Here’s Eva’s corner in my room– full of things that could each be a blog post in and of themselves.

There’s the new Moses basket I designed that will be my next baby gear sewing pattern (the SweetPod Sleep Spot maybe?), new handknit booties and hat for a fresh head and toes…

the newborn diapers all freshly washed and waiting…

a newly slip-covered rocking chair and a hexagon stripe quilt…

On Monday I had contractions every 10 minutes ALL DAY LONG– from about 7:30 in the morning until 9:30 or so at night.  While I could tell that it wasn’t quite the real thing yet I also felt like it could turn very real any second.  I was on a roller coaster of thought and emotion.  I wasn’t ready!  I need this one last week!  My shelves and refrigerator were empty– so a major grocery shopping trip was accomplished and eased some of the unready feelings.  We braved the new Ikea to buy that new dresser we really needed when the last baby was born so we could have a place to keep clothes and blankies.  I think my body was just trying to tell me to get with it, stop dilly-dallying.  There will be a baby coming next week, or the next.  My days with Hunter as the baby are numbered– as are my days of needing help rolling over in bed.

Last night, as the sky looked like this:

I relished in the wonderful day I had swimming with my kids and stocked my freezer with 3 pans of Chicken Enchiladas.  Today is Lasagna day.

And I’m feeling ready– with each day a little more.

We were both just 20 years old.

We were soul mates from the moment we met, so even though we were so young, after 2 years of dating we knew it was time.

It was time to make it real and forever because we really couldn’t imagine being without each other.

And now we’ve lived in 4 states.  We’re waiting for our 6th baby to join us in a few weeks.

When we were both 20 years old I don’t think we had a clue what love really was, what it meant to build a family, what true happiness was and where to find it…

but 13 years later we’re starting to see.

And let me tell you– he is even better in every way than I had ever imagined, even in my 20-year-old naivety and idealism.

Happy Anniversary Barry.  I love you more than I know how to say.

You are my best.

So, I’ve been pretty neglectful of this space.  Barry had most of June off as he wound down from one assignment and prepared to start a command position this past week.  That was such a wonderful break– I never got a chance to make dinner (bummer), only had to deal with half of the poopy diapers, and had time to work on designing a new sewing pattern!  It also meant that I had a hard time figuring out my routine and how to have my own computer time.  Hopefully for the next week or so I’ll have a bit of a normal routine, but then on to swimming lessons and then a new baby…

But, do you want to see what we did today?

We went to the reservoir with friends with boats.  Why is it that every time we get to go boating I can’t water ski because I’m pregnant?  I guess since I’ve been pregnant for something like 12 years straight (or at least it feels that way).  It was still fun– my little Hunter just snuggled up as close as he could to me and fell asleep to the hum of the motor, the fresh air, and sunshine.

I’m an Idaho girl born and raised– but I didn’t grow up in potato growing Idaho.  In fact, I don’t think I really saw a potato field until I was a teenager.  I grew up in Boise, which is about as citified as Idaho can get.  (And really one of the coolest cities there is, in my humble opinion.  The Denver area, where we live now, is pretty cool, but way too big for me.  Boise is like a mini Denver.)

My brother, however, married a girl from the potato capital of the world and lives there now.  We decided to make this year’s Idaho trip to their neck of the woods.  No matter where you go, if you’re with family it’s the perfect place.  We had fun.

My brother and his family spent the winter making this little house, built in something like 1913, livable.  For $19,000 they got some good bones, but had to totally gut it.  The before pictures are pretty scary.  It amazes me how some people choose to live.  The plaster had completely fallen off the walls in some places so you could see right outside through the walls.  My brother and his wife didn’t realize that the black sink was really bright orange enamel until they did a little cleaning before the kitchen demolition.  My brother’s done an amazing job turning it into a lovely home for his family. They’ve just got to build a garage and put siding on and they can say it’s done.

My parents came out too and brought one of my little nieces.

The kids played outside every second they could.

We got there just in time to see a baby gecko hatch!

We went swimming at Lava Hot Springs,

played with Papa at the park,

and celebrated his birthday.

Did you know that there is an entire museum dedicated to the Idaho potato?

Well, now you do.  One thing I learned is that potatoes are native to South America.  They were brought to Europe by Spanish explorers, spread throughout Europe, and then were later brought to North America.  So even though Idaho is so uniquely suited to potato growing they’re not from there.  I never knew that.

More importantly, though, the museum houses the largest collection of potato mashers (neatly displayed thanks to some kid’s Eagle Scout project) and the world’s largest Pringle (technically a potato “crisp”).

There was also some prep for the front walk to be done, so all the boys pitched in to help.

Little kids sure love to do REAL work.

It kept them busy for a long time.

