Hexagon Quilt Progress

 This weekend I made some great progress on my hexagon quilt.  I'm making these diamond units and then will join them all together.

I finished three of these diamonds this weekend, all except for these last three little pieces, which I finished attaching during nap time today.

This is what it will look like when it's all connected.  I have a total of four done now.  My blues are somewhat sorted by depth of color - from dark blue to turquoise to light blue.  It seems like there are a lot of lighter colors here but that's just because those are the ones I've put together so far.  It will be a balance of the three shades in the end.  I have little snack size ziplock bags with the hexagon sets for each diamond unit so I can just grab one and not have to sort pieces. 

This is a really fun quilt to make, but it's definitely going to take forever to make a king size quilt.  But just imagine how cool this will look when it's done ;)

My Musical Little Men

 My boys love music.  Here's the baby, jammin' to the Baby Einstein classical music toy.  He holds all the musical toys up to his ear now.  This all began because we put this one on the quieter setting, then showed him how he could hear out of each ear by moving it back and forth to each ear.  He thought that was pretty cool.

 Here's what it looks like from the front.  This is actually decent music.  (Shocking from a children's toy).   It lights up too.

 So now he's into all musical noise makers.  This is a car wash toy that usually stays on the refrigerator (it's magnetic). 

 But not when the baby plays with it...

 The three year old is into making noise, er, music, too.

He actually plays pretty softly and carefully.

 But his favorite thing to do is pound on everything as if it was a drum.  Case in point - this is a stool from our outdoor play set.  I guess this qualifies him for a marching band - ha.  He also uses long Lincoln Logs to pound on every toy tub and container in the house. 

 The baby loves containers as well as the next guy.  He just prefers to sit in them... even when they're already full.  These poor little dollar store containers are going to have a short life, I'm afraid.

It's already bulging out :)

A Bunch of Cute Guy Pictures :)

 Does it get any cuter than this?  I could have titled this post "orneriness" but I think I already have a post by that name :P

 Daddy and the baby have a pretty special bond.  When Daddy comes home, baby comes running, and always wants to go see him right away.  The baby still has really bad eczema, and dry skin, and we've found that plain old vasoline works the best (along with his prescription strength eczema medicine.)  I hate the feel of the stuff.  So Dad has taken on the task of greasing the baby :D  Yeah Dad!

 I don't think I'm ever going to have to worry about the honey-do list not getting done.  I've got a lot of little honeys along with the big one that are always willing to help :)

 They even help with the dishes :)  Can you see that grin?

 This one is 100% orneriness.

 I'm not sure if he was washing dishes or cooking soapy soup, but he stayed occupied for about half an hour, and didn't make too big a mess, so it's all good.

 I tell you, if all I had in my daycare for toys was about a dozen of these tubs, we'd be good.  They all love them.  Especially my own youngest two.  The three year old thinks when you get in the bucket you also have to be covered up.  In this case he used the pillow :)  Peek-a-boo!

The baby likes the bucket too.  He crawls into it and rolls around - kind of like the fun house I loved when I was a kid.  Remember those?  You go inside this barrel type thing, and the faster you run the faster the barrel moves until you can fall down and be tumbled as if you were in a dryer... genius toy :)

 We got this stuffed animal bear in Gatlinburg.  Actually I think Bugga bought it for the eight year old when he was only a year old - or maybe two years old.  I can't remember.  Anyway, the three year old likes to wear it... with the tail end out...

 He's a regular Grizzly Adams...

 His latest love is spinning.  Here's the wind up.  Then he counts - "One, Three, GO!" and spins and falls down.  He gets all the daycare kids doing it and it gets kind of dangerous with the arms swinging around.  It's also very loud and gets everyone wound up.  I usually make them do it outside, but we're starting to get snow and soon enough we won't be able to go outside as much.  We woke up to snow again yesterday morning but I didn't take a picture - it was about like what we had the day before - just an inch or two.  It's snowing again now too, and temperatures have been in the teens overnight.  Boy do I need an indoor playground.  I thought about doing that with my garage, but then we decided to move the living room and adult dining room out there...  Still working on that one.  I can't go much farther until I buy bookshelves - which is going to take close to $1000 for the amount and style I need.  So that's on hold....

 The baby's been practicing his walking.  He's getting braver, but hasn't taken off as fast as I thought he would.  He's still pretty careful and only goes a few steps at a time.

