Saying Goodbye to October!

I just finished this Gumball Dragon for Aiden.  It was suppose to be part of a halloween cal on a group at Ravelry, but I didn't get it done on time, then I got sick with Pneumonia.  Aiden was thrilled to see it finished.

I didn't do much in the way of Halloween crochet this year, but I did manage to get this cute monster done in candy corn colors!! 

 October was a busy month for us, actually it's the start of a very busy end of year!!  My little Aiden turned 8 in October, He was super happy with his party and his gifts too. 

Pretty sure he was very happy with this cake too!!!  Although he never eats much, which is a good thing.

We also went to the Kansas Underground Salt Mines, let me tell you I was a bit freaked.  This picture was taken above ground while waiting for the next trip down.  650ft!!  The lift we went down in, was pitch black, of course!  The guide had a light on her hat, which Aiden wanted on, and he and I stayed close! 

This is one huge piece of salt!!!  This was one we could touch, they preferred you not to touch the salt walls, but there was plenty of "touchable" pieces of salt.  Not only was this one huge, but pretty thick too.

Of course we all had to wear hard hats, I think we all looked pretty cute in our hats!!! 

Just in case you were wondering where the men down in the salt mines use to "go" well wonder no more!!  Yep that is a toilet there.  If you look closely at the ground, you will see a "ton" of toilet paper and rolls from years past!!  There is a saying that what comes down tot he mines, stays in the mines!!  I will add more pics later on. 

they also had an area where a lot of movie props are stored!  This one was pretty neat.

Of course October ended with Halloween!!  I was lucky enough to have the night available to take Aiden trick or treating.  Austin stayed home to pass out candy.  This was my little Ninja, and you better believe I felt extremely safe walking around with my ninja!!!  

My OWN PERSONAL CAL!

I remember when I first learned how to crochet.........I remember the struggles in the beginning.  That was back in late 1996.  I started my first design in 2009!!  My writing style has changed over the years.  I still try to stay as unique as possible without making it too difficult to understand.  It's not just my patterns that can be difficult at times, I have come across many squares/designs that are weirdly written, or difficult......and when I am frustrated, I remind myself that they too have a right to stay as true to their style of writing.  I will be the first to admit that some of my patterns can be re-done.  I have mentioned before that I am going to start doing all my patterns and fixing them.  Well I am finally doing it, going to be my, "Re-Design Crochet a long"  Everyone is welcome to join in if you want......offer up suggestions or let me know of any corrections!  Once each one is done, I will post the pdf on Ravelry, as well as fix the pattern here.  For the squares I plan on using the following colors:

Orchid
Dark Ochid
Green, can't remember the color name, will update when I remember it.  LOL 
Border: Dark Sage

I am using these colors as these will be made into lapghans for my living room, which is mainly sage/green.  I will be working them in order that I designed this, if this helps you.  I have already started. 

Shells Around, designed this month back in 2009, so one of my first small square designs.  I remember designing this one, and it's still one my favorites.  It works best in a solid color, although I think a 2nd color for the last round would work.  If anyone works this up in a variegated, let me know.

Simple Wish, designed same month, but in 2010.  original pattern had a front post dc that extended as a "wand" for the star. 

SUMMER TEMPS ARE UPON US!!

Anyone know when the first "official" day of Summer is?  I think it came knocking early!!  I will admit that it's been a really mild spring so far, so that's good.  Last year our temps were in the triple digits in late March and April.

Austin completed his Science College course at Newman University!  He did really well, this was a dinner afterwards, I am proud of all those who were accepted and did well. 

Austin and the gentleman who made it happen for him!!!  Thank you so much!

The boys are out of school, and already it's been crazy busy.  Summer is suppose to be relaxing!!  This was at the River Festival which happens every year, it was not a very good one, seems to be going down hill every year, but mainly we go to see Aiden have fun at the Kids corner.  We did got on paddle boats which the boys enjoyed.  I love this picture of them!! 

Currently Aiden is a green belt w/blue tip in Taekwondo, he had belt testing this past Saturday, and he nailed it!!!  He did really well, so I'm sure he will be getting this blue belt sometime later this month. 

This was his group that he tested with.  some were blue belts, some were green belts.  They also did board breaking, Aiden broke two of them.  

Austin will be going to JROTC Camp this Sunday, and will be gone for the whole week, then another camp in July!  Aiden and I will miss him, but he will have fun, and gain a lot of experience and memories from both camps.  I think I will be signing up Aiden for a week long basketball camp.  It's not overnight or anything, so I think he will enjoy it.

