Christmas Craft

Heather sent me a picture and instructions for a craft she did and I loved it so Saturday I made this fun Christmas decoration. It stands about 20 inches high...perfect for a table top. Thanks for the idea Heather!

Baby update

I thought I would post a few pictures of Jane without the newborn puffiness of the first pictures. This was her first day home from the hospital-
There is another arm in that sleeper somewhere!

We are Grandparents!

Our Thanksgiving Day was spent at the hospital where my son Kyle and his wife Han delivered our 1st grandchild. Jane Vy was born today at 5:10pm weighing in at 7.9 pounds and 20 1/2" long. Here she is...

Chubby cheeks already! Mom and baby are doing well. Han was very tired when we left the hospital.
Proud Papa! I love this picture of Kyle with Jane.

Even Austin got in on the baby holding action!

It will be so fun having a little one around again. Congrats Kyle and Han...she's a cute one!

Swim Meet Update

Austin is doing well this year in swim. He is improving his times every meet which is awesome. In the meet today he swam the 100 yd Freestyle coming in 2nd overall with a time of 57:52 beating his old time of 58:34. He swam the 100 yd Breaststroke again coming in second overall with a time of 1:15.33 beating his old time of 1:16.46. He swam in two relays - the 200 yd. Medley ( he swam breast) and the 400 yd. Freestyle and they came in second overall in both. It has been fun to watch his improvement and he is very happy with how well he is improving his times. His races have been very exciting because he is usually in a dead heat with another swimmer either just loosing to them or just beating them by tenths of a second.

Bathroom Redo

After helping Heather with painting in her new house and returning home to do a suede wall in my neighbor's home, I decided that while I am in the mood I might as well get our upstairs bathroom done. I found a shower curtain and accessories with colors I love on it (on sale of course!) and color matched paint and towels. The end result is...
This wall is actually a light blue but didn't show up that way. I wanted to show this picture. Bought the frame and printed the saying off the computer. It looks really cute! Sorry it's a little blurry.


The first picture shows the actual wall colors the best. I am still looking for a few things to possibly add to the bigger walls but overall I love it! Painting and decorating is fun!

Han's Baby Shower

This past Saturday we had a baby shower for Han and baby Jane. I started off keeping up with picture taking but then I was sidetracked with writing who gave what and hostessing that I failed to get pictures of everything and anyone except Han- my bad!It was a fun shower though and baby Jane got lots of cute things. Kerri Jo made these cute baby bootie cupcakes-
My sister,Dona, gave Jane this adorable knit dress. Han wished it was big enough for her to wear!
I loved this picture frame from Great Grandma Passey. There is a place for a picture of Jane every month for the first year.
Great Grandma Toothaker made this fleece blanket...
Heather made the car seat cover on the stroller behind my nieces, Erica and Carmen. The car seat/stroller were from Jane's Grandparents ( that's us!)
I made this fun quilt- hopefully Jane will love rubbing the furry edges and it will be her special "blankie".
Thanks to family and friends who came to support Han and baby Jane! Four more weeks till Jane makes her debut!

Iowa Trip

I left on Wednesday the 4th to visit Heather and Clint in Iowa...to help them paint and move into their new house but we made time for a little site seeing and shopping, too.I came home with 83 pictures...way too many to post. I narrowed it down to these few. I flew into Omaha, Heather picked me up and we headed to the Winter Quarters Temple. It'a a beautiful little temple.
We also visited the Winter Quarters Cemetery. The monuments there are really nice. There aren't as many grave stones as I thought there would be. I'm sure a lot of the graves are unmarked. The ones that are marked are mostly unreadable. We didn't visit the museum but I enjoyed the walk through this place. Such faith these pioneers had!
LeMars, Iowa is the Ice Cream Capitol of the World( in case you didn't know) because it is the home of Well's Dairy also known as Blue Bunny Ice Cream. So, of course we had to go to the Blue Bunny Ice cream parlor/gift shop.
I have been so good about not eating any sugar but you cannot be in the ice cream capitol of the world and not eat ice cream...


Did I mention that there is a Well's Dairy/Blue Bunny Museum? It was closed while we were there and Heather and I had intended to go back but we forgot. This truck is outside the museum.
This is Well's Dairy, where Clint works...
and being the ice cream capitol of the world, one would naturally assume you would have the largest freezer in the world, which LeMars does...
Yes that's right...the entire white building you see is freezer. It is huge!!
Part of the reason for my visit was to help C & H paint and move into this cute little home. Check out Heather's blog for a room by room tour.
LeMars has an awesome memorial park that pays tribute to every war America has been in beginning with the Revolutionary War down to the Present Iraq War. It is very well done and quite impressive.
Another must visit place in LeMars is Habitue. A fun little coffee/crepe house. They have delicious crepe sandwiches...
but the best part is their crepe deserts (again my no sugar rule was abandoned). Heather had this chocolate banana hazelnut crepe,
and I had the apple crumble crepe. Both were sooo good!!
LeMars was a fun little city and I loved seeing where Heather & Clint live and meeting their friends- especially Tiffany and Ryan. It will be fun to go back, hopefully next summer with Steve and Austin and see it when it's green. Thanks for the grand suite room Heather!

Happy Birthday Meghan!

Happy Birthday Meghan! I love you and miss you. It's appropriate that it is snowing today. I can just here her now shouting, "I love the snow!"

Finally Done!

So do you remember many many months ago when I started making my very first pieced quilt? Well, after all the work it took to piece it together and quilt it, I decided I'd had enough and put it away. Enough time had passed that I felt I could now dig it out and finish it and that's just what I did...Not bad for my first quilt. I am going to hang it downstairs...as soon as I find a shelf with a quilt hanger on it. Click on the picture to see a bigger version of the quilt.

St. George Trip...Again!

Yes, we made another trip down to St. George - this time with our good friends, LeAnn, Tony, Lanelle and Troy.
We went to see the play "Crazy For You" at Tuacahn on Thursday night. The play was fantastic! They don't allow picture taking but I snuck this one in just before the play started. I love this theartre..1 because it is outdoors and 2 because of the location- the beautiful red rock cliffs in the background.
Friday morning we went to the St. George Temple, such a beautiful temple!
After the temple we drove to the Red Cliffs Recreation area for some hiking. The park caretaker there told us this was a popular hike because of the scenery and she was right...


A few fun nooks and crannys to climb through as Steve is demonstrating above.
The tree behind these guys was so cool- you will have to take my word for it though cause you really can't tell from this picture.

Our destiny on this hike was a waterfall but alas the waterfall was not falling with water. It would have been at the top off the picture below but I guess there is only enough water for it to actually be a waterfall in the spring. Still so pretty though.
To get around the waterfall (or where it should be) we had to climb around this rock ledge using footholds in the rock and holding on to a rope. I don't mind telling you that it was a bit nerve wracking because it was quite a drop but we all made it across and back, though some of us more shakily than others.
That night we went to "Benja's" our new favorite Thai restaurant. The food was to die for..so good. We had some sushi for appetizers ...
and these delicious dishes for the main course. Can't remember their names but oh so good!
This desert was made of sticky rice with fresh sliced mangos and a coconut milk sweet sauce over it. We also had one with a custard instead of the mangos which was my favorite. YUMMY!!!
Friday night it was back to Tuacahn to see "Tarzan" (the 2nd time for Steve and I and it also was a fantastic play! A Very fun trip with some very fun friends!!