Ending an Unexpected Hiatus From Sewing! Family Update with pictures.

Has it really been 2 years since my last post? I can't believe it! I'm sure it's not a huge surprise that adding a second child cut into sewing time. So very worth it though! It's as though I blinked and two years have flown by! Not much sewing has happened, although I have managed to sneak a little in here and there.

I can't say that I will be posting all the time or that I won't miss a few weeks here and there since we all know I will! I can say that as soon as I get the photo taken and uploaded I will be updating you on some new projects I have started and even a finish or two!

Does anyone else just love the thrill of beginning a new project? I find the only feeling that comes close to beginning a project is FINISHING one!!! Although, I have began many more than I have finished. I always wonder why that is and then there I go wanting to start something new.

My problem is the actual quilting. I enjoy it but I don't like having to stop part way through. So I don't start unless I can most likely get it finished in the same sitting. What's that? Small children don't occupy themselves for HOURS so you can quilt in peace? You don't say! Hahaha :) To be fair, I didn't get a whole lot of quilting finished before the baby so I can't use that excuse.... much.

Anyway, here are a few pictures to update you all on the family :)

Quilty goodness coming soon.

Hello Blogland!

I'm back! The baby is great and so is our boy :) We've had a run of family/friends passing away in the last few months (tomorrow is my grandma's funeral, she is the 7th person we've lost recently). I had created a post when Rosalyn arrived and it seems that it was still a draft..... my apologies on that. I'm going to add to it with some more photos and just make it a "her first 3.5 mths" post.

I do have quilty things to update to. For now though it's just this quick post to let those wondering know that all is well, for the most part, and I will be updating soon. There's just so much that's happened and to be honest I forgot exactly how time consuming newborns are with the erratic sleep patterns at first!

Apparently, baby watch has begun....

I think some people are even more excited for the arrival of this baby than I am (which is saying something).

Nick is almost convinces his daughter is deliberately hanging out in my stomach just to torture him, also I am not allowed to be separated from him until she gets here. That is just fine by me since I actually enjoy my husbands company, shhh don't tell him ;)

Payton asks everyday before school if his sister will be here soon, I have no idea son, but we will come get you if she decides to make an appearance!

My mom calls several times each day asking "any twinges yet?" Up until 3 days ago I could simply say not yet.......

Let us not forget the multitude of people that say "Haven't you had that baby yet? You look awful, are you sure your not in labor? I bet you'll have her (insert day time etc here)? You're huge! When is that baby due? Someone's about to pop!" and many others :) It's well meaning and I don't mind (generally)but it does get a little insulting...... I mean old to constantly hear how bad/big/ tired/or generally crappy I apparently look.

As of 3 days ago braxton hicks contractions decided that random and far between was not entertaining enough. They are now a steady form of slow torture designed to interrupt sleep and keep the pregnant lady in this house cranky and hurting! I have to say after 3 days and nights of them every 7-8 min generally (sometimes more, sometimes less) even I am saying come on kiddo due date or not, enough is enough!

I'm hoping something is progressing, just so it will seem like the fake contractions are worth it. We'll find out tomorrow morning at the next doctors appointment.

No matter what, just find the humor. If this sounds complainy, it's not meant to I'm actually chuckling as I write it out. This baby can not stay where she is forever, and she's not due until March 12th. There is time, she just needs to cook until she's done, simple as that!

As for the "common" comments, I generally reply with random things like "well I have been pregnant for 2 years now" or "Yes, I am in labor, my water just broke.... oh wait she just kicked me, nevermind" even "Just how awful do I look? Are we talking one foot in the grave or I just like to make pregnant people feel bad?" Okay that last one wasn't funny but in my defense it's only pulled out for really rude people ;)

Braxton hicks are getting old fast, can't find much humor in that one..... Although, it seems weird to look forward to labor just so they will stop! I think we found a silver lining :)

So when is your guess for the arrival of Rosalyn? I'm hoping for Thursday, March 6th 2014. Mostly because then my dad will be able to see her before she's a week old (which was the case with payton. My dad's a truck driver just to clarify.) Also, so Nick will have some time home with us before he's called back to work, it's looking like either March 10th or April 1st depending on Miss Rosalyn's arrival :) 

Just a quick update :)

All is going good here. I am 37 weeks pregnant (next doc appointment come thurday at 38 weeks). There is a bet going in our family that I will go early, most seem to think within the week :) We shall see!

