Remember Color?

Click on the highlighted word to go to another website.

Remember the post we did on Color?

O.k.

Now is the time to check out what your color pick says about you. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the pictures that you sent along with your descriptions of why you chose a particular color. What surprised me was the number of people, out of this group, who chose a form of blue. Almost everyone.

Check out the "color" website and then let us know what you think about it. I was surprised at how most of it was pretty accurate for me. But I'd love to hear what you all think of it and if you think it was accurate with you or not. Just something fun to do.

Some Days...

I guess I need to start back a couple of days ago. I had everyone running around the house gathering trash for the truck that was coming soon. So as Kaitlyn leaned over the kitchen trash bag (you know the lawn size bags) I notice that there is a large pie slice piece missing out of the rim of the ceramic bathroom trash can that I had looked all over Hades for. So I quite angrily started in on who, how and why. Only to be told by anyone and everyone who has ever used that bathroom, that "I don't know" did it. I went absolutely ballistic. After calming myself down, I walked downstairs and completely stripped the bathroom of all the pretties. Now none of them have to concern themselves with worry about something being destroyed and not knowing WHO is responsible. Yes, I do feel better and my intention is to use the pretties in my own bathroom.

From this came a cleaning frenzy the likes that this house has never seen.


Olivia and Jolie's room was littered with garbage that they insisted they would perish without. So I gave them an ultimatum. You clean it or I'll clean it. 1 day later their room is spotless and they have a lot to be proud of with their hard work. They did a great job!

Kristina's room is your typical teen room. Just without the clutter. I'm so proud of her for getting this accomplished, without Mom having to froth at the mouth and threatened to do it myself. Hooray Kristina!

Yes, she likes fans, lanterns and dream catchers.

For what ever reason this group feels that our basement is theirs to trash and destroy with their crap. So in all this frenzy of elimination they also had the privilege of cleaning the poolroom and common areas. I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I did taking them. May I present my CLEAN basement.

Now we have the possibility of a Albuquerque low hitting us this evening and for the next few days. So if I were to tell the future...... and I were to look in my crystal ball.... I think I'd see a lot more cleaning for our home.

Just another day.......right?

Anticipation...
Satisfaction...
My boys faces just tell it all! They couldn't wait for Dad to blow out those candles.

Kristina out did herself again with this birthday cake for her daddy. The bottom held a Quiche dish size chocolate chip cookie. Above was a German Chocolate Cake with Vanilla AND Butter Coconut Icing. Only to be topped with shredded coconut, pecans and chunks of chocolate. A chocolate lovers dream.
We've been at cleaning all morning and most of yesterday. The common areas in the basement are clutter free and clean. Such an enjoyable experience to walk down there now. I'm concentrating my efforts on the little girls room. They are of the mind to set up their beds into bunks again. O.k. with me. I'm of the mind to de-clutter and organize their room. Throw out what I consider to be trash, (the whining you can only imagine), and give them the most for their space needs. The boys are loving listening to all the whining and are even attempting some of it themselves as teasing for the girls. The jokes on these guys! They're next!!! HAHAHAHA!


Here is the latest addition to my bag of "in progress" pieces. I absolutely love the colors in this piece and of course I can't seem to capture with the camera their beauty. Two shades of red, accented with a gorgeous blue and a unbelievably deep purple. I'm considering starting another piece in the next few days. All of these projects are beautiful, but very repetitious. I'm enjoying having the availability of different stitches in the different projects.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy Birthday Dad!

From all of us - Suzanne

Kaitlyn, Kristina, Olivia, Jolie, Parker and Hunter

Max & Jake also.

Spring is in the air...

Kristina bought these tulips for Jolie the other day along with a huge box of brownies in the hopes of her feeling better. Well I don't know if Jolie truely appreciated the flowers (the brownies were a hit!) but the tulips did wonders for me. Just had to take a picture of them.

Feeling better everyone seems to be on the mend with Jolie taking the longest to show really good improvement. I'm thinking we may be headed back to the Dr. with her.

