This may explain the horsey video from yesterday. Occasionally, there are some people who will ride their horses through the field in our backyard. They did this yesterday which prompted Mimi to grab her horsey for a “ride”. Today they got a chance to meet the real horses and to sit on them. The girls were out of this world excited about this opportunity. Annie declared afterward, “Today was my favorite day!” I’m glad I grabbed the camera.

Violet didn’t get a chance to ride on the horse, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be included in this post.

Mike wasn’t sure what time he’d get home from work last night, so we decided to meet up with him at Buffalo Wild Wings on his way home. It was kids’ night (which means free food for the kids), and Cuddles and Billy were there to paint faces and make balloon animals for the kids. Thank goodness the girls don’t have a phobia of clowns like I did as a child.

As mentioned in the previous post, Mike and Brad shot some ducks. Here’s Brad posing with their game. Brad got a female teal duck and Mike a female mallard.

Have a closer look at the teal duck.

Mike has been heading into work a little earlier some mornings so that he can get some fishin’ in. Last week he caught this large fish. I think this one was a salmon. Mike has been telling tall tales of these huge salmon overtaking their rods, nets, and lines. Men and their fishing stories.

In other news, Mike was outside this afternoon cleaning up the garage so that I can finally park inside it again. The girls were playing with their hula hoops, and Mike decided to shoot some video footage of them. Annie is really good now at this skill. However, please watch the entirety of this video as there is much more to it.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82t73KtaWHQ

We had a fun few days with some friends this weekend. They drove up from Indianapolis which is a short 4 hour drive. My friend Rebecca has known me since 7th grade when we met in home-ec. She was working hard and getting excellent grades in the class while I was busy chatting and getting a D+. I wised up for 8th grade home-ec, and I am grateful for what I learned in order to do the sewing projects I make these days. Anyway, Rebecca was always a good friend. We lost touch for a few years but found each other a couple of years ago and have been in touch ever since. Rebecca and her husband, Brad, had a baby girl, Kamille, 5 days before Violet was born. We thought it’d be fun to get together and worked this weekend into our schedules. Turns out Brad is an avid hunter like Mike, so they spent the weekend hunting geese and ducks. (Check out the website I designed for his new business Pinnacle Outdoors. If you need any hunting calls or scents, then order from him. 🙂 ) Both Mike and Brad shot a duck last night, and the boys were quite ecstatic. Rebecca and I just hung out with the babies. We made her sweetie 3 pairs of baby shoes like Violet’s. I was so glad and surprised we could get those made despite fussy babies. I hope they had a great time like us, and we’d love to do it again in the future.

The babies weigh exactly the same and are the same height. Check out the cheeks on Kamille. Such a cutie! Speaking of Violet’s stats, she had her 2 month appointment on Thursday. She now weighs 11 pounds, 6 ounces (50th percentile) and is 22.5 inches long (50th percentile). She had to get 3 shots and was not happy:(

As you can see it’s impossible to get two 2-month-olds to look and smile at the camera at the same time.

The moms with their babes.

Happy, little family.

The girls insisted on holding Violet, so they each got a turn. As you can see the novelty of a new baby has not worn off. Violet doesn’t seem to mind though.

Mike gets just about every holiday off since he’s a government employee. This Columbus Day was no different. We decided to visit Minnesota for the three days, so that the rest of Mike’s family could meet Violet. Of course, the girls also love spending time with Grandma Minnesota, the cousins, anuts, and knuckles. There was no shortage of that. On Saturday morning Knuckle Jake cooked up some brunch for everyone (delish, as always), and we got to see most everyone except for Anut Sara and Knuckle Dave. Fear not, we did finally get to see them on Sunday evening for a dinner at Ma Olsen’s house. The one bad thing about these visits is that they are usually short, and we are sad to eventually have to go home.

While unpacking the suitcase we finally remembered where we stored Violet during the car trip.

At Jake’s brunch Violet got to meet many of her new relatives and get held a lot. She loved that part. Marissa, Owen, and Maya are enjoying their new relative here.

