One More Time. . . GIVEAWAY!

I won again at the craft blog thinger-- BUT-- since several of you have expressed your fright at creating something for others, I am changing this one up a bit. I am going to make the winner a quilt-- no strings attached! All you have to do is leave me a comment with the fabric group you like the best. I will randomly choose a winner and they will recieve a quilt made with the fabric of their choice! Sounds fun, right? Truthfully I am probably the MOST excited! I love having an excuse to make something for someone. . . Yippee! Here are your fabric choices:




Bright Plaids
1930's

Recess

Flights of Fancy

Ocean

Strawberries

Katie Jump Rope

Wonderland

Park Slope

Now, the details. The quilt will be made by me-- I am NOT a professional. But I will do my very best! ;) It will be a throw size (or crib size, if you prefer). Throw size is about 50" x 70". It will actually be quilted, not tied. I reserve the right (I always wanted to say that! ;) ) to add fabrics not pictured for filler, backing, etc. I will get it to the winner in the next three months. Anyone can enter (even previous winners!)- but only once. I will announce a winner on Tuesday, April 6 at noon, MST.

Vacation! Or. . . sort of

I am sure some of you moms out there will understand my questioning the reality of a vacation being an actual vacation. It really feels like a whole lot more work than just staying at home. . . and for a week after the "vacation", you are trying to get the kids back on schedule and well rested and well fed and get rid of their "give-me" additude and do all the laundry from the week as well as the laundry of this week and take care of all the stuff that wasn't taken care of. . . I think I need a vacation!!! ;0)

Okay, but for all the work after the vacation-- it is still fun during the vacation. And, lucky for me, the vacation came to my town so it was a little bit easier on me (thanks, family!!!).

My mom, my sister Lexie and her baby Jaxon and my sister Lacey all came to visit from Tuesday to Friday. We had a lot of fun, even though with two babies and two toddlers we spent a lot of time taking naps, feeding kids and doing homework. And the weather was bad, so we didn't do anything outside. But here are some of the things we did manage to do.

We ate LOTS of chocolate! Wow! Coldstone cakes are awesome!

We played games. Settlers-- Lexie's favorite and a new game-- Ticket to Ride. Very fun! I definetly recommend both.

We perused Twin Falls limited shopping. And we even went swimming at the hotel pool. If you ever want to visit Twin Falls, I recommend the Shilo Inn. Great, clean rooms and very good price.

Aunt Lacey and Grandma spoiled the girls and Aunt Lacey put up with crying babies all night and played with the big girls. It was a great girlie week (poor Jaxon!). Here is a pic of the big girls and the grandbabies.

Us Mays are electronically challenged and can not seem to get everyone in the picture at once, so Grandma is missing. Oh, and Jaxon was sleeping. Here are the May grandbabies. What cuties!

And yes, Jaxon is six weeks YOUNGER than Kendi. He outweighs her by 6+ pounds and outdoes her in every other way possible. But this didn't stop Kendi from stealing his binky every chance she got. In her defense, they were exactly like hers. And she is not used to sharing (yet).

Funny little story. Aunt Lacey plays music in her car (Mom does not-- three kids is enough noise!). Kira and Kamber rode in Lacey's car a couple of times and were excited to listen to "Her Music." They apparently don't like Boy music (male singers). Their favorite happened to be "All the Single Ladies" by Beyonce. I don't even really know the song, but the girls ran around the rest of the week singing the chorus. But they made up their own words. Kamber would sing, "All the singlex, all the singlex!" Then Kira quickly corrected her. "No, it is not 'sss', it is 'th'. All the thinglex, all the thinglex!" Sounds good to me!

Thanks Lexie, Lacey and Mom for the fun weekend! We love you!

Box Tops

Hello, all of my wonderful friends and family! I have been meaning to post this for a while now, but here it is! You are all FANTASTIC!!! Thank you so much for the many boxtops we recieved. I believe we reached over 250 while in Nevada. WOW!!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!