Crochet to do list: This adorable Lego Bag for Aiden!!!!  Going to get my colors now.

You can also see some of my recent crochet projects here at my photobucket account.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!!

 

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!  

Well I hope that all the Mothers out there have a great day today!!  Being a mother sure has changed my life!  I have always looked up my own mother, she was so supportive of me, and still is.  She was always there for me, even when I knew she was angry, or disappointed in me.  From the time I can remember, she has ALWAYS made me feel loved, wanted, and safe.  I knew that no matter what I did, or was happening in my life, I could count on her!!  She taught my so many things, and even now as a mother myself, I am still using what I have learned from her, and what I still learn to this day.

I will never forget the moment I heard my boys heartbeat for the first time, the first time seeing them during the sonogram.  I will never forget the moment my eyes saw them for the first time after they were born, nor the feel of their skin, or how amazing it was to finally touch them, kiss them, look at how incredibly sweet, perfect, and amazing they were!!!  I love them so much, and have raised them to know that love, to know that I will ALWAYS stand beside them, always support them, even in anger, even when they have done something wrong.......NO MATTER WHAT.

here is a story Aiden brought home from school, I don't know who actually wrote it, but it's in a book that the kids made.

Title, "If you give a Mom a Muffin"  

Illustrated with love by: Aiden

If you give mom a muffin, she'll want some coffee to go with it.  She'll pour herself some.  

Her three year old will spill the coffee.  She'll wipe it up.  wiping the floor, she'll find dirty socks.  She'll remember she has to do laundry.  

When she puts the laundry in the washer, she'll trip over boots and bump the freezer.  

Bumping the freezer will remidn her that she has to plan supper.  She will get out a pound of hambruger and look for her cookbook.  (101 things to do with a pound of hamburger)

The cookbook is sitting under a pile of mail.  She will see the phone bill, which is due tomorrow.  She will look for her checkbook. 

While she is looking for her checkbook, the phone will ring.  Her five year old will answer and hang up.  She'll remember she wants to phone a friend for coffee.  

Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup, and chances are.....If she has a cup of coffee, her kids will have eaten the muffin that goes with it.  

"HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!"

Dear Mom, I will give you a muffin for mother's day!  Love, Aiden 

I can tell you that his drawing was super cute!!!

First Aiden had to "organize his opinion" of why he thinks I am the best mom, then he wrote it out with a picture. 

Name: Aiden

"Mom of the Year"

"My mom desservz to be mom of the year.  My mom is really super nice to me.  My mom is the best one!! My mom is super amazing.  She takes good care of me.  She can do the best in the world!"

Written in his own words spelled by him too.  :D  He then drew a picture of me with pink hair!  He knows I love pink. 

For you crocheters out there..........this is a lady who is offering a pattern for free for 48 hours......which is less now, but head over to her blog to check it out.  

Twinkie Chan

My Life is Good

That's Aiden right behind the girl with aqua pants, he is wearing the striped shirt.  He has a music program earlier this month, it was a Jazz program, and they all did awesome!!!  I will post the videos soon.  I really enjoyed being there, Sat right in the front row, he was happy to see me, I could see him looking for me, then he spotted me and waved, smiled and blew me a kiss.  How sweet!! 

Austin received the "Army Recruiting Command JROTC Award last week.  I was again very proud of him.  He has done really well in JROTC and seems to like it a lot. 

Last Saturday, Austin was spending the night with friends, so Aiden and I went swimming for a couple of hours, then came home to rest up before going bowling, but Aiden changed his mind and wanted to go to the yearly Board game day/night.  He is really into playing board games..........so he had a lot of fun.  We both did, he wanted to go to dinner, and chose Golden Corral, since they have the Cotton candy.  LOL  I really enjoyed the one on one time with him. 

Of course we had to make a trip to Wal-Mart where he wanted me to buy the Electronic Banking Monopoly game.  So I did.  he is really good at counting money, so I didn't see any harm in getting this one. 

I have designed a coaster, a dishcloth, and redesigned an older square design of mine this past week.  I am about to have them tested and will offer them online soon. 

Time to crochet!?!

I have been so busy lately!!!  Been bogged down with allergies since Spring break!  I started taking my allergy pills, but the allergies are still really bad in the morning.  You know that feeling when you are swimming and you get water in your nose?  Well that is how I feel in the mornings and it feels worse!  UGH!  I can't wait for allergy season to be over.