Matt and Dylan will be celebrating their birthdays this month, so it seemed appropriate to celebrate it while we were all together.

Even Lily the husky greeted her with warm kisses.

According to his mother uncle Jake has always been a fan of babies. Maya seems to have inherited that gene from her daddy. She was funny with me and kept coming up to me to ask who I was. You would think that she would remember me since we’ve spent time together on at least a dozen occasions. I must not be that memorable (sniff, sniff).

As usual Grandma has the magic touch and can put Violet to sleep in mere seconds. On two separate occasions, no less.

It was discovered that the furnace was not operating properly and not generating any heat. It got pretty darn cold on Saturday night, so we pulled out the snuggly, winter suit for Violet to wear to bed. Isn’t she cute? I had a hard time putting her to bed because she was so soft and cuddly in this.

The next night was dinner at Grandma’s house. Mike acquired a few pheasants from a friend, but they needed to be plucked first before freezing. All the cousins were fascinated with the processing of the birds. Paul and Dave helped with the plucking, and the little kids were curious to see the heart. Owen kept his distance though.

Like brother, like brother.

He likes to scare small chidren, too (just kidding, he’s actually a fun uncle).

The girls got ahold of the camera. Mimi’s model pose.

My guess is that this was taken by Mimi just a tad too close or something…hmmm?!? Or were they just in the red light district? And what in the world is going on with Annie’s mouth?!?

On the way out of town we met up with Grandpa Minnesota for lunch. Although it was a short visit it was still nice for the girls to see Grandpa and for Violet to meet him for the first time.

Our neighbors were gracious enough to loan us anything baby-related because their baby would be a year-old by the time Violet was born. This saved us tons of money and the stress of having all new baby stuff for the last baby in our family. We received the crib today from them, and I finally got the opportunity to put the final touches onto the nursery. I don’t know if I’m more excited about the nursery part of the room or the craft side. Have a look for yourself.

We’ll start with the craft side first. My workspace. The table now has a skirt on it to hide all that unsightly clutter underneath.

Those little shelves on the wall house all my sewing notions and such for easy access. The cabinet has all my craft supplies like scissors, stamp pads, markers, decorative punches, etc. It used to be our kitchen cart for our one-butt kitchen in our first house we owned. I made the display boards years ago for the girls’ rooms, and we never had a place for them in DC. Now the girls have the purple one in their room, and I got the pink one. I plan to put craft ideas there for inspiration later.

Let’s take a look at the nursery. Here’s the changing table. I’ve got wicker baskets on both shelves below for all of Violet’s things. How is it possible for such a little being to need so much stuff? The pictures on the wall are of Annie and Mimi. They used to hang in Mimi’s nursery in NC. I guess they are kind of sentimental to have “baby” pictures of the girls hanging in Violet’s room

Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for, those “fish” that the general consensus seemed to think I made. Can you tell what they are now?

Here’s a closer look, from Violet’s view. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, it’s a bird mobile. Mike cut some branches for me and also stuffed the birds.

The tree thingy behind the crib is a vinyl wall “sticker”. An easier and cheaper way of getting a wall mural. I loved this as soon as I saw it. So fun!

I wish I would’ve taken a better picture of the crib, but here are the crib bumper and crib skirt I made.

I love this room, and plan to spend a lot of time in it. Hope Violet doesn’t mind.

In a quest to get Mimi’s hair out of her face during dinner time, Mike appeared with several hair bands and came up with the idea to do this to the girls’ hair. Of course, the girls were giddy about their new look.

Violet, on the other hand, was too busy dreaming of her new shoes to be concerned that her hair isn’t long enough to pull off such a look.

My new love.

