Poor Doggy!

This is a photo of the kids playing 'Poor Doggy" at our pioneer day celebration. Arya is hidden under the hat. She was so good at this game! The goal of the game is to make someone smile. There is a 'doggy' in the middle of the circle and he/she had to try to make each player smile. If the person smiles, they are out. The winner is the one who stays in the longest. No one could make Arya smile. She took this game very seriously. We told her not to smile and she didn't!! It helped that she could pull her bonnet over her eyes so she didn't have to look at the 'doggy!'

Family Reunion

In July we had a family reunion with my dad's side of the family. These have been going on since before I was born! This year since it was my dad's turn to plan the reunion, (which I ended up doing!), we had it close to home in beautiful Lake Arrowhead. I have missed so many of these reunions over the years; it was so nice to come to this one and to see my cousins, aunts, uncles, and siblings!!

My Dad, two of my siblings and our children.

My family (Jared was working and couldn't be here).

Cute Cousins! Ernest kept moving everyone's shoes. Arya and Alanna, posing, second cousins on the swing.

Cooking in the kitchen, kids playing a game, Dad and Craig on the computers.

The second cousins made a cool fort out in the woods by the house. They made brooms and swept it all out, made a fire ring, made seats, and they would have meetings out here. They were here for hours and hours. Reminds me of when I was a kid. Such fun!

The water in the lake was REALLY cold, but some braved it. Arya just liked to pose. Arya LOVES the camera!

We had so much fun at this reunion. I had forgotten how great these are for me, but especially for my children to get to know their relatives. I am looking forward to the next reunion in two years up at Bear Lake!!

My babies

My beautiful children: Alyssa 11, Nathan 9, Savannah 7, Alanna 5, Arya 3

Arya's birthday

Everything is exciting on your birthday when you are three!

This is a little pillow that Savannah made for Arya. She loves it! This is Arya's 'ipad' so that she will leave my iphone alone!!!

Arizona

Jared took a job in Arizona back in April and he will be there for a while. We have enjoyed going to visit him. We love the pool. Alanna learned to swim without her floaty.

Arya has the right idea. She is my kind of girl; baggin' the rays!!

The kids LOVE swimming!

We were able to go to the Gila Valley Temple open house. (It was hard to get a good photo after driving out there two hours, waiting for the tour, the tour, going back to the car to get the camera, back to the temple for the photo and then three hours back because I got lost as I was playing on my phone! OOPS!!) We even drove through the Thatcher Cemetery. This is where my Grandma and Grandpa are buried. It is beautiful old cemetery and I have good memories of coming out here with my dad and brothers and sisters.

We also took Arya to Build a Bear for an early birthday present to get her first build a bear friend. The kids all brought their bears for the special occasion.

Quilting-Should have posted this back in March when I wrote it!!

I have been working on this quilt off and on for about two months. I have a wonderful quilting teacher that had guided our little group through each step of quilting. I have made quilts before, but always did it my own way, not the 'real' way. I used a rotary cutter to cut the strips, sewed them all with a 1/4 inch seam, cut all of those into blocks, sewed the blocks together and had a quilt front! (Oh, and I ironed it all every step of the way, which I NEVER do!)

Then I sewed the borders on and realized that my back was a tad too short. I figured this would happen and I had a plan. I did a strip of blocks down the back to make my backing bigger. I really love it!

Then, using safety pins, pinned the backing to the batting, to the quilt front. I machine quilted all of the cupcake print pieces. I had about two little puckers which you can't see at all, but I know they are there! Then I sewed the binding on. I wanted to make a quilt with a binding because I love the look of it. I wanted to hand bind it because I am really bad about lining up the back binding so that it is caught in the stitches as I stitch in the ditch. So, I started my hand binding and I love it!!! It is so relaxing and I get such a great satisfaction about looking back and seeing all of those tiny little stitches. Yes, I can see my stitches if I look hard, but I love the look of it! It has been fun.

I want to sew a nine patch quilt next, but I don't know who I would make it for! Any suggestions?? (Patty and Craig, I would love to make one for a little girl!)

Alyssa's birthday

Alyssa had a very small birthday party for her 11th birthay. She choose a purse theme and the girls all played games about purses, painted purses, and had a ton of fun. Happy Birthday Alyssa!