Christmas in St. George

Sorry for being way behind again! I guess I’ll start with the most recent happening.

For Christmas and New Year’s we went up to Erik’s parent’s house in St. George.  The bridge across Hoover Dam is finished so it cut about 15 or 20 min out of our driving time.  So nice! And you can’t even tell that you are driving over that…part of me is happy about that and the other part is slightly disappointed. 

Christmas day was so much fun! I didn’t ask for too much other than a camera that doesn’t take a year to take a single picture.  Erik got me one for Christmas and I love, Love LOVE it!! I got a few other random things, mainly cake decorating stuff.  I got Erik a game called Dominion which I think I ended up liking better than he did!  We played that game about 3 times every day since he opened it. 

It was Gabie who got spoiled.  I guess I will back track here.  Before we left for St. George we had Gabie open a few of his big presents and some we thought he would enjoy on the way up there.  Gabe got a tricycle (I got it a few months ago from Craig’s list-only $20 for a $125 tricycle—not bad!), a tent with a crawl-through tunnel, and a bicycle seat.  Gabe’s favorite toy was a steering wheel-thing that talks and plays music.  He played with it all the way up to St. George!

  

Erik’s parents also spoiled Gabe with numerous presents, including a power wheels jeep.  Gabe got 3x the amount of gifts then any of us!  Later Erik’s grandparents came over and gave Gabe even more presents and we all sat down for a yummy Christmas dinner. 

 

 

The rest of the week was spent playing dominion, fooseball, and Wii games.  Erik and I also got to go on a few dates while his parents watched Gabe.  We saw The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Tangled; both were very good.  We took Gabe to the Dinosaur Tracks museum and a natural history museum.

 

New Year’s Eve was spent at the cabin in Pine Valley, where there was SNOW! It was Gabe’s first true encounter with snow.  He wasn’t too excited about it, but he didn’t hate it.  It was FREEZING!!! Especially for us, coming from Arizona!  I think it was somewhere around 7 degrees.  But that didn’t stop us from 4-Wheeling!  We bundled up and put Gabe between us.  Gabe feel asleep while 4-wheeling and my knees and thighs almost got frostbitten but other than that we had a blast! Then we warmed up inside with some nice hot chocolate!    

 Since Gabe hadn’t had much of a nap New Year’s Eve, he ended up falling asleep around 5:30 and woke up just in time to bring in the New Year, lol!!  We left the next morning to head back to AZ.  We enjoyed staying in St. George.  It was nice for Erik to not have to go anywhere and I enjoyed having Erik’s company for more than a few hours, and we both enjoyed finally getting out, just the two of us! Erik’s parents are very hospitable and are excellent grandparents to Gabe.  

 

An Arizona Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year instead of going anywhere we just had family come to Arizona. My Parents, Lisa and her husband Eric (yes, two Eri(k)s in the family!), and my sister Cindy all came down to visit.

My mom made the majority of the Thanksgiving meal, Erik helped a lot making his frog-eye salad, stuffed mushrooms, and a yummy pumpkin cheesecake. I made the cranberry sauce and the green bean casserole. Yay for me. Thanksgiving dinner was delicious and the turkey was perfect!

We had fun having everyone over, especially Gabe! He loved having so many playmates. I loved it too...I got to play with my beads while various family members played with Gabe. That + getting beads 60% off at Joannes = lots of bead projects! I'll try to post some later. Maybe.

The next day we took everyone to see some Indian ruins near Sedona. Erik and I had already been there but I think everyone had a lot of fun really liked them.

In all it was fun visiting with everyone and playing board games and band hero. Here are some pics:

Gabie and Aunt Cindy

Thanksgiving dinner! Yum! I also made the tablecloth...

Snuggling with my Gabie

Sweet Gabie kisses!!

Indian Ruins @ Tuzigoot

Lisa and Eric

Cindy and Gabe. Cindy was definitely his best baby sitter! Gabie loves his aunt Cindy.

My Parents

Montezuma's Castle

My Cute Gabbers

Silly boy!

Gabe's newest favorite thing is crawling in the driver's seat, pushing all the buttons as fast as possible and honking the horn. What a goof.

Our family picture.

Gabe's Thanksgiving Shirt!

Sorry I'm turning this into a crafting blog but that is all I've been up to pretty much! I mentioned a few posts ago that I discovered how to do appliques on my sewing machine and that I wanted to do more with it. Well here is want I did!! I made a Thanksgiving turkey shirt for Gabe. I'm sad that this holiday gets skipped over in favor of Christmas (though I do love Christmas!!), and I couldn't find a Thanksgiving shirt for Gabe so I decided to just make one. I cut out all the pieces and pinned them on, and then set my machine to a (very) tight zig zag stitch and just stitched just inside the edge of the cut-out pieces. For the legs, beak and that red thing (I don't know what you call them...) I just glue gunned them on. Hopefully they won't fray.