While Mike’s mom was visiting soon after Violet’s birth, she helped me to choose a new sewing machine. The one I previously had was having issues, and I didn’t see the point in paying to have a cheap, 8-year-old machine fixed. Even though I had my eye on some sewing machines on sale at the local NEX (Navy Exchange), Kathy recommended that I consider taking my sewing machine purchase seriously and invest a little more than I had originally planned. I must say I’m so glad that I took her suggestion because I’m now the proud owner of a Pfaff Expression 2.0. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles (and the price tag) of a fancy embroidery machine, but this machine has everything I need and more. One of the features that Pfaff machines offers that no other brand has is the IDT which is basically a built-in walking foot that ensures even fabric feed. The automatic tie-off at the beginning and end of each seam also saves me from many headaches. I love the extra arm length which allows for bigger projects (boy, I could’ve used this when I was sewing all those Roman shades). There are ton more features that I could spend pages writing about, but I’m happy with the just the ones I’ve list above.

The couple of sewing projects I’ve done so far on my new helper have gone way more faster than had I done them on my ex-helper. I’m actually excited about sewing and have been searching for more projects to do. Tons of accessories and feet are available for this machine, and I’ve already got my eye on a presser foot that automatically makes pleats for you called the ruffler attachment. There are tons of girls’ clothing projects that I’ve wanted to make, and this foot would help me do them even faster. The piping foot will also come in handy when I make the slipcover for our sectional this winter. You heard that right, I plan to slipcover our newish sectional. You see, the fabric on it is absolute garbage and started tearing up on the cushions after having the sectional for just 2 months. Fortunately, we got all our money back and were able to keep the sectional. We tried to decide what our best options would be (purchase new furniture, have the current piece professionally reupholstered, or cover it myself), and slipcovering would obviously be the least expensive plan. We’ll see what comes of that project.

Enough rambling about my lovely, new sewing machine. I seriously could go on and on for days, but I’ll not bore you anymore. In the meantime, take a sneak peek at my current project. I’ll hopefully have it complete by tomorrow. Can you guess what they are? Mimi’s guess is that they are arms. I can tell you that they are not arms.

I made Violet some shoes. So I went a little overboard. It seemed necessary that she have a pair to match all her outfits. Of course, I still need to make the obligatory pink and purple pairs. You’d be surprised how limited the selections are in the local fabric shops around here. I really had a hard time finding just these fabrics and couldn’t find anything in pinks or purples that I could even settle on. For those of you interested, here’s the pattern for the shoes:
http://www.michaelmillerfabrics.com/blog/cloth_shoe.pdf

And just to prove that they really are cute on and match an actual outfit…

In other news, Mimi had a mini school program today. I think it was some sort of verification that they are actually teaching the kids something because they had them recite shapes, letters, and even a couple of math equations. Now this is what I’m talking about especially after learning that Annie’s math curriculum actually has math problems such as “If math were a color, it would be –, because –.”

I’m pretty sure nobody had a smile as big as Mimi’s.

Violet received her blessing at church today. Mike did a wonderful job giving our little girl her blessing. The Evans (Jim, Sara, Hayley, and Matt) and Grandma Kathy came for the event. It was a very short visit, but we still enjoyed what little time we had together with good eats and great conversation. I’m glad they made the trip.

All of us after church.

Of course, we took this opportunity to get a family picture.

As usual, Mike couldn’t take it seriously, and neither could the girls for that matter.

Had to get a nice picture of Jim and Sara since they were all gussied up, too.

Grandma and Violet.

Can you believe this is the same dress that Annie wore for our sealing back when Annie was 15 months old (made by the very talented Auntie Sara)?

It always delights me when my babies start to move past just being eating/pooping/sleeping machines and begin developing little personalities. Violet is entering this engaging stage and has graced us with her little smile more than a few times since Sunday. Rather than talk about how cute she is, just have a look for yourself. In case you’re wondering, the battle wound is self-inflicted. I couldn’t stand having those mittens on her any longer, and this is what happens.

Her surprised look. This is pretty much the look she’s had on her face since birth.

WAIT! Is she going to SAY something?

No. No, she’s just sticking her tongue out at me.

Finally, a real smile. Sigh…

You gotta see just one more. I don’t know about you, but I can’t get enough of this face.