Monday, July 28, 2008

Smiling Cricket

The elusive mormon cricket. Fischer and I have been trying to catch one for days. You here them out in the field and when you get close they stop chirping. They are hard to find in all that grass. These crickets are actually pretty big. They get to just over 2 inches big. I caught it in a net because it kept hopping away. It was pretty funny whenever Fischer touched it, the cricket would make a loud chirping noise and Fischer and I would both jump and he would end up dropping it. In the picture he looks like he is smiling, though I still did not want to touch him. I don't know how many times I jumped while taking his picture! It felt like he was so close.


I thought I should include a couple photos that are a little more pleasant to look at. Amelia! She started pulling herself up in her crib and figured out how to go from lying to sitting. So now at night we find her sitting up in bed. She started crawling today, though not very far yet.



Friday, July 25, 2008

Recycled bag


DSC_0003, originally uploaded by bird and a bee.

I found a cool flowered pillowcase and had an old orange sheet and used them to make a nice bag.
Fischer was using it to pack all his toys that he wants to take to Wisconsin. Amelia is so close to crawling. She pivots around, rolls all over the place and is starting to pull herself up with the furniture. Any day now she will be crawling. The wildflowers are starting to wind down. Everything is starting to go to seed. I'm so proud of myself, I figured out how to set up Flickr. It is a way for people to view just the pictures. The bag picture is sent from there. I really like how it looks, but I haven't figured out to send more than one picture.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

little boys

Little boys just love anything that slithers, creeps and crawls. Fischer was very excited when Jimmy found this garter snake. He is not afraid to pick up spiders, flies, beetles, snakes and whatever else that I prefer not to touch. I don't let him know that though. He loves finding flies and feeding them to the spiders. He'll watch as the spider comes out to get the fly. Jimmy is the one that showed him that trick. They are all amazing creatures, but I prefer them all from a distance.



Monday, July 21, 2008

Handmade

This past weekend I made a couple of dresses for Amelia. They were supposed to be for next summer, but since this is my first attempt at making clothes for her it didn't quite work out that way. So she has a new dress for this summer and one for the next. The brown one didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to. The armholes ended up being a little small for next year, so I just cut the dress shorter so it would fit now. In doing this, it is kind of big on the shoulders and kind of wide. All in all not bad for my first try. She wore Friday night to the music festival. My inspiration for this you can find at shannamurray.typepad.com. The green dress I think turned out really cute. I'm not sure how it will fit. This past week we got a baby gift from our friends in California, Chris and Gitte. Gitte's mom knit Amelia a beautiful sweater. I love it. It will go well with the flower dress that I made.




Sunday, July 20, 2008

A Summer Weekend

The weekend was full of fun filled activities. Jimmy was out of town, so it was just the three of us. Friday started with a dinosaur egg hunt and kite decorating at the park. Later in the evening we went to a music festival where Fischer danced around in the grass to bluegrass music with his friend Tate.



Saturday Fischer went to his first circus. His eyes about popped out of his head when he saw the elephants. The lion and the tigers made his jaw drop.



Sunday was a relaxing day, we were tired from all the activities. Jimmy came home from his trip in the afternoon and then we went to the beach for the evening. Fischer had a blast. Amelia didn't like the water, I don't think it was warm enough for her.








Thursday, July 17, 2008

An Evening Run

The kids and I went for a nice evening run. Here are a few pictures that show some of the things that we enjoyed on our run.


Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Thrift store

I'm so excited about my most recent find at our thrift store. I found a vintage Rid-Jid ironing board there for $3.00! I didn't have an ironing board, so this is perfect. You surely cannot get a new one for that price. I just have to make a new cover for it now. Fischer and I make a weekly visit to our thrift store to see what treasures we can find. Fischer's is usually an animal of some sort. When we sell the house, the thrift store will be getting many of these toys back.



Now that Amelia is getting more mobile, Fischer is starting to interact with her more. Today I found him "holding" Amelia. It was so cute that I had to get a picture. Amelia gets such a kick out of her big brother.


She is getting close to crawling. Each day brings her closer.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

SUMMERTIME


I can't get enough of the wildflowers here. Summer here is perfect. July and August you can almost guarantee that it will be sunny. Everyday is clear blue skies with temperatures in the 80's. At night it drops to the 40's and makes for very comfortable sleeping. Sometimes though it does get a little too cold. The night before last it actually frosted! The one problem here though is that it is too short.



Summer is flying by as usual. One of my goals is to be able to create one thing a week this summer. Sometimes it can be kind of hard since we are so busy. This past week I made a bag out of material I got from the thrift store. I think it turned out pretty well.

I was able to accomplish two things this past week. Our bathroom has a door with a window on it. For the past 7 years we just put a piece of fabric on the back of it and called it good. We thought it was about time for something a bit nicer. Jimmy made a curtain rod and I made the curtain. Again it was with fabric from the thrift store. I added some applique and embroidery. I think it looks alright. It's my first attempt at a curtain.




I thought I should of course include some pictures of the kids. Amelia is such a ham. She loves posing for pictures. Her little personality is really starting to emerge.




Friday, July 11, 2008

Wild Flowers







The wildflowers are absolutely gorgeous this year. I've never seen such a variety before. The fields are full of patches of pink, purple, yellow, and white. I think there are so many because of all the snow we got this past winter.

Fischer likes to see how he measures up to the wall.

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