Mommie Marzie

I made Cheese Chowder for dinner last night. A family favorite. After we were done eating and I was in the kitchen cleaning up Sai says”

“Mom, you are the best cooker!”

Ahhh… I gave him a big huge hug after he said that.

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I had my glucose test on Monday. Ugh! I about threw up. It was terrible. Got the results back today. All clear. Yay! I had both kids with me (2 hour delay to the start of school due to snow). They were fascinated when I had my blood drawn. I’m just glad they didn’t get sick. My next doc appointment is supposed to be in three weeks. Then I’ll start going every two weeks. AGH! It’s going by so fast. I’m not ready.

It’s done. Yay! I actually finished it Wednesday but haven’t posted til today. I was amazed at how quickly I got it done. Wahoo! I used a blue and white yarn to tie the blanket. I thought that would (hopefully) balance out the pinks and yellows to make it look more boy-like.

I think I’ve figured out how to manage those pesky leg cramps. Now I have lower back pain. My searching online says that it’s most likely due to hormonal changes etc. Blah. By the end of the day I feel like a 90-year-old woman. And my hips hurt too. Sleeping is getting more uncomfortable. Yuck. I’ve still got 14 weeks.

Enough complaining!

Does anyone have any ideas for Valentines? I wanted to make something for Sai’s school class. I thought about doing the crayon rolls, but there are 21 kids in his class plus his teacher and a teacher’s aide. I was checking out Sew, Mama, Sew! but nothing caught my eye. It’s got to be cool yet easy. I just want to avoid going the candy route. So let me know if you have any (inexpensive) ideas!

Look what I did! Back in November when my parents visited my dad brought these quilt stands that he had made me. Then he bought, cut, and sanded the boards. I pulled them out today and put a baby blanket up on the stands. And I did it all by myself. (I kinda amazed myself.)

I tied the quilt with yarn. It only took me just over an hour. And now the quilt stands are down and put away. I feel like I had a really productive day! Tomorrow I’ll sew on the binding and finish up the binding. The blanket is for a friend who is having a baby boy. The baby shower is on the 2nd so I figured I might as well get it done and stop procrastinating.

The last two days have been school free. I don’t really know what to do on long weekends. Yesterday I scrapbooked. Don’t die of shock! I know, it’s been over 5 years since I last scrapped. My friend April has me back into it. I’m working on transferring the little bit I did of Sai’s 8 1/2 by 11 book into a 12 by 12 book. It’s amazing that I can fit pictures from two pages of the smaller book onto one page in the big book. But anyway… The boys “scrapped” with me. They colored and cut and pasted and made their own creations. And when they were done the cleaned up without me bugging them! When Joe got home I started cleaning up my mess and Joe thought it was the boys’ mess and tried to get them to help me. But I said no, it’s my mess and I’ll pick it up.

Today the boys and I went to the pharmacy to pick up a script for Joe. The boys have a fascination with those doors where you push the button and it magically opens. So Sai hits the button and got distracted and the door hit him in the head! It would have been really funny if he wouldn’t have been crying. I never realized how much force those doors have! He’s got a nice sized bruise on his forehead. Poor guy.

That’s about all that is going on around here. We’re surviving the cold. The high today was supposed to be something like 20. Brrr. This winter has felt colder and snowier than the last two. Oh, we got snow on Sunday and over half of our congregation didn’t show up for church. It was really kind of funny. It wasn’t that much snow in town, but I guess up the canyon it was a lot.

Now that I’m no longer nauseous and sick I’m being plagued by horrible leg cramps. It starts with a cramp in the calf. I roll out of bed as fast as I can and try stretching it out. Which always results in horrible cramps in my shins. I can’t stretch out the shin cramps so I wake up Joe and have him rub them out. (Isn’t he a saint?) I brought this up with my doctor at my last visit. He said that taking extra calcium with vitamin D will help. So I’ve been faithfully taking that before bed. I’ve been good, until last night.

The leg cramps were so bad last night! I woke Joe up and he rubbed and rubbed and rubbed my shin. Then Jay woke up crying and saying “Feep me!”. Then Sai woke up saying “I had a bad dream.” So there were the four of us awake at 4 AM. I had tears streaking out my eyes from the pain and I was trying to say comforting things to the boys. It was AWFUL! After maybe 10 minutes my leg felt better. I took Sai to his bed, rubbed his back and talked to him for a few minutes. Then I went and laid down with Jay. And I had a hard time falling back to sleep because my leg hurt and I was worried it would cramp up again.

So what else can I do for leg cramps? I read on babycenter.com that the calcium isn’t proven to make the cramps better. It says to take warm baths and stretch your legs, etc. I got leg cramps when I was pregnant with Sai but they were always in my calf. The ones in my shins are killer!

My friend Rhonda and I have deemed Wednesdays as our craft days. We figured if we set a date then we would actually work on things. Like Rhonda is working on a quilt for her daughter that she started five years ago when her mom passed away. She wanted motivation to get it done so her 10-year-old would stop guilting her about it.

