First:

 

Oh yay. Luke has entered the sticker obsession phase. He likes the really tiny ones the best. So far the only advantage of this is that they have kept him occupied during church for upwards of 10 minutes. 10 MINUTES!!! This is a miracle.

Then:

 

While we were at my folk's house in Hurricane on Saturday, Luke and cousin Jack took some time to stare at each other and compare dimples, and then Luke showed him his prowess with Madelyn's Nintendo DS (which is now locked up in storage for a month since she keeps neglecting to use the potty at school and has caused everyone a lot of grief...)

Then:

 

Poor boy took a turn for the worst Saturday night when his most recent cold settled into his lungs. I hate it. Every few months it's the same thing--him wheezing and straining and me worrying to death. Thank goodness we have Mark and his medical-ness around. We loaded Luke up on Albuterol via a nebulizer that my dad gave us earlier that day (thanks, dad!) and after several breathing treatments and oral steroids he is finally starting to feel better. He's been bouncing off the walls, anyway.

 

And since Luke's so good at sharing, I'm sick now! I'm thinking that the bucket as a sneeze shield might not be a bad idea in the future...

Also:

 

Saturday I decided to finally finish reading The Hunger Games trilogy. I'd read the first book last year and Mark had been bugging me to read the others. Well, it only took me two and a half days to read both Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I still can't really decide if I'm a huge fan, (mostly because of the subject matter) but they sure are page turners!! Of course after I finished, I realized that not only did I have about seventeen loads of laundry and dishes piled up as a result of my constant reading, but I was feeling slightly paranoid all the time. If you've read the books, you'll know what I mean.

Finally:

 

This is really what I've been up to lately. I have an enormous fabric stash, and a big chunk of it was bought for the purpose of making baby blankets. I always seem to need them for gifts, and we're donating some for a church humanitarian project next week. Since Christmas ended I've finally found time to work on a few. (I've got another dozen in the works...)

 

Cotton....

 Fleece....

  Cotton and corduroy

 Can you see the superfine welt? I found both the teal and the elephant corduroy at Walmart, of all places (and the multicolor swirl cotton). I'm keeping these. I don't like anyone else enough to give them away, hahaha

 

The blue and brown cotton blanket ended up as a car seat canopy (all you really do is make matching straps with Velcro), but they are a giant pain to make. (My sister-in-law Monica just did a tutorial on how to make one here.) So of course now I've got people clamoring for me to make them, even buy them from me.

We'll see if my desire for money wins out over my desire to be lazy. I'll keep you posted.

Luke helps with laundry, and other shenanigans

 This is what happens when I try to put laundry away.

 "My work here is done."

 "Wait, you put everything into neat little piles again??  Better go jump on them..."

 Daddy's home!!

 Jamming out to the recorder

 Chocolate pudding

 Window markers

 Eating an icicle


Shredding and chewing on tissues

 
 Trashing  Madelyn's room

Uuuuhhhh...

  This was pretty much me at Pilates class last night...ow...

 For months now, when Luke would run into his bedroom, he'd hop onto his bed and do this, and then just hang out looking at everything upside-down. I'm glad I finally got pictures of him doing it! What a goose!!

Machine quilted blankets from days of yore

**I took these pictures 5 months ago....just now getting around to posting :/

About 12 years ago (ack, that makes me feel so old), I had to choose a big project to do for my Young Women in Excellence program. I decided to machine quilt a baby blanket, which was probably the most random thing in the world I could have done. I had fallen in love with some printed baby fabric and decided to draw a bigger version of each thing to quilt onto my blanket.

 

So, just copying what was on the print, I quilted a baby bottle, rattle, diaper pin, teddy bear, duck, booties, pacifier and the word "Baby". And some hearts.

Someone should have told me not to use extra thick batting. What did I know??! I was 17! (18? I dunno. Feels like a century ago.) Anyway, it was a good practice for honing my sewing skills. I guess I was inspired by this blanket my mom quilted for me:

 

  

She had some really crazy intricate swirly patterns going on. Plus, check out that binding! I am not worthy!!

I keep these two quilts in the bench in Luke's room, and one day I came in to find that the kids had gotten them out, so I took some pictures.

 

  

Ten years after I'd made it, I finally had a baby boy to go with the blanket (and then it was another two years before I remembered to take pictures of him with it).

 

Isn't he delicious??? He was 23 months at the time. ♥

 

Love this picture.

 

Remember when he had blue eyes as a baby? They turned hazel right before he turned one. Oh well.

See! (6 months old) That color just slays me. **sigh**

Madelyn wants in!!

 

Luke used to do this thing where he'd walk up to you and pretend to put something in your hand. He used to do it to Madelyn all the time when she'd come home from school, and she'd say, "Mom! Mister is giving me nothing again!" I love it when kids do weird stuff.

 

I told her the pink quilt can be hers now. She loves it. Hearts are one of her favorite things.

 Love my little sweethearts!