And yes, we are collecting them here in Idaho, too. Soooooooo, if you want to continue saving them for us, we will love you forever. But if you are tired of watching for them, we will still love you forever. ;0)

Thank you, again.

A week of Firsts!

- It is our first spring break. Yes! No getting ready by a certain time everyday! Wahoo! (Mom is much more excited about Spring Break than Kira is. When I told her she didn't have to go to school for several days she was upset about it- silly girl!)

- We made our first trip to Boise. Brandon needed some new work clothes, so we shopped for work clothes--for Brandon--with 2 toddlers and an infant--all day. Ummm, fun is NOT the word to describe this outing. But Boise does have a nice mall. And I got to use my "30% Friends and Family" coupon at Gap and Banana Republic-- I saved over $200!!! Yes!

- And because of our previous outing, the girls and I went back to Boise today to return some of Brandon's unwanted clothes. This trip was much more fun. We returned the clothes, ate some lunch and then went to the toy store. Much more kid friendly than Dillards. Oh, and the first was going to the zoo! My girls have never been to the zoo, so it was kind of exciting. An added bonus was that they have discounted prices on Thursday. Not too bad. It wasn't an amazing zoo, but it was very kid friendly with slides and other play on things (huh?) and even a carousel. And there were some neat things to see. The girls favorites were the basic giraffe, zebra, monkeys. I loved the more unusual animals like:

A red Panda. They even had a baby one!

A Komodo dragon. ENORMOUS! Have you ever seen one of these things? Crazy!

A porcupine. Wouldn't want to get too close!



A lemur. After seeing Madagascar, how can you resist?

And a huge tortoise that looked like it was 100 years old. Love it!

- Another first- our first paycheck! Wow! That was a long time in coming. Brandon is enjoying his job although it is keeping him VERY busy. And how blessed we have been to make it 4 and a half months with no income. And thank heavens it is over!

- This is the first week it has felt like spring. I LOVE it! The warm weather, the sunshine. It makes me so happy!

- And, last but not least, my little Kendi is crawling. She just figured it out yesterday. It seems to have made her much happier now that she is mobile. She is still pretty slow, so I am loving it. Give it a week or so and I will be whining and complaining. . . until then, enjoying the moment! (I will get a picture tomorrow-- better late than never, right?)

One more friend!

Yay! Another friend wants to play! Kira is a winner! (Not my Kira, the Kira she was named after ;0) Just send me your address and repost on your blog.

Winners!

Okay, since I only have three friends apparently. . . the winners are:

Brooke, Lyndsey and Brianne! Yay!

I can't wait to make you something fun! Now, you have to post the original post on your blog.

Be looking in the mail in the coming weeks! It will be a fun suprise! (PS Lyndsey and Brianne, will you send me your addresses to leiselp@gmail.com? Thanks!)

You could be a winner!

Okay, so I can not wait any longer to post this (Sorry Sharlene, patience is obviously not one of my virtues! ). I know, I know-- it is kind of like those chain letters we got in the third grade, but-- how fun!!!!

Lucky you! The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2- What I create will be just for you.
3- It'll be done this year.
4- You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry or an article on properly cleaning your face before a masque. I may sew or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
5- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must repost this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!

PLEASE play along with me!!! If you don't you will have bad luck for the next 20 years and your dog will get fleas and your roof will collapse and. . . all that other stuff! Okay, I am just kidding. . . ;0)

Happy Birthday, Lacey!

My littlest sister Lacey celebrated her 24th birthday this Sunday. And for her present, her hubby, Todd, brought her here! Yeah! We had so much fun seeing them and sharing our new little lives with them. We had cake, balloons, presents, sight-seeing and snow! Can't get much better than that. . . well, unless Todd would have remembered the games. But, you can't have everything, right? ;0) If you want to check out the gifts I made Lacey, visit my craft blog.