Monday, December 31, 2012

2012-year 3 in pictures

For tonight's post I thought I'd go on a little trip down memory lane and show month by month how our little sweetie has grown.

January:
cowl complete

February:
too tired to eat

March:
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April:
pretty in pink

drink with me mommy

May:
I'm ready for my close up!

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June:
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July:
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It's biting me

August:
peekaboo!

storytime

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I had to throw that last one in there since we spent so much time on the trampoline this summer.

September:
bed head!

ducky mage

October:
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October was light on pictures as she was going through a "clothing optional" phase.  lol

November:
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Daddy is The Flash!

enjoying the sun
Yes, all the fur kids are still alive.

December:
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smiles at the playdate

We are looking forward to a super fun and exciting 2013.  Happy New Year's everyone!

Sunday, December 30, 2012

A Little Reflection

It's near enough to New Year's Eve and even I am not immune to taking a bit of time for reflection. December as always was a super busy month.  Oddly work was pretty demanding even though quite a few people were out.  Usually things wind down but I definitely always worked at least my full day plus an hour or two.  I'm giving a pretty big presentation on January 8th that I'm a bit nervous about.  The attendees will be all senior leadership-very high above my pay grade that's for sure!  Good thing I like public speaking.

First up, I'd like to say thank you to everyone for making Maegwin's birthday month so special.  The packages just kept coming all month long and it will probably be an adjustment not having things to open.  LOL!  She loved everything and thank you cards are on my agenda for today.

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She got this fabulous city scape from Aunt Therese and Uncle Jay and the boys. She loves knocking on the cars and telling the people to get out. It's pretty hilarious. IMG_4702
One of my Ravelry friends, Tara, knit her this little wrap me up puppy which Maegwin named Pickle. She got a digital camera from us with which she took this photo. She has quite an eye! IMG_4686
We took pictures of each other taking pictures too. hehe On the 22nd we got our first snow of the year. Very late for around here-I was beginning to wonder if we'd have another crappo no winter which we really couldn't afford. We need the moisture since we had such a bad drought last summer. I played with the snow setting on my camera while Maegwin played outside. It's amazing! It captures the falling snow so well.  IMG_4718
She tried to catch snowflakes in some little pots. IMG_4720
We put this bowl out to measure our snowfall. IMG_4722 IMG_4725
We tried winter trampolining but Maegwin declared it was too slippery so we got down fairly quickly. I have to say, I wasn't sorry
. snow-o-line
All year Maegwin has been requesting dragon cupcakes for her birthday.  She didn't want a party or anything else in particular but she had a litany of  "My birthday is in 'cember and I will be three years old and I will have a dragon cupcake" so I pretty much had to make one.  After much research, I decided to make some from fondant.  I only did the one for her because I didn't have time and we didn't have any other kids over or anything anyway.

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I think he turned out pretty great!  We packed him up and took him over to my mom's for a bit of birthday celebration.  I imagine this scene with the theme to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  Staring each other down to see who will strike first.

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It was Maegwin!

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She basically only ate his nose and eyes off before declaring the fondant "too spicy".  She says that about things with lots of food coloring in them.  I don't particularly blame her since I think fondant tastes like cardboard sugar.

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I didn't really get any good shots of Christmas...I think Mom was taking most of the photos since I was stuck between Sarah and Maegwin handing out presents.  They were swarming me like flies!  I did get one of Maegwin in her new fairy outfit.  She insists on having a dress or skirt on to dance so this will get a lot of use.

Fairy dances
And I got one of her hugging cousin Sarah.  She was happier than she looks.  She just doesn't like to stay still.  Hello Kitty was the theme of this Christmas and she is holding what she named "Momma Kitty".

hugging cousin Sarah
On Christmas night we got more snow.  Winterstorm Euclid, I believe?  It was pretty overblown in the forecasts...we only got about four inches of snow.  During a break in the snow, Maegwin and Daddy went out to explore and look at the creek.

perspective from the porch
I used my zoom to see them up close.  A little blurry but it was 15x so I can't hold still enough.

Maegwin & Daddy explore the creek snow play
It was funny to watch the little dot get closer and closer. She had a great time out there. tiny Maegwin
One of my favorite things about snow is how it makes the trees look. Winter without snow is so dreary. snowy trees
We cleaned off the cars before everything iced over. IMG_4766
Maegwin tried some snow triking...there's probably a reason why trikes are seldom seen in winter. IMG_4767
I'll try to blog some more tomorrow-need to get those thank you cards out. Have a great New Year's everyone!

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Fads may come and go but butternuts are forever

Hello, gentle readers!  I expect you are all, as I am, in the throes of holiday preparation.  I have a few moments while Maegwin is getting a bath from Daddy to try and jot some things down.  Last week I was cleaning out the basement and discovered some butternut squash from over a year ago.

