Sewing projects for 2015

I have a lot of sewing/crafting projects that I have been wanting to make, and this is the year I am going to make them. I am hoping that this will also give me some direction on what to make when I am in the mood to do some creating.

1. Ties for Russell. This one will be a relatively easy project and one that I can do when I only have a few minutes here and there. There is also a girl in our ward who said she'd like to come make some with me for her own little boy.

2. A new diaper bag. I have been wanting a new diaper bag for a while because I am not in love with the design of our current one. I have been reluctant to buy one for various reasons ie. too big, too expensive (our current one is a savers find for like 3 bucks) too many strange compartments. I bought this pattern a couple months ago because I think it will be perfect and easy enough to sew.

3. A hooded scarf. Even though we had a pretty moderate December temperature wise, we have has some really frigid days, too. I have found that I am wearing my hair up a lot more often and so the back of my neck has been freezing. I saw several on pinterest and found this pattern that makes it look pretty easy.

4. A menu board. We have a great permanent place for one in our house, and after making one for Janet for Christmas, I was very encourage to make one for ourselves. Along with a menu board I think I will also make...

5. A Family Home Evening Board. We need one. The only thing is how do I know how many assignments do I put on the board?  Maybe I'll just make a simple one for now and if more people join our family then I'll just have to make another one.

6. These towels.

I got some kitchen towels and potholders on after Christmas clearance that will make great gifts for my visting teachees this next year.

7. A warm/thermal space-suit for Ben. He needs one for working outside during these cold-cold Minnesota winters! Plus, he is a wonderful husband, so he deserves only the best that I, and NASA, can offer. 

These are only a few of the things I have been itching to make. As I make other things I'll be sure to add them to Sew Scoresby for all to see.

Christmas 2014

Waiting to go downstairs

Our Christmas.

Oh, what's that you asked? That's not our apartment? Well, we managed to move into our new-to-us-house on December 20th and cleared away enough space for us to celebrate a wonderful Christmas day in our own home. Christmas Eve was not the most wonderful day since Ben got the 24 hour bug we were passing around (he and I) and Russell had the 5 hour bug (he must have such an awesome immune system that the 24 hour bug could only last 5 hours). I guess this means there is only room for improvement for next Christmas.

We'll give you all a tour of our new house soon.

I came across this while I was packing up. They gave it to me at one of my appointments about 2 months before Meghan was born.

 I quickly glanced through it and gave it to Ben so that as my birth companion he would know what to expect (because he had probably forgotten what it was like to be my birth companion 2 short years earlier with Russell, maybe?). He felt very educated especially after looking at the back page (below).

He told me that when my face starts looking like the last one he would know for sure that I was really in labor.

Firsts

First snowfall

Russell's first snowball. He would only make snowballs the whole time we were outside.

Meghan's first snow encounter

Meghan's first snow angel. It's a little hard to see.

Meghan and Russell's first illegal ride in our van. Russell couldn't have been happier.

First marshmallow. She loved it! She will be so happy when she can eat real food. So will I,

Meghan's Quilt

Ben's Mom makes each grandchild a quilt when they are born. Russell's is Saggy Baggy Elephant.
Meghan's is also Saggy Baggy Elephant (which works perfectly since they will be sharing a room for quite a while). Her blanket has girl colors in it and has a unique arrow design.

Meghan's backing is Little Golden Book themed. Her blanket has my favorite illustration from the whole book on it--the circle of elephants around little Saggy Baggy.

Can't get a picture without him trying to get in it.

Russell needed 'me Saggy Baggy bankie' to get pictures done, too. The back of Russell's blanket is Saggy Baggy Elephant themed, and his has my second favorite picture from the book--Saggy Baggy floating in the water.

Sleep Deprived

We running on little sleep here in the Joslin home. It seems Meghan is progressively getting worse and worse so it is turning into her waking up close to every 2 hours at night. It really stinks. And, it makes me pretty crabby. We learned very quickly with Russell that I need to get sleep, so we had a plan so that I'd be able to get some sleep. Everything was going awesomely. Meghan was reliably getting 4-5 hours of sleep at a time with quite a few nights of 7-8 hours thrown in.

Then something happened.

About a month and a half ago, she started waking every 3-4, and slowly she worked herself down to last night waking every 2 stinkin' hours!

I was hoping night time wouldn't come down to this, but we got the swing out to see how she would like it. She hasn't spent a night in it, but if tonight is like last night, she is going in it right away.

Ben has also been working feverishly on the house staying there until sometime between midnight and 2:00 every night. He has taken several days off to aid in getting things done quicker. I've also been able to drop Meghan and Russell off with one of my visiting teachers so I can do stuff like scrap off old carpet pad and pull staples out of the floor.

