Projects

Since I finally put our house all together I have had time to work on the things that I want. Since there has been a baby boom in our family I have kept busy making blankets for all of them. All three of my sister-in-laws from Joe's side of the family have had (or about to have) babies. Dana had a little girl in March. They named here Leah. I made her a purple (grape) and lime green afghan. Deena had a little boy in April. His name is Wyatt. His blanket was dark brown and olive green. Amy is due in June with a little boy. I made his dark brown and country blue. I usually take pictures of all of my blankets so I remember what colors look good together, but I forgot to get pictures of those three.

For Christmas my in-laws gave me a quilting frame, which I've been wanting forever. My father-in-law made it and I love it. It makes a huge difference! I usually just quilt on the floor. Definately not good on my back and the blankets didn't turn out as tight. Anyway... My brother Jeff and his wife just had a baby girl yesterday, Shaylee May, and I made them a quilt using my frame.

And here is the finished project.

My friend Paul and his wife Nicole just had a baby girl too. Here is the blanket I sent to them.

So that's what has been keeping me busy. Now that I'm caught up with all the babies I want to make some more blankets and try to sell them. If anyone has any ideas on what colors I should do, leave me a message in the comments. That's all for now! We've got birthdays coming up so I'll have plenty more pictures to post.

Finally Done

Everyone has been asking for pictures so now that we are done unpacking, here they are. The movers came and dropped off our stuff on April 20th. All in all they did a pretty good job. A lamp got broken (I hated it anyway), there's a chunk out of one of our end tables, a scratch on the piano bench, and a broken pot, but that's about it. I was expecting much worse.

This is how the girls kept themselves entertained while I unpacked. Ozzy joined in the fun too. (His eyes look creepy in this picture)

Our room-Yes, I got to keep my vanity!

Girl's Room

Office

Living Room

Playroom
I was standing in the laundry room/toy area to take this picture. I didn't think you needed to see that though.

My van doesn't fit in the garage very well so we just turned it into our exercise room/workshop.

Half of the kitchen. I don't have much cupboard space so I'm hoping to find a pantry cabinet to put on that wall.

The other half of the kitchen.

Dining Room

Backyard

And finally...

The only injury during the whole move. When I was unpacking the kitchen I dropped my corion cutting board on my foot. It split the skin and bruised it pretty badly. I think I might have cracked the bone because the sore is gone now, but it still hurts to put on shoes and put pressure on it and there's a hard knot on the bone. (Just like my knee for those of you who know about my retarded knee.) The satillite installer was in the other room when I did it. I yelled pretty loud (a few profanities probably escaped my lips) and he said from the other room, "Mame? Do you need some help?"

So far we are loving it up here. The people are all so friendly. Our neighbors have even come over to say hi. (We've never had friendly neighbors.)It's been a little bit of a culture shock compared to Albuquerque! Also, everything is so clean! The stores, the streets, and the parks. We've got everything we need within a five minute drive. (Except for Sam's club which we are supposed to be getting soon! Right now we have to drive 20 minutes which is the same as we did in Abq.)

That's it for our move. Until next the next one!

Just kidding..... Hopefully the next move is into our own house in this city, but not for another year.

Killing time...

The girls and I have been trying to keep ourselves entertained while we've been in the hotel.

We went and saw Monsters vs. Aliens and it was really cute. The girls laughed their heads off through the whole thing, even though they didn't understand half of the jokes.

We went up to Longmont (where our house is) and went shopping for summer clothes. The girls are both growing like weeds. They are also in the habit of acting like cats so they have been crawling all over the floor which of course leads to holes in their pants. Kayla has gotten to the point where she wants to pick out her own clothes. She only wanted dresses though, so I had to keep pushing her in the right direction. Now that I've got their summer clothes it's back in the 40's here. I'm learning that Colorado weather is as crazy as New Mexico's. It was 70 yesterday and today it's 40 and raining. I guess they won't be wearing their new clothes anytime soon.

Taking a break from shopping at the play area in the mall.

The real reason we moved here. I've missed TCBY! They still have 99 cent wafflecone Wednesdays too!