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We brought them upstairs and photographed their fabulous condition. These are from the fall of 2011! The proof, as they say, is in the pudding so we cut it open and roasted it. IMG_4659 IMG_4657
Conclusion: Delicious! I was putting the innards in the compost when it struck me that those seeds were exactly the kind of thing we should be saving. A butternut that stores well for over a year? Crazy! I fished them back out and we plan to plant some this coming season. We got our seeds and seed potatoes already. We are going to grow blue potatoes along with our standard reds. We spent a lot of time selecting items with Maegwin since I think this is the first year she's going to be really involved with the garden. Our intention was to make sure our harvests would produce veggies that get her excited so we have white, purple, and red carrots, purple broccoli, dragon tongue beans (like green beans with red stripes), and several colors of radishes to name a few. We are very excited! We also fished some of the old windows from down in the basement and will be building some cold frames later today so that we can plant some lettuce, cabbage, and spinach. Sadly we don't need them yet since 2012 is the hottest year on record and we've been 10-15 degrees above normal. It doesn't bode well for the summer so we're going to try to get as much as we can out of the garden while it's tolerable to work outside.

 We had some guests for Thanksgiving so in preparation it gave us the kick in the pants to get Maegwin's room done. We did several primer coats to cover up the hideous orange and then a lovely shade of light pink that Maegwin chose.
So from this:
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To this:
  newly pinkified room
She really loves it and the room is so much brighter! The last thing to do is owl stencil and I want to make some roman shades for the window.
Josh's family were all out visiting and sadly I got no pictures!  We had a great time though playing Settlers of Catan, hanging out, and putting up our tree.  I did catch this photo which I love.  It looks like Josh is the Flash and Maegwin is ordering him to zoom around.  Grandpa Kevin is observing it all.

Daddy is The Flash!

Catch up post on knitting to follow!  My needles have been quite busy.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

September wrap up

bed head!

As you all can guess, September was a busy month.  Knitting and free time was precious and something had to give.  What gave was the blog.  I truly do want to write but unfortunately Maegwin's sleep schedule is so out of whack right now that I get about 30 minutes in the evening to do anything that isn't geared to the two-year-old set.  Josh kindly stays up with her and tries to soothe her since he's home with her but it's tough.  She does do some playing by herself-definitely more than she used to.  I love surprising her and seeing what she is up to.  She put my cowl on her head here but it makes a great headscarf doesn't it?
what is she doing in there
Most of the time it isn't anything very naughty. (Those are her bunny crayons she is holding-don't ask me to explain what she is doing with the rest of that stuff.)
You can't possibly understand my work
She does love getting into pans and things.  Mom is getting her a play kitchen for Christmas that I think she's going to love.  We still haven't decided whether to set it up in the upstairs or downstairs.  Since we moved her dollhouse upstairs she plays with it almost everyday whereas before she ignored it entirely.  I think she was in toy overload downstairs but we took nearly everything and moved it up to the playroom/craft room.  It might also have been the angle-we put the dollhouse up on our old coffee table so now she can reach into it while she is standing.

She and Josh are doing ok being home together.  There are good days and bad but I think that is how it is with all of us.  LOL!  I do love the fun pictures that I get to see though.
smile for the camera

little cleaning helper

ducky mage

She lets me style her hair now which is fun.  We experiment with all kinds of 'dos.
80s hairdo
She also has finally got comfortable with washing it.  I will not miss feeling like I was torturing her everytime I tried to clean her head.
washing hair


In September as every year we attended the Wool Gathering.  It was really fun to see how excited Maegwin was this year.  She started the day ready to go!



She really loved the sheep.  There were quite a few kinds but my pictures came out kind of blurry.  My sister, Missy, is talking to her in this video.


I didn't buy much.  I actually sold some jewelry I wasn't wearing so the trip was completely not effecting our budget which was great.  I got yarn to make a geodesic cardigan in a really pretty dark cherry color.  It's almost black but you can pick up the reds.  The pictures couldn't do it justice.  I also got some yarn to make some of these bunny slippers.
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We met up as usual with my mom's knitting group for breakfast then all went to do our shopping and met back up for lunch.  Maegwin did great while we waited for a table.  There were flyers for some woodworking show happening later there in a little plastic pouch on the wall and she took them out, distributed them to everyone, and then went back around and collected them.  She did this at least ten times and even the people who weren't with us were very amused.  Next year I definitely need to bring the wagon though.  My arms got really tired holding her when she didn't want to walk anymore.

Other than that, we're just chugging along.  I've finally heard back from my second appeal to the insurance company and they now aren't charging me over my maximum so we're happy about that.  Now it won't take as long to pay it off.  I have to say, fighting with insurance is not my favorite past-time and I'm very glad my employer has an advocacy program.  Ridiculous that I had to use them but there you go.

We are now starting to prepare the house for having guests in November.  My in-laws, including my youngest sister-in-law, are coming to visit for Thanksgiving.  I find this the perfect opportunity to motivate us to do some little projects we've been putting off.  Our kitchen sink was leaking/running whenever the cold water wasn't turned off under the sink, our bathroom sink upstairs sprayed and dribbled water from the handles when the water was turned on, and the shower downstairs was dripping.  Josh took them all on yesterday and we bought the parts but got home too late to finish so we currently have only one working source of water (two if you count the utility sink in the basement I guess).  He's hoping to finish them up today and has in the interim learned probably more about plumbing than he ever wanted to know!  We also bought some paint to start priming the shelves in Maegwin's room upstairs.  We're going to paint over the orange in stages-hopefully that will spread out the cost and we can get it done before it's too cold to have windows open.

I've completed a lot of knitting but it is all for a Christmas swap, a going away gift for a friend, and presents for family so I can't share it.  I'm sure the non-knitters are happy, but you will all pay on the flip side of the holiday when I catch up on it!