Playing catch-up

Meeting Zak and Weezy

Playing in the snow/ice
(when it was here)

Making some home made chicken broth. Mmmmmmmm..

Tam's new tag

So my friend Tamara tagged me once again and for once I'm following through. Probably because it's so easy. So here's what she says:

"This one is simple, and all you have to do is upload a picture that is already saved on your computer. My life is in the FAST LANE these days, and I LOVE simple!

Here's what you have to do: Look in your pictures folder, and open up the fifth folder. In the fifth folder, you have to upload the fifth picture. (Why so many #5s???? Because what I say goes! HA!) It's really that simple. Then, underneath it, explain the pic and pass it on. And who am I to judge....really, even if you're NOT tagged...you can still do it, just b/c you can...just b/c I LOVE you!"

Alright Tam, here you go:


This is Trevor. He's the little boy that I used to watch full-time. He was super cute and very well behaved. I started watching him last year in January and I had him from 8-4:30, Monday through Friday until this past December. It was a great way to earn extra cash to pay off those student loans, and Isabelle learned a lot about dealing with someone younger than her. It wasn't easy watching someone else's child so much, but it was still a great experience. I love it that he and Isabelle still give each other big hugs every time they see each other at church.

Have you ever read

So have any of you ever read this book??? I think most people get the opportunity to read this book in High School, but this was a new one for me. I just want to say this about the book:

It is a sad book! Not sad as in "you'll cry your eyes out" sad, but rather heart breaking sad. The book spans the adult life of a farmer in China in the late 1800's/early 1900's named Wang Lung. In the beginning you revel in the strange love that exists between his wife O-lan and he. In the middle you want to cheer for the poor family in their success, but worry about the consequences of this success. In the end, you are sad for this man for not seeing fully what he could have had -- true happiness. For any of you who haven't read the book, I won't spoil the story for you. It's a good one and I really recommend reading it. I found my copy at a used book store for $1. :-)

The new arrivals!

Abram & Samuel Kelly



My Brother and his wife Denise welcomed their twin boys to their family early this morning. I'm so excited for them and can't wait to see them in person! Congratulations you guys!

btw.... this makes FIVE kids for them. ACK!!!!!!!! :-)

Today is a great day

Why is today a great day?

Well, I'll tell you.

I don't have any kids today.

Nope.

One is at school until 4:00.

The other is at a friend's house until then.

Today is a great day!

Ew......

Can you just say "Poor yarn choice"? Blech.......

So yeah, I totally thought to myself when I was at the store, "Hey, this yarn is cheap AND it's self-striping (meaning, it creates it's own stripes) -- This yarn will be great for making my first pair of gloves!" Um.... no. This is just plain disgusting. The pinky finger looks like a moldy lil' smokey sausage. The ring finger looks like a piece of poop dipped in lint, and don't even get me started on the middle finger. When I was knitting it, I had the other two fingers pushed back inside the glove and it was like I was flipping myself off the whole time. And to be honest, I could have handled that if it had been pretty. But an ugly middle finger? I just can't handle that.

So, back to the drawing board. Maybe I'll use the yarn for something else some day. Who knows, one of you lucky gals just might get a pair of lovely socks made from this crap.

BTW.... yes, that is my nasty carpet. All the years and all the places we have lived in, I have never experienced such nasty carpet. We have had it cleaned so many times and it doesn't matter. It's disgusting. It's crunchy. And if you're wearing shorts, it actually hurts to sit on it.

Where I've been... aka World's longest post

So I've decided it's time for a little catch-up since my blogging has taken a real nose dive lately. For a long time it was really hard to want to blog since I couldn't post any of the things I was making for Christmas. But, now that Christmas is over, I can share them and hopefully I'll get back into posting again.

Well, the holidays for the Parker family have been pretty eventful. Originally for Thanksgiving we were just going to go see Shane's family since Tracy would be there with the new baby. However, a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, I found out my cousin Dave was going to come this year to my family's gathering. You see, we didn't have a huge extended family with tons of cousins running all over the place at family functions. We just had a few cousins that we saw regularly and Dave was the only one my age. We were very close growing up even though we only saw each other a couple of times a year. The last time we had seen each other was when Kelly was a newborn (she's 7 now).