I also got some "Spring" cleaning done this weekend, and my body is reminding me that it's not so young anymore!  I sometimes forget that I'm 40!!  I don't feel it, well not all the time anyway, it's weird to describe,  but I have to remind myself that I am not as young as I once was, and that my body needs some rest.  It seems to take me longer to recover.  I have always had issues with my knees, ankles, and joints,  growing up I was always spraining my ankles....my knees would give out.....my feet look awful right now..........they are swollen and my ankles are really "out" there.   LOL I have to laugh about it though, if I don't, I will cry!  :D

Anyway with all that is going on, my crochet has started to get cobwebs!  I need to finish an afghan for my mothers queen size bed, will take a picture of progress soon.  I granted a wish for a lady in my crochet group, for a lapghan........she likes jewel tones, and I used a combination of 6" and 12" squares.  I used my Circle of life pattern from my recent, "Symbols of Life" designs, and a 6" "Diane's Flower" from my designs as well.  Here is the finished product......

I got it mailed to her last month! 

I also am joining, "The Crochet Crowd" challenge, starts 4-15 and ends 5-15.  This one is for the, "Ocean Waves throw"  As usual, I went crazy trying to come up with the 5 colors.  I could have went with one color or even two, but for me when I do an afghan, which I can tell you has been a very long time......for years I have done afghans using squares, not one pieces.  So this is my first in years!  I wanted to go with the amount of colors the pattern called for, and I want to use this for my living room.  You can see my couch above, it's a sage green, I have green tiled tables and a green carpet, but I was leaning reluctantly towards green for the colors, but decided NO..........I am using the below colors:

From Top to bottom: Aran, Dark Orchid, Shades of Purple, Orchid, and Watercolor.

So the water color has some green in it!  I sure hope this comes out right.  I will post updates, hopefully I will be starting on this sometime today. 

VIRUSES, BUGS, AND ALLERGIES...

You decide on the "blah" of the week!  I tell you I have been sick a lot since late last year.  It's either flu like or cold like.  Last week, I thought my head cold was into my eyes, as they were leaking and very hard to see out of.  After waking up for my 5th day with my eyes cemented shut, I decided to call the dr.  I was lucky enough to get an appt with a couple of hours.  No infection, (thankfully), but it's mainly my allergies.  So I HAVE TO, NEED TO remember to take my allergy pills!!  It seems each couple of years, my allergies come up with something new to bug me with.  This was also my 3rd visit within a few months where my blood pressure was high.  So they put me on medicine for that.  I think that explains the dizzy spells I get every so often.   I need to read up info they gave me as well as checking online about how to reduce my blood pressure.  I know stress plays a huge factor in it.  As a mother of two boys who are 8 years apart in age, I'm always under stress.

So I will work on de-stressing my life as best I can, and not letting my temper flare up.

Boys are back in school from Spring break and there is only a bit over 2 months left of school. 

Day at the Park with Aiden

We got some really nice weather this past week, Austin went to a friends, so Aiden and I decided to head to a park. First we went for a walk along the water and around the parks streams.  We saw some really amazing trees!!!  I love the trees here, especially these two!  How gorgeous are they?

I got Aiden on one of the trees, but he didn't want to take anymore after this one.......LOL I love taking pictures!!  always have.  This was too awesome of a pic not to take!

See another weird tree!  this was really awesome. 

Love how the trees are reflected against the water here.  After we went for a walk around the park, we decided to go play....well Aiden played, I watched.  he had a lot of fun, but it was getting warm, so off to Walmart we went after this.  

Boys are off school for Spring break........they actually started yesterday.  Both are looking forward to the week off.  I just hope I don't go crazy.  I am babysitting my neighbors kid for the next month and a half, so Aiden will have someone closer to his age to play with before he goes back to school.  I had both of the boys out today playing since the temps were in the 80s.  The dogs from next door even had to come over to play too.  :D 

I crocheted these apple pie potholders a few weeks back.  they came out nice.  I used Regular WW yarn instead of cotton which I do sometimes for the hot pads.  I mainly use them to place hot pans on.  So it works either way.

