Christmas Break Day 10, New Years Eve

Today is New Years Eve, and as boring as it sounds, we are not planning on going anywhere or doing anything crazy.  We are having some fun chips and dips tonight, and some delicious munchies with the kids, and that is about it.  I plan on being in bed by 10, no kidding!  One funny story:  the kids were arguing earlier today so I put in the movie Mary Poppins for them.  All was well, and blissfully quiet as they watched the movie and sat together nicely on the couch without pestering each other.  After about a half hour, Emmitt came upstairs to where I was cutting fabric in the kitchen and said "Mom, Mary Poppins is giving me a headache!"  So he stayed upstairs, had some chocolate milk, and helped me.  It was so cute of him and it made me giggle because she gives me a headache too!
 

Christmas Break Days 8 and 9

Thursday, what a day it was.

I was able to deliver the civil war cot quilt I made for Amanda's dad.  He was so sweet and grateful.  He loved it and was so appreciative.  That makes me happy and it makes me feel like the time and energy spent making the quilt was well worth it.  I went over to Amanda's house for a fun night with her and her dad, and also Caleb.  Caleb learned some Brenn Hill songs on his guitar for Amanda's dad and he sang them for us all.  It was a fun fun night just chatting with great people.

I also got the Christmas tree out (YIPPEE) and bought myself a new camera.  We will see how this one holds up.  The 3 previous Nikon Coolpix didn't seem to like my rough back-pocket-behavior!  

Kendal spent part of the day doing an optional homework assignment by reading books online.  She passed off a reading level and had a great time reading.  She is so excited to go back to school and have her teacher see how much to accomplished on the online reading program.  She and Kelsey went over to a friend's house that have 2 daughters the same age as my daughters.  They had a blast.

Today is not that exciting.  The kids are and I cleaning up more Christmas remnants.  It is warm outside, so they are headed out for a bit.  

Christmas Break Day 7

On Wednesday Kelsey cleaned out her room and I cleaned out the sewing room and we swapped a computer desk for a large book case.  I love the new book case in my sewing room, and she loves having a homework desk in her room now.  In my cleaning, I came across this old round robin quilt top from 2007.  I made the center apple tree and 3 other ladies from my quilt guild added the 3 additional borders.  I put on the dark brown border and took it to the machine quilter to finish.  I made this the year my Grandma Lela passed away, and it is called Grandma's Apple Tree since she had a few apple trees and there are sweet memories in my mind of playing in her apple trees and eating apples with my siblings and cousins.  I can't wait until it is finished!

 I also finished up the civil war cot quilt I am giving to my friend Amanda's dad, Larry Bowman tomorrow night.  Here is what the label says:

Made for Captain L.R. Bowman, Surgeon for 2nd Regiment Ky. Infantry.  Thank you for your kind and generous service to our brave Southern boys.  I am forever grateful, Mrs. R. Crane   October 1863

It turned out pretty nice and fun.  I hope it keeps him warm on those cold reenactment nights!  I love sewing with reproduction fabrics and with older, simple quilt block patterns that the ladies would have used in the 1860s.

Christmas Break Day 6

Since my camera is still angry at me and has no intention of forgiving me, I have no pictures to post for Tuesday the 27th, although plenty happened at our house today.
Kelsey and Matt went to Salina at 7:00 am to work cows, check on the baby calves, and get more firewood.  They didn't get home until late and Kelsey had a fantastic day.  That means Emmitt, Kendal, and I spent the day at home.  Those two get along really well, and they spent the morning playing with the farm toys that Santa was good enough to leave us.  I did laundry, lots of it, cleaned our very messy house, and cooked.  Christmastime seems to make this house a mess.  I really wanted to take down the Christmas tree, but I knew it would break Matt's heart, so I left it and worked on a particular civil war cot quilt for a very particular man.  I am so excited to give it to him in a few days! 

Christmas Break Day 5

 The day after Christmas, my sister Tori and her family came up to Heber City to ride the Heber Valley Railroad with us.  I had won a few train tickets, and I was able to purchase 6 more discount tickets for our fun after Christmas adventure.  We rode the 3:00 Train and Tube train.  We rode on the train around Deer Creek Reservoir, and then returned to Soldier Hollow to go tubing.  The normal tickets for this train run $38 for adults and $28 for children.  With my free and discount tickets, the math turns out to about $5.30 per ticket.  That is right!  AMAZING RACHEL!  I love KTMP radio - they are the folks that hooked me up!

