Creative Juice

I've been chugging the creative juice lately! Christmas and Phillip's procedure costs cut our resources a bit...so I stayed home for over a week. To counter act boredom I started sewing new cute shirts for the kiddos. I am in LOVE with my new designs. The squirrel design is actually a Carter's shirt (Lia's shirt) that was so super cute I could not resist. Yikes! I only have 3 more shirts to get done, plus matching hats. That should last me until the next pay period. LOL. Yesterday, I sewed Mia a bubble skirt that actually turned out. I tried to make one a couple months ago that failed miserably. This one worked!!

Saturday we drove to Scottsbluff so I could spend my gift certificate money at JoAnn's craft store. Mia wore her coat the entire car drive, refusing to take it off. By the time we arrived at Target she was pretty hot with bright red cheeks. We were browsing the dollar bins when she suddenly ralphed all over the floor, three times in a row. Ewwwww! She was excited her barf was "it's so beautiful, mom! pretty princess pink, like my strawberry milk!" Can you tell what she likes? In the past month her speech has improved 100 fold. She uses pronouns, adjectives, articles, adverbs, possessive nouns, and verbs like a champ. I love when she gets something mixed up like, "hims wants hers binky pink." Today at Alison's Ella was being goofy. Mia told Ella, "Ella you are being bad." Ella replied, "I no bad" Mia replied, "it's not, 'I no bad', its I am not bad." Go my little grammar queen! Guess all that reading and verbal correcting is paying off. Back to Scottsbluff...Justin corralled the kids while I drifted in JoAnn's. It was heaven. We ended up not using the gift card because it had to be activated on a home computer. Sometimes I really hate JoAnn's because their web site is awful and their stores can be strange. We ended the evening with a fun dinner at a Chinese place in honor of New Year's Day. Before we drove home we made a stop at Home Depot. I finally got supplies to make some backdrops for my "studio." I had an awesome idea so we will see if it actually works. Details forthcoming.

The biggest loser contest started this morning. I got up earlier than usual, because Phillip woke me up at 6:00 am, so I exercised and showered before the kids woke up. That was a little strange. I am eating my breakfast shakes again and reducing my sugar intake. It was really difficult not to spray some whipped cream into my mouth as a tiny snack. We need to stock up on healthier snacks.

As you can tell from Mia's photo shoot, I put up my huge black background this evening. Amelia actually asked to get her pictures taken, so I obliged with glee. I turned on "Step in Time" from Mary Poppins, then had a grand ole time. She was so funny. It was hard to get a sharp picture of her because she was wiggling so much!

Big news: Phillip can roll from his tummy to back! Yay! He is growing like a little weed. In the past week the little tyke really chunked out. He is heavy. Tomorrow he has a 4th month check up. I predict he weighs 14.5 lbs and is 23.5 inches long.