Holiday Homemakers Sale

I love you all, and I don't want to annoy you with advertising, but well, I'm gonna advertise. Well, we will call it INFORMING instead of advertising :)

I am participating in a boutique tomorrow, and would love to see some visitors! I will be selling quilts: all of those currently on my etsy site plus 5 more that haven't made it online yet. And a few of my etsy quilts will be on SALE at the show! My friend and I will also be selling these super cute coal sacks, awesome stocking stuffers!

There will be some other awesome and talented vendors with cool stuff too!
Jewelry
Hair bows/flowers
Bow boards(these are sooo cool!)
Scentsy
And more!

For anyone interested, it will be from 8am-2pm tomorrow, Saturday 20, at the S.E. corner of Recker & Guadalupe in Superstition Highlands, Gilbert - follow the signs!

Thanks tons for putting up with all of my, uh, informing, and hope to see you there!

It's ARIZONA, sheesh.

I posted this on my other blog, but I wanted it up here too:

So, we had a crazy bad storm yesterday. It was naptime, so I was in sewing and listening to an audiobook. It had been thundering for a while, but then the lights started flickering and I could hear wind and loud rain. So, I went out to look out our balcony. All I could see was the tree right next to our balcony practically bent over, and WHITE. I couldn't see the parking lot(usually VERY visible), I couldn't see ANYTHING but blowing rain and hail!
And then my entire apartment SHOOK.
I'll admit, I kinda freaked out. I like Arizona because I don't have to worry about things like hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes. And I felt like I was in the middle of it all!
Anyways, the craziness lasted another 10 or so minutes, and abruptly cleared. From my balcony I could see 3 fallen trees and lots of branches, so that didn't bode very well. And my street looked and sounded like a rushing river. Cars driving by had water up to the car body. It was insane.
And my little spot wasn't so bad! Zoey and I took a walk this morning to snap pictures of some of the damage around us.

Luckily this tree just decided to rest on the covered parking, and there wasn't a car underneath!




Another uprooted tree. It's leaning on the fence...




This is what our walk was really for. This billboard is about 1/4 mile away from our apartment on the main road. It was straight up and down yesterday morning.




Seriously crazy. That huge piece of metal is TWISTED.





When I drove by this yesterday afternoon on the way to work, the huge tree that caused all of this damage was still on top of those poor cars. The wood chipper was at work this morning!




I feel really bad for our maintenance guys right now...They have so much work ahead of them!





Here's the trunk. It took that whole chunk of ground out with it! (It was a ginormous pine tree)




Walking back, we found another building that met a tree.





And then I rounded the corner to go get our mail, and found ANOTHER huge tree uprooted!




Aaaaand another one!

I could hear the wood chipper working in the back of the complex where we didn't venture, too, so I imagine there was a lot more going on than I saw on my little walk. There are branches littering the ground everywhere. And guess what? It's getting gray outside again. Hope it isn't as bad as yesterday!!

Da Zoo

A couple weeks ago, we were supposed to go to the lake, but when we got up that morning it was all overcast and a bit windy. We decided that it wasn't the best day to go, and went back to sleep. A little bit later, we got a phone call from Shawn and Sharla asking if we wanted to go to the zoo instead, since the lake was cancelled. Of course we said yes!

It was nice and overcast so it wasn't too hot, and there weren't a whole lot of people there, so we had a pretty good time!

This baboon made friends with Keely. Zoey and Lydia both wouldn't go any closer to the glass. oey kept backing up into my lap as far as she could to get away, it was funny.

Though she didn't have any problems walking off on her own!

Cousins checking out the animals

The cheetah was way out in front just pacing around. I didn't have to zoom the camera in at all to get that picture

Zoey figured out how to wiggle out of her stroller if she wasn't buckled in

We had some fun petting the goats. You can see Zoey's hand pulling back as Spencer pulls it toward a goat....

If you can see behind Keely's head, these two goats had their foreheads pushed together. They weren't really headbutting, they were just sitting there with their heads together. It was weird.

Washing hands after petting goats. I would turn the dryer on and Zoey would turn her head up to get blown in the face, and would squak when it would turn off.

House Painting Adventures

So remember when I said we went and painted my grandparent's house waaaaay back in June? Well, here's some proof!

This was where Spencer spent most of his first weekend:

We had to pull that tree thing off the wall, paint under it, then put it back up. Unfortunately one of the branches wasn't attached to the wall anymore and hung down far enough that the elk had it for breakfast the next day.