Busy Week

Well hopefully you can see the pictures above.  I have been trying to find a free collage/slide show maker online, but the ones I am finding are not very good.  Photobucket took the feature away!  Anyway it's been one very busy week, and another starts tomorrow.  I had to take Austin to a college university Wednesday to register him for a Science College course!! YEP you read that right, my 15 year old is going to college.  I get that it's only one class, but he gets credit for it and will give him an awesome opportunity to get a feel for college life.  Thursday he had a swim meet which went very well.  His high school has never had a boys swim team until this year!  So they are a very small team, I think in all there is about 12!  At these swim meets, the other teams are huge!!  20 or more kids.  Well this past Thursday only 5 of them showed up.  Some had other things they could not get out of doing, one got into a fight, and one had a bad grade, so hopefully they all can make it back before this season is over.  Anyway for only having 5 kids, they did really good!!!  This is what happened to Austin when he tried getting out of the pool....

When he walked over, they were both bleeding pretty good, so we got them cleaned and bandaged up, and thankfully it stopped bleeding by the time he was ready for his next race.

Friday night is when we went to see the Harlem Globetrotters, Austin has seen them before, but Aiden hadn't and his little face was lit up most of the time.  It was really fun, they are very entertaining and very good at what they do.  Aiden got a basketball and got a couple of autographs.  I think our arena needs to be better organized when letting the fans come up to get autographs.  It was a mess, We stood in line for one guy, and these parents would push us out of the way, finally I would not let it happen again, I would hold my arm out in front of them and say no you will not push my son and I out of the way.  Some got pissed, but I didn't care, I know we all wanted our kids to get autographs, but you don't shove and push other kids out of your way!!  No wonder the kids think they can do it too, they see mommy and daddy doing it, so why not them.  After the second one, I said enough!!!  There was only about 5 minutes left of autographs.  I don't blame the Globetrotters, but maybe they should just "pre-sign" items ahead of time.  I think our arena failed big time on that one.

Saturday Austin had an invitational swim meet, lasted over 6 hours!!   there were 87 heats!!!  OMG it's not natural to sit on those bleachers for 6 hours!!  Austins team did amazing!! Each kid cut seconds off of their times.  AJ came in second place in the 100 yard Butterfly!  He also cut 20 seconds off of his old time!!  I was floored to see him cut that much time!  I am so proud of him.

BURRRR RESOLUTIONS ANYONE?

This cute little owl was done as a cal in my group.  I changed the colors to reflect a winter snow owl.  He came out really cute!  If you want to crochet him as well, click HERE.

I made these fingerless gloves for Harmony, who made a wish for them in my group.  This was the very first pair I crocheted.  I never saw the point in them, but sometimes you have to make something to see the potential they have.  I loved them.  If you want the pattern, you can find in at the Red Heart site.  

I keep getting asked if I have made any New Year Resolutions.  Well I could list off the many that I always make every year, but I never really kept any of them..........but I will make just one.........

To Better Myself! 

That I think sums it all up in 3 words.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2012

Well it's now officially 2013, ok been for a couple of days now.  :D  We all survived!  had a great night, and now it's time to get 2013 kicked off to a good start! 

Looking back over 2012, Here are just a few of the highlights.

Both boys winning medals and trophys at their very first TaeKwonDo tournament.  They have been to two this year, and both did amazingly well!  Aiden is now a Green Belt and AJ is a Blue tip, they should have them tomorrow. 

AJ getting accepted into a Science college course!!  He had to write a short essay about why he thought he needed to be accepted and he got in.  So later this month, he will go one day a week to a local college and start receiving credits! 

AJ also joining the Swim team in high school.  I am always happy to see him do extra activities that will help his chances of going to college, which is also what his second language will do, as well as JROTC, which he has advanced up in ranks. 

Aiden doing so well in school.  He is so smart and is with the top of his class. 

Aiden is growing up into such a handsome, intelligent young boy........I am so grateful to have both my sons, I think about how many times I thought about having kids when I was younger, most of my younger years were spent thinking I never be a mother, I'm not sure if it was I thought I wouldn't be good at it, or the change of being a mother was scary.  During my first pregnancy, I went through a lot emotionally and physically.....I was scared beyond all belief.  I had no idea of what being a mother was..........but when AJ was born, and I saw his face for the first time, it was like no other feeling in the world, he was so beautiful, so perfect, so precious!!!  I knew then that no matter what I was going to love him more than life itself........my whole life changed. 

With Aiden, it was the same.....I was scared, excited, happy, but the feelings of fear crept into me again.........would I love him the same, could I give him the attention he needed.......would I be able to show both boys how much I loved them.......but again, seeing his face after he was born, holding him, kissing him.......I knew I loved him more than life..........I knew then that those fears were nothing.........He was so perfect, so beautiful and so darn precious!!!