My cousin Dave and I

I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to see him, so we decided to pull off 2 Thanksgivings this year. Thankfully, Shane's family was understanding and offered to hold their Thanksgiving on Friday so I could attend mine on Thursday. I must say though, as great as it was to see everyone, it was really disgusting to eat two thanksgiving meals back to back (I'm not a big traditional Thanksgiving meal person to begin with). Shane and I seriously considered going vegetarian for a good while just to cleanse our system of all that meat.

But anyway, like I said, we got to spend time with both sides of the family -- I got to see my favorite cousin and we also got to spend time with the stinkin' cutest baby of all time (Tracy's little boy Graham). Sorry people, I have literally never seen a cuter baby -- including my own.

The girls with their Nana and Papa at Thanksgiving

Next up obviously was Christmas. I really enjoy homemade gifts (both receiving and giving) and this year I took some advice from my sister-in-law Melissa and started making my gifts earlier in the year. In July I started knitting my dad's scarf that he had been begging for (unfortunately I don't have a picture, but it turned out perfectly!). Shortly thereafter I began working on Loren and Autumns gift (Shane's brother and sister-in-law). We had them this year for Christmas and since they were having twins, I inflicted my knitting adventures onto them. I had always wanted to make a baby sweater before and this seemed like a good opportunity. I crossed my fingers and hoped it would turn out well. Here's the final product:

Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of both the sweaters together before mailing them, so this will have to do. I'm still waiting for a picture of the boy's in them, so hopefully they turned out nice. Whether or not they did, I still had fun making them and learned a whole lot in the process.

My next great knitting adventure was for my brother Steven. He and I share and common love and interest in all things strange and bizarre. I love my brother deeply for that. This would be the same brother of the Capt. Picard commemorative plate and the Knitted Poo and Toilet paper birthday surprises. This year we had him for Christmas and I knew I had to give him something simply divine. Behold:

His very own Battle Bonnet. Isn't it a beauty???? I was even able to find a foam head for him to Display it on when he's not wearing it. You know you want one.


My next gift was to my mother who also has a great sense of humor. So here it is: My mother loves Twilight and I'm pretty sure she loves the movie more. I struggled for a long time to think of what to get her for Christmas when inspiration struck: I made her a heart locket which held 2 pictures -- A picture of my dad on one side, and a picture of Edward Cullen on the other!

I really wish I had gotten a picture of the locket. It was absolutely hysterical! This was the picture that I had used of Edward Cullen. When I gave it to my mom, I told her it was so she could have both of her loves next to her heart at all times. She loved it!

Okay, I need to get a move on.........

All of the cousins on the Kelly side of the family got to have a sleepover at Grandma's. They had a lot of fun and I'm really happy they all get along so well.

Shane's little sister Britney stayed with us for a little over a week during Christmas while his parents went out to Idaho to visit his brother Loren. If you really wanna know why I haven't been on the computer lately, it's because of this beautiful teenager. I think she was physically attached to the computer while she was here.


To Isabelle's (and everyone else's) great delight, she got two new pillows for Christmas. If you don't know about Isabelle's disgusting love of diseased pillows, you're very lucky in deed.


Kelly proclaimed that her favorite gift for Christmas this year was a doll set I put together for her. It just consisted of doll pins and stands, pieces of fabric, rubberbands, and markers so she could make all the little dolls she wanted. I was really surprised at how much she liked this gift, but I'm so glad she liked it.


Shane received his annual innapropriate trophy from me. Oh wait.... I don't think that's a story I've shared on here before. Hmmmmmm.... it is a great story........


Shane surprised me with an amazing rendition of his anniversary gift from earlier this year. I can't even begin to tell you how much I love that shirt. I'm considering having it framed.


And lastly the girls received gift certificates to Build-a-bear workshop from Santa this year. The girls had a great time and thought Santa was the coolest for doing that.

But now that Christmas is over I needed something to help with my need for knitting (it soothes my insomnia). So now I have decided to learn how to knit a pair of gloves. We'll see what happens when I start to get to the individual fingers...........