For the most part I like the way it turned out. But since I was sewing the pieces on a knit shirt and despite my best efforts to not stretch the shirt while I was sewing, some of the pieces turned out wrinkly because the shirt stretched while I was sewing. Dangit. I think the best thing to do for appliques (and I plan on trying this next time) is to sew the pieces on some heavy-weight fusible interfacing and carefully cut around it and then iron the applique on. That way it won't bunch up, plus the inside of the shirt won't be rough from the stitching.

Here are the pics:

Sea Green Necklace with Fabric Flower

Here is my most recent jewelry project. It was pretty simple to make, even the flower. The big beads I got at Joannes for a couple of dollars and the beads between them are Swarovski crystals that my sister got me for my birthday (thanks Toots!). I used some bead caps I got at Walmart and strung it all on nylon coated bead wire. So easy. For the flower, I found a tutorial on line, click here if you want to see it. So that's it. I love how it turned out...elegant but funky. I don't usually wear jewelry this chunky but I guess that is the style now! Only problem is, I have NOTHING that matches this. I raided my entire closest and couldn't find a single thing that matches! I'll try to coordinate my jewelry with my wardrobe a little bit better next time!

Sorry my camera sucks. It looks better than these pictures show. A new camera is definitely on my Christmas list!!

Free Fabric!!

No, I'm not having a giveaway. I'm just announcing that I got a TON of free fabric from a lady in my ward who is giving it all away for free!! I guess she got it from an old lady that likes to hoard fabric. There was so much fabric I didn't even know where to start. There was also a bunch of lace and trimmings. If I had a girl I would have fun with that, but since I only have a little boy to sew for I picked out the most "manly" fabric I could find. There wasn't too much that was super super cute, but nothing beats free fabric!!

I found this soft fuzzy orange fabric and the shiny silver fabric in the endless sea of fabrics. So I got to work right away! I didn't have a pattern to follow so I just made up my own--it's cheaper that way! Since the fabric was so soft I thought it would work well for pajamas for Gabe. I don't like making up my own pattern too much because I always end of having to do a lot of alterations. All things considered though, I Gabe's pajamies weren't too much of a hassle to make and they fit him fairly well...I would hope they do after all the alterations I had to do!

One new technique I learned while making Gabe's pj's was how to sew on appliques. Gabe is really into stars right now so I thought it would be cute and appropriate to put some stars on is pajamas. I cut out the stars from the shiny silver fabric and set my machine to a tight zig-zag stitch. It was so easy and turned out super cute! I'm so excited about this new technique...I'm already planning more things to do with it!

What a goofy face!

Appliqued stars-I love it!!

Parties, Parties, Parties!!

I love Halloween time because there are always so many fun parties to go to!! Plus the weather [finally] cools down and there are treats galore! What could be better?!

First party, our friend's little girl Sariah turned 3! It was a fun little picnic party. There was also cake, yummy food, and a pinata!

Painting pumpkins

All the kiddos

The next party was thrown by our friends the Nielsons. It was a very yummy dinner with very good company!

Gabe and Eva are good buddies!

I took this pic mid-embrace!

A random shot of people

My creepy goth family!

We also went to Fry's (our local grocery store) Halloween party. It was pretty fun for being free. Gabe won 2nd place in the costume party. I think he would have won first if he hadn't been crying (he thought the judge--who was dressed up as a skeleton--was scary!). He won a little bathtub book. All the prizes for his age group were the same so it didn't really matter I guess! Sorry, no pictures! :(

Then of course, the Ward Halloween party, something we look forward to every year! I didn't get any pics of the actual party. It was fun we ate hot dogs and homemade root-beer and salads and got to hang out with friends. Gabe enjoyed eating off of everyone's plate (we sat on the lawn to eat), a hayride, and of course trunk or treating! He figured out real fast that if he held out his pumpkin bucket to people then he would get candy!

I did get some pics of Erik and I after we came home from the Trunk-or-treak while we still had our costumes on. Somebody said we needed more makeup for our look so we put on more!

Pretty scary huh??
I look like a freak! Of course, that is kind of the point here! Sad thing is, I really didn't have to do much for this costume. I really just put on a little extra makeup then I normally wear!!

I know Trick or Treating was on Sunday, but since it only comes once a year and I didn't want to be a scrooge, I took Gabe Trick or Treating for just a bit with his cute little friend Kade while Erik passed out the Halloween candy. Here are some cute pics:

And to top off a very fun month, we enjoyed having dinner with some friends (Thanks Riddles!) and eating some yummy chili and cornbread!Our kids thought it was fun if they all banged on the red thing at once! (I really don't know what it is!)

Gabe, Sariah, and Eli in their festive Halloween pajamies!

And that concludes my posts for the very fun month of October! Stay tuned for my November posts, there will be a fun surprise, I promise!! ;)