This Look

I just love this expression!

Mercy Loves to Cook

Mercy loves to pretend to cook.  She poured water into the pans and then cooked it!

Sleeping Beauty

I just got a new prime lens: a 35mm f/1.8.  I have had fun trying to play with it and get good pictures!  Some have turned out nicely.  Others have been quite blurry.
Here is my sleeping beauty.

Keira can Read!

Keira has been working on 100 Easy Lessons for a long time, and has been making slow progress.  I decided to pull out the BOB books to see if that would help her make more progress.  She has LOVED it!  It has been such a confidence booster for her as she has seen that she CAN read!

Project 365: Week 15 Kyle

As I stated last week, I continued the Adventures of Mr. Turtle to the end of the week, so that I could start a different series this week.  My goal this week was to take a picture of Kyle every day.  Next week (starting tomorrow), I'll take a picture of a different child every day for that week.  (Unless the baby makes his appearance, which I think will throw me off.)  And I will continue with that until all the kids have had a week of pictures.

All ready for church:

Reading his Bible:
 

Working on Critical Thinking:

 Picking paint off the wall near the zoo:

The is the best smile we have ever gotten from Kyle when he is in front of the camera!  (He had just shot Sophia with the water gun!)

Not sure way this face, but it sure is cute!

A boy and his dog (and an extra bruise on his head):

Flying Upside Down

This quilt has had it's ups and downs.  I meticulously planned the front, drawing out the design, color coding it, and then executing it according to the plan.  But once the top was finished, it was underwhelming.  So I turned my attention to the back in an attempt to make amends for the front.  I threw the back together based on a vision in my head, and just went for it.  When I was finished, Adrian and I both decided we liked the back better than the front!  So after basting it with the original top on top, I took it apart, added some to the top, flipped it over, and rebasted the quilt.  A lot of my enthusiasm for this quilt went down the drain in that process.  I was also having sewing machine problems.  Eventually, I borrowed my sister's sewing machine and quilted the baby's quilt in a loop de loop design.  I quickly sewed the binding to the front and then hand bound the rest of the binding down.
The name of the quilt comes from converting the back to the top.  We wanted to emphasize the airplanes.  The quilt was finished with 5 days until this little boy's due date.

Flying upside down top:

Flying upside down back:

All the solids are Kona in: Leprechaun, Nightfall, Rich Red, and Daffodil.

Three accent fabrics are from Tim Holtz' Ecclectic Elements collection: Game Pieces in taupe, Top Shop in multi, and Correspondence in taupe.

The vintage cars fabric is Classic Cruisers Rall Cars in Cream.

The focus fabric is called Vintage Planes Blue.

Zoo Atlanta during Spring Break

I must be crazy!  I decided to take 5 kids to the zoo 4 days before my baby is due during spring break.  In my defense, we are a part of a zoo program where if we go at least once a month, the kids get stamps in a passport and earn prizes.  This month (month 4), they earned a t-shirt.  I didn't want them to have to wait until next month to get their stamp.  Also we just don't know when this baby will make his entrance into the world and when I will be ready to go to the zoo again.
Anyway, fast forward through the bad wreck that caused us to be to about 30 minutes later to the zoo than we had planned, and past circling all the residential streets around the zoo parking lot in hopes of finding street parking close enough that I could walk to the zoo (with about 30 or more other cars), and past the massive lines of people.  We managed to get our passports stamped, t-shirts for all the kids, and walk through the new reptile house before heading home again.

Being Pregnant

The things we do when we are pregnant could be really funny if they weren't so painful!  The midwife said that I should lay with my hips up and my head down.  Mercy decided to join me so she could watch, "sheep, sheep!" (Also known as Shaun the Sheep.)

Painting

As part of a school project, the kids had to paint clay models that they made.  The kids had a great time!  We do art far too rarely.

Project 365: Week 14

I decided to continue the adventures of Mr. Turtle through today so that I could start something new on the first day of the week, instead of in the middle of a week. 

March 29: Basking in the sun, and casting cool shadows!

March 30: Mr. Turtle couldn't figure out why the Salt Pig wouldn't talk to him.  He went to investigate and only got a face full of salt!

March 31: According to Avalyn, turtles are always found around flower.  Mr. Turtle tries to smell the tulips.

April 1: Wanting to get his paws dirty, Mr. Turtle sneaks closer to Kyle's paints.

April 2: Mr. Turtle finally gets to smell the flowers!

April 3: After a busy, tiring day, Mr. Turtle helps to do the dirty dishes.

April 4: Mr. Turtle tries to walk on the balance beam.