I sure love my family and it was so good to visit Tyler and Katie and their cute boys.  Cramming 7 extra people (or 10!) into a little house with one bathroom can be a little crazy– but it was good crazy.  And too short.

(We did venture farther than the Potato Museum– that’s where we saw the bison I posted the other day.  It will take a whole other post to show you that, so come back tomorrow.)

Since Jessica (of Very Baby and Balancing Everything) already made a post about our visit I’m going to start at the end of our vacation and work up to the beginning.

You see, when Jonah was a new baby I had a conversation with a friend where she told me her sister was using cloth diapers with her new baby and my incredulous reaction was “What, is she crazy?!  A baby generates so much laundry as it is!  And a newborn poops constantly!”  But within a day or two my curiosity got the better of me and I thought I’d venture a Google search on the internet about modern cloth diapering.  In my search I stumbled across a little internet business dedicated to selling fabric and supplies called the One Stop Diaper Shop.  A little more surfing led me to a bunch of articles written by the shop owner.  They were witty, they were at times hilarious, and they convinced me that I should at least give cloth diapering a try.  (You can see the current version of those articles here.)  I e-mailed that shop owner with I don’t know what question.  Over time there were more e-mails and discussions about natural parenting, diapering, eating healthy, natural childbirth, circumcision.  That shop owner, Jessica, invited me to read her private blog with all her research and thoughts (It was my first time hearing of such a thing as a blog and I must admit back then I felt SO voyeuristic!).  She introduced me to Hypnobirthing which empowered me in making the birth of my 3rd child my first natural birth.

Anyway, that was a long time ago– probably about 9 years!  Over that time we’ve become blog friends.  With so much in common– cloth diapering, homeschooling, religion, chronic disorganization, craftiness, parenting philosophy– we felt like we knew each other, but never really KNEW each other.  Since she lives in eastern Idaho and we were planning on going up there to visit my brother we decided to set up a date.

The bonus was that my friend Tracy, who I know and love from my involvement with the beginnings of Art of Womanhood and other TJEd related things, is in the same ward (Mormon congregation) as Jessica and her very good friend, so I got to hang out with both of them for a day!  We went out to Thai food and then ended up with our families at Jessica’s house.

We basked in the refreshing (is that a good positive spin on it?) Idaho wind.

The kids played in the back yard and gave the batting cage a try.

My kids got a fix for their Lego withdrawals.  (Jessica’s boys ran and hid in the closet when they saw me come down with my camera.)

And us moms just hung out and talked and Tracy rubbed my pregnant, swollen feet and ankles (and back and shoulders) for nearly two hours!

She’s a doula (among many, many, many other things) and I wanted to pack her up and take her home with me.  All the sitting in the car we had done did a number on my ankles and she was able to get all the swelling to go away!  If she didn’t live 10 hours away I would have her come and rub my feet and legs my whole labor.  Barry was a good sport to sit and endure all the girl talk.  I think their efforts to convince me to join them at Homeschool Swim Camp next year almost convinced him because he’s made a few comments about how I need to start practicing driving the van with the trailer attached.

This whole blogging universe is a pretty crazy thing.  It gives us a chance to find kindred spirits and to see a glimpse into others’ lives.  I was grateful for the chance to make some of my “imaginary friends” true real life friends.

And did I mention they both have chickens?  Someday, someday I will live in a place I can have chickens…

We’ve been out adventuring in the wild west (or in other words driving hours and hours through scrubby Wyoming desert) and I came back to phone messages and e-mails wondering where we were.  Here’s a photo to help you guess:

And here’s a link with another little hint.

I’ll be back soon with details, but right now I’ve got to figure out what we can eat from our bare cupboards…

A while back I told you I’d show you the new art work and rearranging I’ve done in our family room.  I did show you my new pillows, framed quotes, and my mantel.  Here’s the rest of it.

You can see what it used to look like here.   We moved the piano into this room and moved the big kid drawing table into my art room.  This has worked much better for the flow of our days.  Every morning we gather after breakfast with some singing and a prayer.  With the piano in near my desk, sewing machine, and spinning chair it was often a tradition that caused me more stress than pleasure.  Someone (read Logan) was always spinning in my chair, turning on my sewing machine, crashing into things, climbing on furniture not intended to be climbed on, being completely distracted by a book.  We haven’t eliminated the book distraction with this set-up, but there is no spinning chair or sewing machine.  Much better.

I splurged on some new alphabet art I’ve long been wanting.  I love Ida Pearle’s paper cut illustrations and thought the alphabet cards would fit well in our learning space.

I also gifted myself this wooden laser cut alphabet from bookhou.

Inspired by this homeschool space I found some fun field guide posters.  We use the bird one quite a lot.  Ian has been really interested in the human body, so I thought the skeletal system poster would be fitting for us now too.  Someday I think I’d like to add a small one with some more color — leaves or mushrooms or backyard bugs.  Or maybe a colorful embroidered alphabet sampler.  Something colorful, anyway.