Baby shower is tomorrow. Payton is so excited, I can't help but smile. He has counted down the days all week. We asked him what the most exciting thing about the baby shower is, he said "Getting gifts for when the baby gets here!" He also had received an invitation for a birthday party from a boy in his class (it overlapped with the baby shower) and we said it was okay if he wanted to go, we would make sure he had a way there (and an adult present) to be with his friend. Our boy would not hear of it! I admit to being surprised and a big moment of "proud mommy".  He told us he was NOT going to miss the baby shower, it was to important to him! Don't you just love those moments when you child shows just how important being family oriented is to them, makes me think we are doing some things right. *for the record, we would have been fine with him wanting to go to the birthday instead. Nothing wrong with wanting to play with friends :)

I have been quilting some, when energy spikes, but it is slow going. It seems exhaustion is the main symptom with this baby! Well, that and the ridiculous hip/pelvic pain that seems to have no end. Making myself walk and get important things done is about it before I'm ready to fall asleep or find a heating pad! Nick has been wonderful lately, taking over chores and helping out with everything.  If energy ever returns I will post a decent update filled with quilty goodness.

How did I get so lucky? Blessed with an amazing husband, wonderful and compassionate son, and anticipating a precious little girl anytime now.

Time and Miley!

My goodness, I hope that things calm down a bit before Christmas! Everything is going pretty good around here. We've had a couple snags that, thankfully, have been worked out.

Did I post when Miley got the stitches out of her ear almost 2 weeks ago? I can't remember.

Well, our girl had her stitches out all of a week and a half, her ear healed up beautifully. Then BAM, it started to fill up again... we rushed her back to the vet hoping it would help for it to only be about 1/3 the size it was when we took her the first time.

Actually, that did help! She did not have to have surgery this time since her ear was not as bad :) She is back on antibiotics again and another month of prednesone and he re-packed her ears with this awesome stuff that keeps her from getting another infection for at least 2 weeks, if for some reason it doesn't go down or gets worse then she will have to have surgery again. It's been a couple days and her ear is looking less tight so we'll just give her meds time to do their job.  ( She has had chronic ear infections all of her life, these two hematoma's are a result of that and had never shown up before.)

All is good with regard to Payton and Rosalyn :)

I missed the last monday link-up for Celtic Solstice, that's okay though I'm hoping to link up this week so long as I get something sewn tonight!!!

Let's just not mention the T-shirt quilt... Okay, but let's just make a long story short and say the backing was the problem and I get to unpick the 1/3rd of the way that I did manage to get quilted (3-4 inches at a time) by Wednesday. Live and learn, what can I say this lesson will def. stick and happens to be the reason for getting behind on the mystery!

Glitches and all it has still been a really good week and weekend. Loving time with my family and looking forward to even more of it since hubby should be laid off after this coming week for a couple months. 

Chaos Rules the Week!

I haven't had a chance to upload my pictures for the Monday link up for Celtic Solstice yet! It has been an amazingly busy weekend/week already :)

Having some technical difficulties with quilting a t-shirt quilt, Santa shop at kiddo's school (I volunteer a couple days), lab/doctor/chiropractor appointment, Quilt guild Christmas program (pitch-in so cooking was required, I made buck-eyes), and to top it off hubby's truck is deciding to act up again! Oh I almost forgot, Christmas lunch with our church quilt guild this afternoon. I think I really just want to clean my house and sew!

I'm not complaining or whining here just Whew it seems like two weeks should have passed! Hahaha, thank goodness for family and a sense of humor :) I'm hoping tonight will be relatively chaos free and I can get a post for it up and going! Wish me luck and remember if you have a week of chaos, find the humor it's much more entertaining than stress!

Celtic Solstice Mystery Part 1

Celtic Solstice Part 1

I've been so excited for this mystery to start! Don't you just love getting to drool over your fabric choices and the anticipation of the first clue, I know I do. 

I plan to link-up to Celtic Solstice Mystery Link up Part 1 over at Quiltville. A huge Thank You to Miss Bonnie for taking the time to share these mysteries every year and all the extras she does for us. I actually sewed all these units while catching up on a couple quilt cams I had missed! 


Here are my units all done and laid out in stacks of 10. I have a couple close-ups a bit further down.