 He's pretty excited by his new skill though :)

 When he falls down he tips over on his head like this and waits there until someone helps him do a somersault.  I really think he likes that as much as the walking :)

 It would probably be easier to walk if someone wasn't standing on your foot...

 The three year old has to get in on the action too.

 This is a perfect example of what goes on here.  The cuddly three year old cuddles the baby to death.  The baby puts up with it for a minute, then screams and pounds on him.

Oh yeah.... It's a barrel of laughs around here :)

What We've Been Up To This Week - school, play, snow and meat processin

 This past week sure has gone by fast.  I've been gone from the house quite a bit though, and that always makes me feel like I'm behind the eight ball.  This week the eight year old made a couple new headbands. We're studying ancient Egypt this year and he's really gotten into it. 

 I personally don't really care for ancient history ... or at least I didn't until this year.  We're using Tapestry of Grace for our main curriculum, and it's wonderful.  It does such a great job of linking the Bible with historical facts, and makes great connections that help us understand everything in context better.  I'm really enjoying studying ancient Egypt, which is something I never thought I would say.

 The eight year old has really taken an interest in entertaining the baby.  He is always wanting to be the one to carry him to the car or into the church or whatever.  Sort of a Duggar buddy system thing, only self-appointed :)

 The three year old was listening to music here - we have a little baby toy that plays classical music, and it's actually very pretty.  The kids (mine and the daycare kids) all know the tunes and can hum along to them very accurately.

 The baby loves playing with his brother.  He was grabbing wedgits out of the box and throwing them at his brother.  It was pretty cute ... and fairly dangerous.  He has a good arm :)

 He likes building things too ... and crashing them down.

 The baby likes to feed people - and stuffed animals.  Oh, and notice the three year old in all these pictures :)

 I just love this picture - especially the three year old.  He was hanging upside down over the side of my chair.  Can't have the baby get all the attention, you know.  Lately these two have been a little jealous of one another. If I hold one, the other comes running.  If I'm reading to one, the other runs over with a book of his own...   I don't mind.  I love being covered with little boys :)  One day all too soon, they won't be interested in hangin' out with mom anymore.

 The three year old has been sleeping overnight in the living room lately on one of the nap cots.  The baby wakes up and then the three year old would scream at him "NO! GO TO SLEEP!" which of course only made the baby cry louder.  It was getting really bad, so we started telling the three year old to move in the middle of the night instead of yelling at his brother.  Now he just prefers to sleep there, so he starts out there.  He sleeps really well too - when the daycare kids start arriving just before 7 am, he sleeps on, even though he's right in the middle of the action.  He slept until 9 am this morning!

I love the turban effect the way he's wrapped up in his blanket.  He had a fit last night when I brought him the green blanket.  He thought it was the baby's and wouldn't take it.  (All the kids use all the blankets, other than one or two that are special, so there was no reason to think he couldn't use this one.)  I finally got the blue one off his other bed and brought it to him.  Then he decided it was okay to use both of them. *sigh*
  

 I've been working a lot more with the kids on handwriting and letter and number skills.  They all love it.

 The three year old was counting acorns here.

 This morning we woke up to snow.  It's been getting cold lately and has snowed in the mountains, but this is the first we've had in town.

 Only an inch or two, and it melted pretty fast.  The three year old looked outside this morning, and said, "Holy moley of the snow! The snow's on the picnic table!"  Pretty funny.  Not sure where holy moley came from...

It wasn't nearly cold enough for a full snowsuit, but the eight year old is taking advantage of it while he can.  He's on the ski team and our local ski hill will be open again this year (they were closed last year) so he's been praying for snow.  He doesn't understand that once it's here it will stay until June.  I'm not too anxious to have it!  The only good thing about having it here this early is that it will drive the elk down from the higher places in the mountains, so maybe my husband will have a shot at one.  He jumped a herd of them last Saturday but the wind was behind him and they knew he was coming.

 Speaking of elk, that's what's else I've been up to this week.  One of the relatives gave my in-laws an elk, so I've been helping my mother-in-law process it.  She's done the majority of it, but I've enjoyed helping here when I could.  It's a lot of fun to visit.  I get a lot of town and family history that way. :) We split the meat and now my freezer is looking pretty good.

We finished up last night with the final hindquarter, and making all the burger.  We ended up with over 60 pounds of burger alone, and probably close to that amount of steak as well.  It's a lot of work to process an elk, but definitely worth the effort.  And this elk is SO good - not gamey at all and very tender.  Definitely a real blessing :)  And it takes the pressure off my husband needing to get one.  (But I still hope he does).