Last week was our first craft day. I worked on the baby blanket my mom started for me when she came to visit. I machine quilted it (I feel like I cheated because my mom seemed to want me to hand quilt it on the quilt stands and frames that my dad made me but I took the easy way out and did it on my machine), and got the bias binding made and sewn on by the end of the day. It only took me a few hours to finish the binding by hand. I love the yellow and orange fabric on the back.

For a few weeks I’ve been thinking about making crayon rolls for the boys for church. We’ve been using crayons in a baggie for a while and they are just looking yucky and can be loud during church. So I found this tutorial to follow. The tutorial was for a 16 pack of crayons and I had 24 packs of crayons. So I made the fabric 5″ x 24 1/2″ instead of 5″ x 16 1/2″. I think they turned out pretty good. I don’t have a blanket stitch on my machine so I just used a straight stitch to top stitch. I used the leftovers from the back and binding of the quilt above to make them. I like the bold colors. (I included the old yucky bags of crayons so you can see the big improvement.)

Now I have to decide what to work on this Wednesday. I’ve got two days to decide! Maybe after Rhonda makes good progress on her quilt we can do some scrapbooking or stamping or something since she’s got TONS of those kinds of crafty supplies.

We woke up to 2 to 3 inches of new snow. While the boys and I were eating breakfast before school Joe called to say that the schools in our district were closed. So I turned on the radio and the Internet to make sure. And sure enough, no school. The buses can’t make it through the canyons to pickup the students that don’t live in town. Sai was not happy. He had a play date scheduled for after school. Maybe that will still be on. I haven’t dared mention it in case he gets really sad about missing it.

Growing up in Utah we got TONS of snow. Here in Central Oregon we don’t get as much. I forget things like how to drive in the snow, how cold it can get, etc. I’m so spoiled! It really isn’t that much snow. But when roads don’t get plowed it makes driving treacherous. We might be getting 1 to 3 inches more today. Oooooo….

We spent the morning picking up and vacuuming the boys’ bedrooms. And Jay and I went outside to shovel the sidewalk and driveway. Well, I shoveled, Jay threw snow at me. There were a lot of snowmen being built around the neighborhood.

I think we are also going to work on making playdough for Sai’s class. His teacher sent a note home with a recipe and asking parents to make some and send it in. That’ll be a fun activity for us, I hope. Maybe I’ll get to pull out the sewing machine… we’ll see how the day goes.

I’ve had this header on my blog for months. And today I’m looking at it and thinking “Wow. How long has ‘adventures’ been misspelled?” I guess I like advedtures more than adventures. And I probably won’t fix it anytime soon. Unless I make a whole new header. Yeah. So I have to laugh at myself.

I’ve spent the day cleaning and I’m spent. The house has been neglected over the holidays. I didn’t touch the boys’ rooms. But all the other rooms and closets in the house have had something happen to them today. But it looks great in here!

And we had one of those weekends. We took Jay to the ER Saturday morning. He woke up around 5 AM and was fussy and whiny. He told Joe that his ear hurt. And he didn’t stop whining and crying. I called our doctor’s office and the doc on call was too busy delivering babies to fit him in. So we went to the ER. Double ear infections and a sore throat. Poor guy. He SCREAMED the whole time–he really hates when he has to see the doctor. After ear drops, antibiotics, ibuprofen and Tylenol he is feeling much better. But he has been taking naps, which is unusual for him. He’s feeling better so I think we’re on the mend.

Blogging has its highs and lows. One of the highs for me is meeting amazing people through blogs. Usually you get to know each other through comments and e-mail and it’s fun to count them as friends.

Yesterday I had the wonderful opportunity to meet a fellow blogger. The wonderful Irene from Mushroom Villagers happened to be around my neck of the woods and suggested that we get together to meet. We met up at the Stitchin’ Postin Sisters, Oregon. It was a fun little afternoon. We wandered around the store and each made some purchases (more about that in a bit). I got to meet her wonderful family and they got to meet my boys. We wandered around Sisters and ended with lunch. It was really nice to meet Irene. And her family surprised my boys with these cool shirts. Who knew that her whole family was so talented? (Thanks again, guys!) We hadn’t even got halfway home when Sai said “Mom, I miss Augie.” Ahhh…

While at the Stitchin’ Post I had a little bit of Christmas money left to spend. I found these soft and cuddly flannel fat quarters. I want to make something for the baby with them, either a pieced receiving blanket or a regular old blanket. I just love the patterns and the colors. I believe all of these, with the exception of the one on the far left, are from the Fleurish line by Valor Wells.

And then I got home and looked more closely at this blanket my mom made. (You can see it here and here, which is when I fell in love with it. When I found out I was pregnant I told my mom that if it’s a girl then I want this blanket. She sent it with Christmas. YAY!!)

Are you seeing any similarities? There are at least three fabrics in this blanket from the Fleurish line. Something about these patterns has really drawn me in!