Payton gets a kick out of the fact that I tend to match my shirt to my sewing ;) Not on purpose mind you but he had to snap a picture and I've been "ordered" to include it. lol 

Don't get used to seeing pictures of me

I usually hide from cameras. What can I

say, I'm a softie for my kiddo :) 

Miley has been in the holiday mood lately, even with her poor ear still all sewn up. I don't think I posted about that, if your wondering what happened: It happened a couple weeks ago. She was fine when we went to bed around 10 and when we got up at 6 her ear looked like someone had unloaded a can of air in it! Since Nick's truck was broke down at the time (ended up replacing his oil pump), he had to take my car to work. Not about to let our poor baby suffer I called my Mom, who was ready in record time and we drove to Urbana (home of Cornerstone Vet Clinic) managing to be second in line when they opened. It turns out that a blood vessel had burst in her ear overnight (she has chronic ear infections and the doc did not seem surprised for it to have cropped up so suddenly with her history). She had to have surgery on her ear to drain it and they sewed her ear flat with those thick blue pads. We have to keep the hole in the the bottom of her ear peroxided twice a day and (apologies for the yuck factor here) keep the scab off for 2-3 weeks. She was on antibiotics for 10 days and prednasone for a month. They also packed her ears with some meds to keep another ear infection at bay for at least 2 weeks. She goes back this week to hopefully get the stitches and pads removed and we'll be able to let it finish healing up. We were so relieved she was going to be okay :) 

 Our pretty girl did not want us to take her new sweater off!

She even held her paws up to put it on and walks away

anytime we try to remove it! lol

 Close-ups of some fabrics and what happens when you turn your back for a second to grab a sip of coffee...... 

 Purple's instead of orange's

 Grey's instead of neutral's

Sky, this is not your bed! He was actually laying on a couple sets trying to hide them from me :) Does that with the cat toys to. I am so glad I clipped them together. Playing a rousing game of 188 unit pick up does not sound appealing this morning!


Baby Update!

For anyone that follows my blog, you know how excited we are to finally be adding a second munchkin to our family. It's been a long journey since our babies will be 8 years apart. Payton is still excited about being a big brother :) He did tell me yesterday that he's getting a little angry with his sister because she won't kick him whenever he wants her to! Hahaha sorry buddy I think your going to have to get used to that. Rosalyn is still doing good, the application on my phone says she should weigh almost 2 pounds and be around 14 inches long. Tuesday will be the 6 1/2 month mark and Dec. 10th is the dreaded gestational diabetes test, not dreaded because I'm worried about having it, dreaded because I can remember how nasty it was to drink the first time around and that was almost 9 years ago! 

 She seems to stay breach most of the time. So her head (on the left) 

is actually above my belly button like she was sitting up but facing my back!

 Yep, it's a baby all right :) 

If those were hard to figure out maybe this one 

will make it a little easier. I think this one is my

favorite out of all 3 ultrasounds so far. 

All of these pictures were from the last ultrasound at 19 weeks.

As much as I love seeing her lets hope there is no cause to need

any more! 

It's been a trip so far :) Still weigh 15 pounds less than

when I got pregnant. Have been sent to an orthopedic specialist 

due to some hip issues, no x-rays for obvious reasons, but I do

get to go to physical therapy for the forseable future.

No matter what I just want a healthy baby. It is all worth it, every second good or bad. Would gladly do it all over for either of my mini-me's. 

Feeling very blessed and hope to be blogging much more often!

Celtic Solstice Mystery!

Is it really time for Bonnie to host another mystery?!?! I'm so excited.

Everything I've been working on is not blog worthy since it's been customer quilts. It sounds odd to say that since I am not in business or anything, it just kind of happened that several people wanted t-shirt quilts for Christmas and a local LQS found out that I can do them and started giving out my number after I signed up for their newsletter. It was kind of odd but as we aren't really private people having our number given out didn't upset me or hubby.

I have to say that I will Never EVER again attempt a quilt restoration! My cousin needed a fabric in a quilt his Great Aunt had made replaced. That was the most challenging project that has crossed my path and honestly not one I plan to repeat ever again.

Payton loved the Christmas Parade and insisted we wait in line to see Santa. "No mom it can't wait, we have to see him today. It's tradition!".......... Fine, that kid is so lucky I love him lol We had to wait an hour and a half but on Santa's lap spilling his Christmas wishes my little man ended up :)

Our little Rosalyn is still growing and doing her thing. We just passed the 6 months pregnant mark and all is well. I wonder if anyone else had a lot of pelvic/hip pain with a second pregnancy though? I did go to my baby doctor and she sent me to an orthopedic specialist who wait that since they can't do x-rays on pregnant ladies I get to go to physical therapy and we'll just hope that helps : / Why yes, I'd love to go spend money on something that may or may not be necessary lol. Naturally, I'm going just in case it helps (so far no but it's only been a week of twice daily exercises, so giving it time.) 