The Lasix is doing the trick for Max. So much so that he is going outside approximately every 15 to 30 mins. After he accidently peed on Kristina I called the Dr. to ask if we can cut back on the Lasix dosage. Approval of that came just in time and we had cut him back to .5 tablet twice a day. With the cut back his coughing has somewhat returned. So I'm considering increasing his dosage to .75 tablet twice a day to see if we can find a happy medium.

Washed, blocked and dried. This shawl/lap throw is done. David really likes this one. He just had to take a picture of it.

The cashmere scarf is coming along o.k. I have decided to put my own spin on the pattern and have it be a little unique. I'm trying to reach the halfway mark on the scarf and then I will be taking a break from it and starting on something else.

Short post today

We've offically begun Spring Break. As usual my group has started the holiday off with a bang. Left to right we have Hunter (sick), Olivia (sick) and Jolie (sick). Not in the picture is Parker, who is also sick but still up and moving. We have a doctor appt today for the younger three as we think Olivia probably has just a quickie virus, feverish yesterday she is cool today. Time will tell. Thankfully we had no plans for the holiday other than celebrating Dad's birthday on Sunday.

Progress on the project is being made though slowly. This is a "North Star" scarf pattern from the "Arctic Lace" book. Beautiful Eskimo based patterns all made with Musk Ox fiber. I'm not using that fiber though I'd love to at some point in time. (The Musk Ox fiber comes dearly at $80 a skein, locally.)

The pattern repeat is 55 rows. What I have in this picture is about 45 rows and it measures about 6". This Cashmere yarn is very fine and delicate. Makes you think the finished project will probably float in the air if thrown up. Amazingly lightweight.

Max and other news...

Max and I went in for his once a year check up yesterday. Jake goes next Monday. We had the embarrassing weigh in. (9.5 lbs. Max this really is a decent weight for a guy your size) Then off to the room for the degrading temp check and the Bordetella vaccine (kennel cough). Once that was all over Dr. Buxton came in for the exam. Max got a full going over all the while trying to sit there with his last ounce of dignity in place. Last year Max was diagnosed with a heart murmur. (Can anyone think of a better house for a dog with a heart condition to live in!!! He fits in just perfectly.) This year it has been upgraded. Meaning that its gotten a bit worse. With the coughing that Max has been doing of late Dr. felt that perhaps Max was retaining a bit more fluid than necessary. So Max is now taking Lasix to help eliminate the excess fluid. Dr. told me that we could possibly tell a difference after one pill. Boy was he right! No coughing at all out of Max. I'm so glad this has worked and I'm anxious to tell Dr. about it when he calls tomorrow. Yeah Max!
Finished "the project". Here is a picture of the monster. Now don't get me wrong. It really is a lovely piece and I'm thrilled to have it in my possession to enjoy, but I'm thrilled to be done with it also. That edging! though fun to do, at first, is quite tedious and you do get tired of doing the same thing over and over again. Actually, 213 little triangles....... each with 6 rows.......me! doing nothing else for 3 days. I won't be doing that pattern again for a while or at best I'll not put a time limit on myself for completion.
Now to get it washed and blocked.




Happy Saint Patrick's Day!


Jolie home sick today. Came home from school yesterday looking depleted. Sure enough I didn't even have to take her temp to see she was feverish. So here we go again. She is the first and I'm anxious to see who comes next.
Have already started the next project. Cashmere! Wonderful Cashmere! Wow! I love this stuff. So soft and slippery on the needles. Carefully, I'm knitting so as to not drop a stitch. Don't want to have to rip out rows of knitting on this. Yes, this has rows of knitting on it.

Lazy week and weekend...

My life, of late, has revolved around getting this done. Does it look like I've accomplished more than the last pictures I took? I hope so! My original completion time frame was two weeks. Which would have been yesterday. Though close I did not finish this project. I'm working on the edging. I have been for two days now. This is tedious, time consuming and hot work. But today is going to be the day, I hope.