 Anyway, the boys, Emmitt and Brogan LOVED the train experience.  They loved it when it had to blow its whistle while crossing all the roads to get out of town.  Brogans eyes showed pure joy!  The girls enjoyed it too.

 Matt had the day off of work and was excited for our day excursion and he enjoyed it very much.  We sat by the wood or coal stove in our train car, so Tori and I heated up really quick for some reason!  We actually opened our windows for a bit!

 Kendal loved the experience and would only sit with Tori and Jared.  She is on a baby-craze lately and she and Brogan made plenty of noise on our end of the train!

 Little Brig was put straight to sleep whenever the train was moving.  He woke up when the train stopped to turn around, but I admit, that motion and the heat made me want to fall asleep too!

 My sweet Emmitt.  He loved every minute of the day.  He loved being with Brogan, riding the train, seeing the baby, tubing, and just being with everyone else on a fun day together.

 When we stopped and got off the train at the Soldier Hollow depot, a bus took us up the hill to the tubing spot.  Matt and Jared started off the troops while Tori and I got dressed and snuggled Brig in the Lodge.  It got dark pretty quickly, so Tori's picture taking was pretty limited.

 I was surprised we didn't get colder than what we did.  Taylor and Kelsey stuck together the entire time and once I came out of the lodge, Kendal and I hooked up for a good time.  She really enjoyed it and was quite the maniac tubing girl.  She got to go down 5 times while the older girls only went down 3 times.  Emmitt and Matt stuck together and I saw them come down once.  Emmitt had his little gloved hand covering his smiling face.  It was the cutest thing I had seen all month!  Jared and Brogan went down a few times and Jared took turns with Tori so she could tube also.  At 6:00 the bus picked us up and took us back to the train depot in Heber City.

It was a super fun day with my sister and her family.  The cousins really enjoy playing with each other and I so very much enjoy Jared and Tori's company.  We finished off the night with dinner at The Dairy Keen together -  the best burgers and shakes in town.

CHRISTMAS DAY

Well, my camera is mad at me for getting sawdust in the lens on Christmas Eve while we were getting firewood, so I have no pictures of Christmas Day at our house.  Can you believe that?  What crumby luck!  But we still had a wonderful day.  I told Kelsey that she and her brother and sister could not come upstairs until 7:00 am.  Matt and I woke up around 6:00 and we heard footsteps and excited voices coming up the stairs at exactly 7:00!  Santa did stop at our house and left us with some wonderful presents.  By 9:00 all the presents had been opened and everyone was ready for breakfast.
We went to church at 1:00 and it was a good meeting.  Emmitt was a little wound up, but it was still a nice way to spend Christmas.  We made phone calls to grandpas and grandmas and shared all the excitement.  It was a wonderful day, but we were all ready for bedtime when it rolled around.

Christmas Break Day 3 - Christmas Eve

 On Christmas Eve day, we loaded up and headed south to Salina.  We needed another load of firewood in a bad way, so we headed to the ranch.  Matt's brother Mark and his boys joined us.  They needed some firewood too.

There was a lot more snow up there than I expected.  I guess since we still don't have any here in Heber City still, I didn't think there was snow at the ranch!

The kids were great.  We worked from 11 to 3 loading the wood Matt and Mark cut into the 4 wheeler trailer and then taking the 4 wheeler off the mountain to the trucks and the large trailers waiting below. 

We brought a nice load of wood back to Heber City, and Mark got a nice load also.

When 3 o'clock hit, the air cooled off and the sun was starting to sink further in the sky.  We loaded the last load and headed to Denny's.  The kids ate like they hadn't eaten in awhile.  It was great.

 We made it home Saturday night around 8:00 and the kids were beat.  A bathtub and pajamas refreshed them and they remembered that Santa was coming!  They all slept downstairs and fell asleep very quickly.  Working hard all day was a good idea!

It was a fun day with cousins, and a fun way to spend Christmas Eve.  Since there is no snow here, it was nice to feel a bit of a white Christmas!  I told Matt that the only way to spend Christmas Eve any better than what we did, was if we were helping Santa in his workshop.

Christmas Break Day 2

Today I worked on a civil war cot quilt I need to finish for a Christmas present.  It is going to turn out nicely.