I have gotten fabrics ready for the first clue going live on Friday! Last year I followed the color scheme to the letter, this year..... not so much.

I need to get a better picture, but I wanted to get this posted tonight and not go in search of my camera and charger to accomplish that :) 

Here's to hoping I get these customer quilts finished soon so I can work on things that can be shared and photographed!

Surprise!

It's not really a surprise to those who know me "in person" instead of online :)

There has been a big reason for going MIA this time! Guess who's pregnant!

It seems pretty safe to announce since I'll be 12 weeks tomorrow, now if only this pesky morning sickness (just morning HA) would go away. I know it's the best/worst diet ever but really I don't really want to lose anymore weight! Not even my sewing room can combat  the incessant nausea and sickness that seems to follow me. Newest Mantra: Breath, this leads to a healthy baby!

In general I'm a pretty open book. It's no surprise how excited we are about our little jellybean. It was a difficult choice to try again after having lost 4 since we had our son. So we gathered up our faith and courage for one last try and I kid you not 2 weeks later we were pregnant (granted we didn't find out until I was a month along). Got into the doctor a.s.a.p. and it seems like there's been an appointment every couple weeks since! Plenty of blood work, which revealed that apparently my body is not making much progesterone (which would have been good to know before since that's the hormone that keeps the baby stable until the placenta attaches) so we've been taking meds for that and are officially 2 weeks past the point where we lost our other angels :)

The ultrasound picture above was taken at 5 weeks, we were so lucky at this appointment because we got to see a heartbeat!  For anyone wondering why that's lucky, the heart begins beating around 5 weeks and isn't always developed enough to view on an ultrasound at this point.

Thankfully, at the last doctor app. all was so well I don't have to go back for a month! Woo-hoo!

We have a poll going about what the baby will be! Do you want to guess along with us?

Post a comment with your guess :)

Payton says boy and wants a boy
Nick says girl and wants a girl
My gut says girl but I'd like another boy!

No matter what Healthy, Happy, and Here would be amazing!!!

Guess it's time to jump on the Bloglovin bandwagon!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Received blocks from Boomerang swap 9.0 :)

Over the last four months lots of grown-up blocks have made their way home! Ten are still MIA right now but the mailing date just passed so there's still time for them to travel.

From abbysMom

From alikat110

From AZ KAT

From Cuppy

From Country1

From Elisabrat

From Gaijin

From Dahna42 

From Jaba

From LS Dugas

From NanaKathy55

From OK Darla

From Travelinggrandma

 

From jaydee3

From joanlizbay

From lestrong601

From marcialee

From missgigglewings
for some reason the photo distorted, the block is perfectly square

From moonrise

From moonwork42029

From oldcatlady

From roseirish48

From themamahauser

From twinriversfarm

From urgodschild2

 

Here's that promised update! Finally got all the pictures organized :)

Am I the only one that's been MIA from blog land lately?

 Just a couple hours ago I finished filling out a couple customs forms and mailing all my blocks for the boomerang swap! As I've been so behind that it's not even funny, I think updating here is the next step to getting back on track.

Before I start the pictures, here's the update on the other quilty items going in my sewing room.

Repair job- Top is finished, working on re-tying and then binding

3 of grandma's- still waiting on binding

Quilt top that Aunt and Uncle sent over to be quilted- finished waiting on binding

Did I mention I hate Binding........  anyway on to pictures :)

AZ Kat

Abby's Mom

Country1

Apparently, I missed a name..... my bad : /

Dahna42

Elizabrat

Girlscout1

Jaba

LJ Dugas

LovingIsabella

Marciale

NanaKathy55

OK Darla

Roseysue

alikat110

Cuppy

Dottie Dodge

jaydee3

Lestrong601

lovingrandma

missgigglewings

moonrise

Navarre2011

quiltingmommy

roseirish

scrapper

Tracibug

travelinggramma

twinriversfarm

urgodschild2

 

 

 

I think I may have missed a couple when taking pictures. These are the majority of the blocks in the mail and on their way home right now! The next post will be the blocks I've received so far. Hopefully next time this swap comes around my schedule will stay calm! Last minute rushing is not my favorite thing to do. LOL