's always that thing called exchanging. :)

Whhheeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Go look HERE now. :)

Love, Love, Love ....

Fetching

Thanks Hanks!

I went to G'ville with the intention of going to Stitch 'n Bitch for a little while and then heading to the mall to do some Christmas shopping. Well I made it to SnB ... and, um, sorta ... stayed there all day. Well for about five hours anyway. Last week was a rough one for me and I didn't realize just how little time I have had to just sit and relax (whether knitting or not) so once I got comfy at Hanks I completely lost my motivation to go out shopping. Friends, knitting, no kids, yummy coffee and treats ... did I mention no kids? And knitting? And not only that but they bought all the sock yarn I brought with me and it is now on display (and for sale) in Gainesville's Newest Yarn Shop! How freakin' cool is that? :) And of course, I had to take some pictures. Unfortunately my camera did some strange yellow color thingy ... I probably had it on some strange setting.

Wedding Pics

Rachel sent me some pictures the photographer took at her wedding. I've been meaning to post them and now i'm finally getting around to it! They turned out really great. The last one is my personal favorite. :)

Cat Nap

Houston's Felted Clogs

Tebow!!!

Come on Gator Nation!!!!


OK, it's once again time to mobilize Gator Nation. Please send this
message to as many Gators as you know. Go to the espn link below and
vote Tim Tebow for the Heisman. The top vote getter will get ONE
official vote towards the actual Heisman Trophy award. I think you
can vote once a day until the end of the contest. Right now Mike
Hart of Michigan is the leading vote getter, but Tim has received
over 4,000 votes just this morning as Gators get the word out. As
Âne Gator fan said, "We can do this!" Thanks.

Vote here

Thanks Sister Hazel!!!

As usual, you guys really rocked!



Brett and I went to another great Sister Hazel concert last night. They played songs from their new Christmas CD as well as some old favorites. I never knew Christmas music could rock that hard. :) We had a really great time and great seats too. And I'm pretty sure we were sitting next to Ken and Andrew's kids. For those of you who don't know, Sister Hazel is(are?) from Gainesville so they start their tours off there and the audience is full of family and friends. It's so great ... I just can't even say enough about it. And the venue is small so there really isn't a bad seat in the house. They had high school students from the Alachua Youth Orchestra and Choir on stage with them last night too. I played in the Sarasota Youth Orchestra in high school and let me just tell you how I would have given my left pinky toe to do something like that back then. They said they will have local high school students playing with them at each spot they go to on this tour. Pretty sweet, huh?

Five Favorites

I asked everyone participating in The Hand Dyed Yarn Swap to blog five of thier favorite things ... so here I go, the first five things that come to mind in no particular order ...

• Those moments when the kids do something funny and Houston starts that belly laugh that makes us all laugh so hard we're crying.
• Turning a blank skein of yarn into something that makes people say "ooooooh".
• Weekend morning dance sessions with my boys.
• Hallmark ornaments.
• Really good music, especially classical crossover (Vanessa Mae, Bond, The Planets, Joshua Bell) and anything with really talented musicians (Sister Hazel, Lenny Kravitz).

More Yarny, Yarn, Yarn

I've Been Busy ...

More Fun at the Fair

My son is truly a wild man. He wanted to ride on everything and wasn't the least bit scared of heights or of spinning in circles really, really fast.

Fun at the Fair

Last Week in Knitting

Baby Hood's Pig

Baby Hood's Hat

Houston's Not-Yet-Felted Clogs

Brody's Haircut

Halloween Pics

Halloween Dogs ... they're thrilled, can't you tell? :)



Houston, or should I say Harry, trying out his wizarding robe and wand I made. If you look in the background you can see Brody and how sick he looks.



Expellaramous!!! hee hee



Our candy hander outers. Thanks Papa and Miss Nancy!



And here's the crew, ready to go get some candy.






Loading up on the 'Bota.



Harry and his pirate friend. (Houston and Natalie, at eachothers side as usual)

Can't you just picture this as a scene from Hogwarts? Harry running through the night to go visit Hagrid ... or something like that.

I'm So Bummed ...

I am supposed to be up in the mountains enjoying the fall air, the changing leaves, and spending time with our friends ... but instead I am at home nursing two sick boys and a sick hubby. I'm so bummed. It's been such a rough week. The daycare called us on tuesday because Brody was vomiting. Fun, huh? And it's been down hill ever since. A high fever, vomiting (and guess what else), two trips to the doctor, chest xrays, a breathing treatment machine and breathing treatments every 4-6 hours, an antibiotic and then a steroid on top of that on the second trip to the doctor (due to less than acceptable oxygen saturation level) ... severe bronchitus (sp?) and possibly a small bit of pneumonia ... and now the poor guy has a molar coming in today making his mouth bleed. Hasn't eaten much at all since monday ... good thing he is still nursing. He seems a little better today than he did yesterday so hopefully these meds are working. So much for the Halloween costume I made him ... he had to miss out. I took Houston out trick-or-treating and then later that night he ended up with a fever too. Now today he has most of the same symptoms as Brody. Ugh! I think Brett has a sinus infection. He's finally agreed to go to the doctor so we'll find out soon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I manage to stay well. Somebody has to take care of things around here! :) We've had some rough nights and I won't even tell you how many times i've been puked on so far. I certainly hope that phase of things is over. Yuck!

Pumpkin Carving

We finally carved our pumpkin last night. Houston said he wanted a happy face instead of a scary face. We found a picture in one of his halloween coloring books to copy onto our pumpkin. I think it turned out really cute.

Brett's 30th

I've been such a bad blogger lately. Brett's 30th birthday came and went without a post ... how sad. Oh well ... he doesn't read this anyway. Last Wednesday was Brett's 30th birthday. We had a surprise gathering for him at the office that evening. Nothing too crazy ... just a small enjoyable group of people along with some snacks and refreshments. I finished his birthday socks the night before .... just in time. I knew when I started those things on September 1st that I would probably be racing to finish them the night before his birthday. I actually did a little better than I thought I would. I only had to finish the toe section of one sock that night. I was so scared that I went wrong somewhere with my measurements and that they wouldn't fit just right but they actually fit perfectly. And even better ... he wore them last Friday and they didn't sag at all. I thought the cuff might sag a bit after a while but they didn't. Yay for sock knitting! :)

Art Class

This was probably my favorite class so far. The kids seemed to like the project and no messy paint to clean up. This was also a good project for them to have a completed craft to take home with them.


Brody sporting the necklace he made while trying to figure out how to get the straw in his capri sun.


And here is Cassady modeling the necklace her sister made.