Merry Christmas!

I have been very crafty this season, in spite of the nausea.  Our Relief Society had a craft night for the quarterly activity.  It was really fun and I made two things.

The first is a Christmas tree.  John helped do all the sanding before the activity and I did the painting and putting together.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second craft was a Christmas Countdown.  Again, John helped with the sanding and I did the painting and putting together.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You turn the blocks each day so it shows the number of days until Christmas.

Today we got out all of our decorations and put up our tree.  Here's a picture of the lovely tree.  John put the tree together and did all the lights (the hard part!) and we put the decorations on together.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Merry Christmas, everyone!

The Reason BYU Started Winning

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John got this awesome cycling jersey for his birthday.  He has been wearing it for games and giving the team good luck.  Go Cougs!

Buns in the Oven

Here's a little update on the babies:

Me at One Month.  This was a couple of days after we found out.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Me at two months.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Me at three months.  This was taken today.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have doctor's appointments this week so we'll probably have more updates soon.  One trimester down, two to go!

No Introduction Necessary

Cycling

I recently finished my first century bike ride.  I rode in the Back Roads Century.  Is was 100 miles through the rolling hills of the Shenandoah valley.  It was absolutely beautiful.







Here is the proof that I actually rode all 100 miles.



It took me 6 hours to ride it all, but it was a lot of fun.

 

My First Quilt

Last summer was a rather lonely, projectless summer for me.  So in order to avoid that this summer, John surprised me with a most welcome gift: a sewing machine.  My first project was a quilt made with squares of the T-shirts of my past.

First I laid out the shirts.



I ironed fusible interfacing onto the squares of the shirts to help stabilize the jersey.  It kind of worked.  I also changed the layout from this original one and left out the smaller row.  My mom also helped me rearrange the squares a little.



The blue fabric in the corner is a pair of crazy pajama pants I got in Korea.  I was so happy with the red, white and blue fabric I got for the sashing.  It ended up looking better than I hoped!



All in all, it turned out really well.



The backing is fleece.

It's a great quilt.  I already snuggled with it this morning!

Updates

Well, it's been a long hard winter.  Lots has been going on.

We spent Christmas in the Great White North.  And John got an iPod Touch.







We survived Snowpocalypse, the record breaking snowfall in our area in February.  John and I spent 11 days in a row at home, snowed in.  We had plenty of fun, though.  We made ice cream out of snow... (just add sweetened condensed milk.)

John dug our cars out of the snow...





We moved to a new apartment and painted for the first time.  Fresh Guacamole is the color of the living room and it is awesome.  We also visited Arizona and were visited by Dan, Janis and Grandpa Ricks.  We had our first house guest when my mom came to stay for few days.  Unfortunately, we also got the news that our best chance to have a baby will be to make use of in vitro fertilization.

Now I'm on summer vacation, sewing and baking up a storm.  John is finishing his last classes and looking for a job.  We're working with a great fertility doctor and hope to start our IVF process in September.  Look forward to more frequent posts as we do.