After shopping we went to a really cool park that is down the street from our house. It has a wading pool for little kids only (of course it's not open yet). That will be fun in the summer. It also has this big Chinese tower that was donated to the city as a thank you for something or other. We ate lunch there and then the girls ran around for about an hour. They needed to get some of their energy out after being cooped up in the hotel.

Saturday we went to Littleton and had Easter dinner with Steve and Erin. The girls had so much fun playing with Naomi. It will be so nice to have family close to us. Thanks again for dinner Erin and Steve!
The cousins. (I stole this picture from Steve.)

Easter morning. The Easter bunny was smart and used Rubbermaid containers instead of baskets. The baskets always get thrown away, but the boxes can be used for storage. (Just a little tip for other Easter bunnies! They've got pretty cute boxes out there too!)

Checkin out their stuff.

Yesterday we went to The Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster. It wasn't very big so we only spent and hour there, but the girls loved it. The first room was full of spiders and trantulas. Yuck! One of the volunteers tried to get Kayla to hold a huge trantula named Rosy, but being my daughter, she wouldn't go near the thing. Aly almost did, but chickened out at the last minute. Both of the girls got to pet a starfish though. The girls LOVED the butterfly room. They were everywhere and they kept landing on us. They had so many different types.

This was my favorite. I've never seen one like this before.

Kayla learning how bugs fly.

A giant 3-D puzzle of an ant that I helped the girls with.

We have two new pets. One of Kayla's favorite things about Colorado so far is seeing squirels everywhere. The other day we were getting out of the car and there was one sitting right next to us. I bent down and held out my hand and it came right up to me. It was probably hoping for food. I didn't actually touch it, but it didn't act afraid of us at all.

Our other pet is a woodpecker. Every morning since we've been here it has woken us up. It is trying to make a home in the wall right outside of our door. Twice since we've been here he's actually gotten through and pulled out the insulation. We keep having to call the front desk to have them fix the wall because once he's inside he starts banging and he's almost made it through into our room. Joe keeps going out and throwing stuff at it hoping he will scare it away for good, but no luck yet. The thing won't let us take a picture of it. He's huge too! We'd let Ozzy after him, but the bird would win that fight.

All of the patching that's had to be done thanks to that darn bird. Obviously he was doing it before we got here too.

Our stay in the hotel is almost done. Tomorrow we are moving into another hotel up in Longmont. Lockheed would only pay for 30 days of temp living and the place we're staying right now is $$$$ so for the last two days before we get to move into our house we are going somewhere cheaper and not so comfortable. We get the keys to our house on Sunday and the movers are coming to deliver our stuff on Monday. Yeah!!! I'm so excited and I miss my stuff too. The girls are excited to have a yard to play in.

Katie requested pictures of where we are staying now, so here's a few.

Well, that is it for now. I'll will post more pictures of our house once we're in there!

The Move

The moving truck.
The movers were so fast! They packed and loaded our entire house within 4 hours. And somehow they managed to only fill half of the truck. I'm so glad it was them doing all of that work and not me!

Saying goodbye to our old house.

All packed up and ready to go. Our van was completely stuffed. You can't tell by this picture, but underneath the girls feet (plus the stow-and-go) was full too. Joe put up a barrier between the girl's seats and the back so stuff wouldn't fall on them.

Hasta La Vista New Mexico!

The drive went really well. The girls were good through the whole thing. The only problem we had was Ozzy threw up in his cage about an hour into the drive. We had to pull off the road and while Joe held Ozzy I had to clean his cage out. Luckily he didn't get out of Joe's arms!

Joe's car got covered while he was back in New Mexico helping us.

And finally....
Our new house!
We just signed the lease on Saturday. We can't move in until the 20th of April though so we've got another 2 weeks in the hotel. Me and the girls have been doing a lot of exploring while Joe's at work. We are really liking it here. We feel like we belong here. The cold and the snow isn't even bothering me a bit. I'll post some more pictures soon. (I couldn't take pictures inside the house because there are still people living there.)