Resurected Hobbies

So what do you do when you are busy growing a baby and you don't have the energy to do anything that involves moving major body parts. Find a hobby or in my case resurrect an old one. I never did much in the way of knitting, wash clothes and scarfs were about the extent of my ability, but over Christmas my mother encouraged me to try something new. So I did and Amelia got a new pair of socks (which she loves and wears right out of the drier and for three days after). She is modeling them in this picture. The second project was a knitting a bag for my mother's birthday. I didn't have a pattern so I made one up which is not the best idea but after starting over many times I finally got something I liked. The best part of this project was the felting. If you use 100% wool and do all the things your not supposed to do to it like wash with soap in hot water it will shrink down to a very tight weave. As you can tell I started to wash it then decided to take a picture so it is a little damp in the first picture. But the two pictures give you an idea of after only 15 minutes in the water how much it shrinks.

Our House

So this is our house in Colorado it is in a brand new subdivision called Raspberry Hill (cute right?)but when the wind blows we get a bit of grit in our teeth. We moved in a couple of days before Halloween last year and since about February every weekend has been devoted to working on our yard. The yard is almost half an acre, I was determined to have a big yard. Now I will tell you it is not all that it is cracked up to being, at least not yet. Because it is a new house as you can see there is nothing in the backyard but dirt. Now you may be wondering why in the world are we bringing in more dirt? Well in this part of Colorado the soil is very clay, and won't absorb water well. So we have to till in some compost to grow grass, trees, and our garden. This is a very bad picture showing just how much dirt we had dumped on our sidewalk and street, if any of you have experience with yard measurements it came in at twenty-five yards. It took us twenty four hours to move it to the back yard. I tell you I shoveled for about eight hours and Taylor shoveled and dumped for about sixteen hours. We were exhausted!

Last thing we did in California

The last thing we did in California was go to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium with Nana, Papa and Aunt Cami. We had so much fun! It is so worth the drive for any Californians who live in the general area, my kids were able to touch tons of little sea creatures, and the shows were enjoyed by all three of my kids not to mention their parents.

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State Fair

Goofin off at the California State Fair last August. Auntie Marie, and my Dale seem to take after each other in hamming it up in pictures.

Surfs Up!

We did take the time while in California to learn to surf, although I only was able to "ride the wave" for about five to ten seconds I did get up most of the time. Most of the time I did need a big shove (from my big brother Arron the major surfer in our family) in order to catch the wave.

Back in Time

Our house in California although it did have a beautiful yard, was so small that we had the kids sleep on the floor in their sleeping bags from Tuki, and if they weren't playing outside there was no other room for play except in the fireplace. I hope you all know I am kidding we loved being in California! I just can't believe that our house in Colorado is three times the size of the California house and our mortgage taxes and insurance are less then our rent was.

So these are some pictures from our last photo shoot, right before we left Cornell University in Upstate New York.