My next project is already ready and waiting for me to get started. Cashmere! I can't wait. I've never worked with Cashmere before, don't even own anything made of Cashmere. The yarn feels simply divine in your hands and wonderfully soft against your skin. Ooooo...mmmm....

Craig came into town for a weekend visit. We all enjoyed having him here and the kids were thrilled to have someone other than their big sisters to play checkers with.

Jolie and Parker barely able to contain themselves with Kristina's latest creation which she promptly took to school and shared with everyone up there, but not any of us! Oh well, the last thing we need is another round of cavities or more weight on the scales. Apparently this creation was a hit and everyone was waiting in line for Kristina's Brownie before anything else was served. Does look sinfully good!

David and Craig came back from shopping yesterday with a surprise for me, a clip on IPod! Anyone who knows anything about me, knows I'm not up on the latest gagetry and really don't care. But ... I have to admit to this being pretty cool. Last year David bought me a refurbished IPod shuffle for about $20 on EBay to use while riding. We ended up purchasing a lot more and selling them to riding friends. So that just about everyone we rode with had their own music. Anyway, at some point mine was broken and I didn't have my riding music to keep me company on long rides. This is the replacement for that IPod. Its about 1.5" long and .5 oz's. Pretty cool!

Snowing Again but I'm going to Ignore it...

What's not to love about Artichoke Dip? Its absolutely fabulous. So I made some for Devonia and I before I headed home to Colorado. I just had to share this pic of it as I'm going to be making some more tomorrow. Yum! Should be a good snack for tomorrow.

As you know Kaitlyn turned 17 while I was away. So when I got home she had a decision to make. A birthday dinner out or a favorite made at home. Well as you can see she picked her favorite at home. Lasagna.
Followed by different kinds of cheesecake.

Notice that the candles do add up to 17.
We couldn't find the #7 candle.




My new project. This pic is from Tuesday (3 days worth of work). You should see it now.

Kristina was one of 5 students from Summit chosen to present to the Board of Education Thursday afternoon on the Pre-school Literacy Program that the students of Summit participate in. They read to and encourage the pre-schoolers to learn to read. We got to see a video of Kristina reading to a small group and then being interviewed by Dist. 20. (We're going to try to get a copy of that video) A lot of these kiddo's are challenged in some way. While presenting to the board they also had to state how the experience had effected them and enhanced their own learning experiences. It was a chance for the

board to meet kids who are working in and with District 20 to better their and others learning. Afterwards they all got to shake hands with the different board members. It was an experience that Kristina won't forget and we won't either.

Tuesday....

This just seemed appropreiate for today, after yesterday. Some days I really do wonder....

Beautiful day. Warm weather. All the kiddo's in school. Hunger pangs drove David and I to head out on our bikes for a ride and a cheap lunch somewhere fairly far away so we could enjoy the warm weather.

After getting to our place of choice and ordering, we were sitting there enjoying the quiet, a little table and I was really sipping unceremoniously at my vanilla latte. You know those days. Just wonderfully relaxing.

My phone rang. (I didn't even remember turning it on) Thankfully I did. The school calling. Diane says, "Suzanne?" My reply, "Oh God." Diane - "Yep! I'm calling about Hunter."

This is the child who I had dropped off at school not more than 40 min's ago. Completely fine and ready for a great day of school.

My question, "What's going on?" Diane's wonderful response, "Hunter just threw up ALL over the place." Me!, "What! He was absolutely fine when I dropped him off!" Diane's giggling now, "Yep!" My meek response, "O.k. I'll be there in 30 - 45 mins".

We have to get home. Change vehicles and get to the school. We arrive home and David jumps in the car and races down to the school while I prepare the family room couch for Hunter.

After a 1.5 hour nap, Hunter was doing great and ready for a snack, playtime outside and lots of running and chasing his brother and sisters. I'd say he is just fine.

***Still working on the post for "Colors". Waiting on more entries before I explain myself on why I wanted this. So don't forget to check on the "Colors" post to see the latest entries or to send yours in!***