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:


February:


March:


April:




May:




June:




July:




August:





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

September:




October:


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

November:





Yes, all the fur kids are still alive.

December:




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

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.


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.
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!
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.  
She tried to catch snowflakes in some little pots.
We put this bowl out to measure our snowfall.
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
.
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.


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.


It was Maegwin!


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.


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.


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".


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.


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


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

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.


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.
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:
 
To this:
 
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.



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