Look, I painted too! And Tom helped us out a bunch too, pulling old nails, screwing in new screws, and then grabbing a brush!

We did another side that weekend too, but no pictures. It was in the morning, and we didn't grab the camera until the afternoon.

Fast forward to the next weekend.

For those of you who haven't ever seen my grandparent's house, it has one really tall side, with a really big window. Pretty, with a nice view, but painting it is a PAIN!! Here was grandma's view for most of the morning:

Aaaand, here's what that looked like from OUTSIDE!

Yeah, that's a TALL extension ladder in the back of the truck. And still barely tall enough! Spencer spent an entire day on that very tall ladder, though it only had to stay in the truck for a little while, luckily.

Oh, and see the dish and antenna? Those were Spencer's mortal enemy by the end of the day... He had to work some ladder magic to paint around and above them, 'cause he couldn't get a ladder in the right spot!

Meanwhile, this little girl was hanging out with her grandma and great grandparents. She had a good time!

And sometimes she looked like this...

This and That

Alright, since I have had MULTIPLE people bug me to update now, I figured it was about time to post something! I have a few pictures from the last couple months:

This is Zoey on her actual birthday. We didn't do any celebrating on that day, but we got a couple pictures :) Oh yeah, by the way, Zoey is 1! Still hard to believe we have had this ball of fun for a whole year.

Then here's a Zoey while she was opening presents at her ginormous party! Thanks again to everyone who came and celebrated with us, it was tons of fun!

Spencer is awesome and decorated this cake for Zoey. How cool is he?

Then at the end of May, Aaron graduated! And look, we were there too! :)

That's all of my pictures for now. Soon I will post about our adventure of the last two weekends: painting Grandma and Grandpa James's house...With only paintbrushes...We are pretty much amazing :) Oh, and the reason I'm not posting about it yet is I have to get some pictures off my mom's camera (of Spencer on top of an extension ladder in the bed of a truck...Yeah, exciting, right?)

I apologize for the somewhat drooly and uber closeupness of this picture, but getting a closeup of a tooth on a kid who desperately wants the camera you are holding is rather difficult!

This is Zoey's broken tooth. She was standing up at Grandma and Grandpa James's house this weekend, holding on to the metal loft railing, and both of her hands slipped through the bars and she face planted into a bar. She didn't really cry much, and after getting her to at least show me that there were teeth in all the places there had been, I let her go back playing. I didn't even notice that one of them was broken! My mom saw it a couple hours later though.
We went to the dentist yesterday, and he said that because of how it broke, there is a chance that there might have been nerve damage, so we are waiting a week to see if the tooth starts to darken, but if it's ok, Zoey is going to get the missing part filled back in on Monday. I really don't want to get bitten by this vampire! Because little miss Zoey is quite the biter right now...
Anyways, I wanted to be sure to get a picture of this so she can see it when she gets older :)

Oh, and guess what? Spencer is done with school for the semester!!!! We are all very relieved, it was a stressful year. He should hear by June 15 if he made it into the program for next year.

More randomness

I have more random pictures that I realized I haven't posted yet!

Zoey fits quite well in a grocery bag...

We had a nice morning swinging at the park one Saturday last month. Zoey likes to swing. She giggles and kicks her legs.

Spencer LOVES this picture. Zoey and I went and spent some time outside while I photographed a quilt, and Zoey hung out on her quilt. She isn't a big fan of grass, so she stayed on her quilt most of the time! Then she was being so cute and making cute faces(not this face), but I didn't manage to catch those faces! I got this one though!

Zoey's first try at refried beans. She liked them, but she was tired while she was eating so she kept rubbing her face! Not a good combination...

It was nice and messy :)

Zoey likes my old rocking chair, and goes over to get into it pretty much every time we are at my mom's. She also likes to stand next to it and make it rock.

We had a James family shindig last Sunday, and it was photo-op time with the two great grandkids! Skylon is so cute! And Zoey was very intrigued and wanted to play!

Besides all our random pictures, we are nearing the end of the semester, hurray! Spencer has made a bunch of cool stuff for his classes in the last couple months, and once the semester is over, I will post pictures of them all. Only a couple more weeks!!!!!!!

Other Zoey updates, since she hit 11 months on Tuesday (how did that happen??): she now says "up" and "uh oh", holds her hands palm up when she's done eating, and shakes her head no, sometimes when she means no and sometimes just cause. She has 4 teeth, and has sort of started to try standing without holding on to anything (like, today).

That's all for now!