 

 We also made some shortbread cookies to take to some of the neighbors.  I didn't make enough because lots of neighbors didn't get any.  I guess that means we ate too many!  I found the recipe at Feminine Farmgirls's blog.  MMmmmmm!

 I also got to see my nephew Brig and FINALLY give him his new quilt I finished for him just today!

 He is such a cute little man!









The kids and I also met Matt at SLC's Temple
Square to see the lights.  We have not done this in about 5 years, so it was time.

 It was a chilly night, but we all stayed warm and had a good time.  The kids loved it, but I think Matt and I enjoyed it all more than they did!

After the lights, we went to McDonalds for a dose of hot chocolate.  I think this was the highlight of the day for the kids!  Pitiful isn't it?  It was a great day with so much going on, the kids forgot to argue with eachother!

Christmas Break Day 1

 I have been cleaning and spiffing up my sewing room today.  I noticed Kendal and Emmitt sneaking into the closet and picking out a few pieces of Dora the Explorer fabric that they were laying down in the hall and playing hopscotch with.  I told them that was fine, but no big messes.  Well, this is what I came out to in the living room a little while later.  My sewing room looked great, but all my novelty fabric stash was all over the living room floor!  They were having a fantastic time!  I must have really been into my cleaning not to see them sneaking all that fabric out of the room I was cleaning!

 About an hour after we got all that cleaned up and put away, I was pinning a quilt in the front room.  I heard Kendal yell "Eugene, please, help me!"  I turned around to see Kendal as Rapunzel with a long green fabric scrap for hair, and Emmitt as Eugene climbing up to save her.  They crack me up.  When I told Kendal that whatever was in the box was a breakable Christmas present from Grandma and Grandpa in Missouri and that it could not be her tower, the two immediately began making a couch cushion tower.  That is what they are doing right now.  I can hear them now, and I hear the farm horses and cows have joined them in the tower.  I hope it is the plastic horses and cows!

County Chess Tournament

Saturday my two girls played in the county-wide chess tournament.  It was a K-12 tournament, and there were kids from all 5 elementary schools in our valley there.  Kelsey played in the 3-4 grade division, and Kendal played in the K-2 division.  

Here is Kelsey during one of her matches.  Everyone got to play 5 matches.  It is so cute to see all the concentration in those rooms!

Here is Kendal playing in one of her matches also.  Gosh, they are so cute!

Kendal had a killer fever all day on Friday, all night, and into the morning.  When she finally started feeling better, all she wanted to do is play chess between matches.  She loves to play and is definitely getting better!

Here is Kelsey and her friend Liz.  There were only 7 girls in the entire tournament, K-12.  This is definitely a boy dominated event!

Here are the kids that won trophies from Kelsey's elementary school.

Trophies were given for the top ten in each division.  Everyone else got medals.

Kelsey tied for first place in her division.  She won 4 matches and had a draw on one match.  There were 26 kids in her division.  Here are all the first place winners.  That sweet little Kindergartner in the front is almost the same size as his trophy!  Can you believe that kid in yellow is in the 10th grade?  I swear they get smaller and smaller!  

It was a fun way to spend a Saturday and the girls had a ball.  Matt took Emmitt to the ranch to move cows off the mountain, and they had a great time too.

my chopped bargello quilt

 I took a bargello quilt class at Quiltfest in 2008.  It was a super fun class for me, even though I have an angry look on my face!  This is me part way through my bargello ordeal - I had a huge tube of fabric strips. 

 This is how it ended up looking.  I loved it, but it was too long and too narrow.  I intended on adding another panel to it, so I would make it twice as wide, but I could not find all the same fabrics again.  So I folded it up and put it in my sewing closet. 


 I pulled it out the other day.  Kelsey's 4th grade class is doing their service project this week.  They are tying quilts for the Children's Justice Center.  The lady that was over the project, brought me a whole mess of ugly 4 inch blocks for me to piece together into a lap sized quilt top so the 4th graders could tie it.  I didn't want to piece all of those squares together, I know, LAZY!

 So I chopped my 3 year old bargello quilt top in half, since it was too long and skinny in the first place!  Then I added a few borders from some of the fabrics I collected to make that non existent second panel.  It turned out to be a nice sized lap quilt top.  The 4th graders tie their quilts in 2 days.  I am going in to help - hope it turns out well!  Now I have another half and enough border fabrics for another one too!