I spruced up the curtains that hide the deep shelves crammed with extra school stuff and a couple of toy baskets with some patchwork stripes.  They make me happy.

Here’s another view of the old piano.  Every time we’ve moved the movers are incredulous.  It is in pretty sad shape, but it works pretty well, I think it’s pretty, and it’s ours.  Barry wants to paint it this summer.  I’m not sure how I feel about that.  It could be fun, but I also like that it is big and dark to balance our big and dark couch on the other side of the room.   I don’t know what color I’d want either.  I think maybe I’ll paint the bench and see what I think from there.

So, there you have it– our everything room.  Always a work in progress.

First off– I want to be a better blogger.  I’ve really been slacking lately.  I have a goal to write here every day this week.  (Week long goals are the most realistic for me– anything longer and I’m bound to fall off the wagon.)  What do you want to hear about?  What makes you hop over here and read what I write?  Any questions I could answer?  Anything you want to know my thoughts on?  Please, please help me out with suggestions.  I’m sure my week of posts will be more interesting if you do.

Anyway…

I have birthday posts for both Jonah and Brenna to catch up on, but I’m trumping those with this one first.  Every year on the week of my birthday Barry travels to be an Air Force judge for the International Science and Engineering Fair.  When Hunter was tiny I went along and last year Brenna joined him for a day.  This year the plan was just for him to go on his own but be home for Brenna’s birthday, leaving late that night, then be home in time to take another day off for my birthday.  That’s the plan I was in on anyway.  Meanwhile, he was cooking up another plan which included finding an overnight babysitter and purchasing plane tickets.  On my Mother’s Day my card was a printout of MY flight itinerary.  What a fun surprise!

I shopped while he perused the science projects, then we went to the beach.

(We packed light and just used my phone for a camera.)

We rented bikes and rode at a leisurely pregnant lady pace.

We rode the Ferris wheel on Santa Monica pier.

We braved the traffic and wound our way through Beverly Hills in search of trendy food from a truck to get an authentic LA experience.

We had an all around great time!  I know I am so spoiled and lucky to live this life I live.  Happy birthday to me!  (33 is still early 30s, right?)

Hope your day is a happy one!

I’ve been having fun redecorating the family room walls, but I’m not quite ready to take pictures of it all and say I’m done.   I decided today that I need to do something different in my fireplace mantel/ cubby thing so I’ve been looking for inspiring mantel arrangements and dreaming up what I could do with what I already have instead of the family photos that have been there for a year and a half.  (And, to be honest taking photos of just one corner of the room is much easier because I can keep the baskets of unfolded laundry and explosion of k-nex behind me.)

What I can say is done is the sewing of these pillows and some quotes to hang on the wall.  I have a friend who had a pretty quote printed as a photo at Costco, framed it, and gave it to me for Christmas– and I thought it was genius!  So, I took some sayings I’ve wanted displayed in my house somehow, made them into big images using Inkscape (which is kind of like Adobe Illustrator, but free), printed them as photos at Costco, and framed them.  They’ve been done for a while.  I just decided they should go here.

The top one is from Doctrine and Covenants 29:34 where the Lord says “All things unto me are spiritual.”  It’s a good reminder when I’m cooking dinner, picking up toys, helping with math, ignoring laundry that even all the mundane things that need my attention have a purpose–  they’re spiritual.  The second is a quote from Charlotte Mason that says “Education is the atmosphere we breathe, the envelope of wonder that surrounds us, held by the gravity of our daily habits.”

The 2 colorful pillows were so fun for me to make.  They’re basically 4 little quilts, pieced and quilted and turned into pillows.  Here’s one side of the first one:

I used the Joel Dewberry Modern Meadow fat quarters I had been saving to make another quilt like this.  I never was really going to get around to making that quilt, and I decided this is a much better way to enjoy the fabric anyway.

This is the other side.

I got a little crazier with the second pillow.

This one is just quilted with straight lines.

I loved making these because I got to do everything involved in making a quilt, but on a much more immediate, instant gratification scale– and I can see and enjoy them every day.

I also used some home decorator weight fabric I had in my stash to add one plain pillow.  It took all of 20 minutes (invisible zipper and all).

Here’s all 3 again in a different corner:

Obviously these are usually on the floor being jumped on or laid on, but they looked pretty here for a little while.   I’m hoping at some point this year I can get a few Rollie Pollies made for jumping and rolling and reading.  We’ll see.  I probably really should be replenishing my supply of baby girl things– and will probably be more excited about doing that as the days go on.

So, anyone have some favorite mantel photos they want to send me links too?  Feel free to leave them in the comments!