April 10

We celebrated Karlie's birthday last week. She is now a beautiful 16 year old. Where does time go? Oh.... so fast. We will be celebrating Kate's birthday this weekend. She is going on 21. How can that be? I'm 26. (remember my earlier birthday post)Weird ;-) So proud of our Miss Karlie!
She is such a wonderful daughter.

April 10

Mike has taken on the long arm machine. He is excellent at free motion flames! Why must he be so good at everything??

Grandpa Earl's quilt.

Granny's quilt. I pieced this one together. Mike did the long arm stitching on top.

Dragonflies.

Small flowers.

Larger flowers.

The backing.

Still need to bind this one.(Put the edging on)

I have moved on to learn the embroidery machine. Now this will be fun, not to sure about the learning curve. I'll get it.

Pretty neat machine, this was my first attempt. Made a new cover for one of Mike's boxes.

The girls have started making barbie clothes.

One "designs" and one "sews". Ha, too cute. Talk about team work.

Kassadie had a cardiology check up last week. Everything is good right now. She goes back in a couple of weeks again. Yay Kassadie.

March 30

Today is my birthday!!! Yay me!!
Yes, the candles say 26.......ummm...running joke here.
And NO I wont tell you what it should be.*wink*

All my beautiful cards from the kids.

They were just the perfect gift.

Mike got my birthday surprise a couple of weeks ago. He had it delivered and installed today. It took the guy 4 1/2 hours to put it together. What the heck is it you ask???? A long arm quilting machine for quilting.

Yep, Mike calls it the elephant in the room. I have to admit it's huge. He picked it out a couple of weeks ago. His direct quote " It didn't look that big at the quilt shop". Ummm...Mike honey, the quilt shop is a huge building. Now our playroom is not a small room, it is (this photo) 24 x 32. That tells you how big this darn thing is. So it looks like Mike is adding another addition on to the house. (Truth be told, he really wants to use the long arm too.) The quilt store owner is coming back tomorrow for a 4 hour training. Super excited about that. It has a computer on it. So you can do free hand or computer programs and it does it. So cool. Yeah, sorry I'm really excited. I will post photos of the before and after of the first quilt we get done.

So until then, thanks to my great family for a great day!

March 24

Yesterday we got our 50 lbs. of winter white wheat. Guess what I did today?? Yep, I got to grinding my wheat. So much fun. I've already got enchilada's I made in the oven, so tomorrow I'm making homemade pizza! This is suppose to make excellent dough.

March 23

Whole Oat Groats

Freshly Ground

Cranberry White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

Our yummy cookies, I'll explain further in the post.

Well it's time to sit down and blog!

A few posts back I mentioned Kassadie was going in for open heart surgery.

She went in at the end of January. She was there for 14 days. She's home,

getting better everyday. She will go back in a few months for another surgery,

but for now she's home and doing okay.

We have been doing a lot of baking these past couple of weeks, we got a

Nutrimill Grain Mill and a Bosch mixer. It's really neat. The kids love

to watch the whole grain go in this cool machine and watch freshly ground

flour come out. Mike is not a sweets kinda guy. And he would never eat a

oatmeal cookie. But we made fresh oat flour out of the oat groats

and used it to make Cranberry White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies.

He wouldn't stop eating them. He said they were the best cookies he'd

ever had. Sooo....I did good!

We celebrated Kendall's birthday last week. Fun as always.

This is her very first 4 patch. And it was perfect. I don't know who was more

excited me or her. She's ready for more!

Kylene started her 1st quilt top last night, once she started she wouldn't stop.

She took the quilt top in to our local quilt shop. They were so excited for her.

When you take your completed quilt top in, they give you 30% off your backing

fabric. So she was excited about that. So looks like tomorrow she will be finishing her

borders and add her batting and backing. Yay for Kylene.

I'm so excited to have 2 quilting buddies. Now, to see how many more join

our little club!!

???

Yeah, Okay, hmmmm? Why is she posting pictures of cows in the road?

Because it's why we don't live in the city.

If we lived in the city, we wouldn't look out our front window and see cows.

That's why!! Wink! Wink!

Or......is this where the saying

"When the cows come home" comes from???

January 4

This is what happens when you let your 17 year old daughter go to Costco.

She brings home a birthday cake. No, it is not any one's birthday.
I circled the weight in purple, 7 lbs. of birthday cake.
She's so my mother!

January 1

Happy New Year! We have had beautiful weather, high 60's. As you can see the cabin's roof is done and NO snow. No rain either, weird.

We celebrated Mike's birthday.Then Christmas. Such a strange holiday season weather wise, no rain all month and warm sunny days.

Mike has been taken up archery. He got something called a "Robin hood". That's when you shoot an arrow at your target and then you next arrow goes directly into the first arrow. Who knew?

He took them into the shop and the guys took a photo of him with them and put his photo and the arrows on the wall.

Pretty neat!

Then he got a pin. You know boys have a club for everything. Kinda hard to see the pin.

The kids are all going through a little cold. Yucky.

Everyone is getting through it and Kate did have seizure yesterday it was very mild. Her last one was June.

She is doing just fine today.

And lastly, Kassadie's doctor called last week.

They have her surgery scheduled for the end of January.

More on that later.

So for now.........Happy New Year to our

friends and family.

January 1, 2012