Russell is the only one who is getting good sleep at night. He gets such good sleep that he wakes up nice and early every morning. If only he could sleep a little longer, so I could sleep a little longer in the morning, too.

I know we are a little behind, but here are Halloween pictures. I made Russell a Thomas the Tank Engine costume. Meghan was a flower.

Our only Halloween day picture. Russell had just had a melt down, Meghan is doing what she does best, and our house is a mess.

Trunk-or-treat

This girl turned 4 months old on Saturday. Her new favorite tricks are playing with her feet, sucking her first two fingers (especially when she is tired, though it doesn't help her sleep), and squirming her way around the floor to get Russell's toys her leaves on the floor. Lots of people have been saying that she looks like her mommy lately :) We broke out this toy for her to play with and she loves it. Russell loves it, too, and plays with any chance he gets. She is always moving.

Sloppy Joe Jack-o-lantern pie

We had this sloppy joe jack-o-lantern pie last night. It was really delicious even though it didn't turn out very orange.

I used a regular can of sloppy joe mix plus I added in three chopped carrots and the rest of a green pepper that we had in the fridge. It really added something to our regular sloppy joe mix. Russell didn't even know he was eating green peppers!

This is probably going to be added into our regular dinner rotation except I don't think I will carve a pumpkin face into it each time. 

Eyeball Spaghetti

Wednesday's dinner was eyeball spaghetti (or halloween spaghetti). It was popular with Russell until it was time to actually eat. Ben liked it, especially with the green olives. I ate mine without eyes in it.

I had to buy black food coloring to color the spaghetti and mine didn't turn out nearly as dark as the picture. I did doctor up the spaghetti sauce like she suggests, and it was really good.

We didn't get around to carving a pumpkin last night. Ben came home from school about 4:45 and had to leave for Patrol leader Council at 5:30, so it was a pretty quick meal. I didn't have much stamina to handle Meghan and Russell while trying to carve a pumpkin. Maybe we'll do two tonight.

Mummy Dogs and a Kitty Lantern

Tuesday we had Mummy dogs for dinner. It was a huge hit with Russell! I decided to make my own dough, which tasted great, but didn't wrap around the dogs nicely. Store bought crescent dough would probably be easier to work with.

 Ben also liked the dogs and the dough wrapped around them. He ate 4. Here is today's jack-o-lantern. A kitty. It was fun to carve.

Halloween Week

This week we are doing halloween dinners each night of the week. Last night we had Zombie Taco Salad.

Chips on the bottom, taco meat and beans next, salsa, lettuce for hair, cheese for skin falling off, sour cream eyes with olive pupils, and a tomato mouth. It was a toss up on whether or not it was a hit. Russell is on and off about whether he wants to eat dinner these days.

We also decided we would carve one pumpkin a night this week since we ended up with  five pumpkins. Last night's pumpkin was a traditional style jack-o-lantern.

Russell was much more into carving the pumpkin this year, though he still didn't want to stick his hand in the pumpkin.

Fall

Sister Missionaries

WARNING!!! This post has some personal opinions that some could find offensive. I do not mean to offend.  I do know that President Monson is a prophet, so don't start worrying that I am going astray.

I think most people are familiar with my mission story.  I wasn't ever going to go on a mission. Ever. Then upon graduating I felt very strongly that I needed to go on a mission, and being obedient, I went. For the first little while I kept wondering what could happen that could get me sent home honorably (so did the mission president's wife), but in the end, it ended up being one of the best experiences of my life that I would never skip.

When it was announced that sisters could start going at 19, I was shocked. I know they have played around with mission ages before, but that was a long time ago. I wondered what it would be like.

Since then, I have watched, interested, by the sidelines as this change took place. We had sisters in our first Rochester ward for maybe a month before we moved and haven't had any in our current ward, yet I am always intrigued by what I see and hear and read.

Once when we were visiting Mom and Dad, we went to church and before Sacrament Meeting started I was looking around to see who I knew. I saw some girls and didn't recognize them. I asked Mom who they were and she told me they were the sisters. I could see no differences between them and all the other females in the ward (the name tags must have been hidden or something).

Shortly after the announcement, I saw something on BYUtv about the lowering of mission age for sisters and during one interview one girl said something along the lines of "I think more girls would go but the mission age is so old that we all get married before we are old enough to go. If the mission age had been 19 when I was 19 I totally would have gone." Something about that irked me.

It seems like it has become the newest trendy thing for sisters to serve missions. It isn't a huge sacrifice. They can pretty much wear anything. What do I know. Maybe I am just bitter because it was not the cool thing to do when I went. It doesn't look like a cop out of something to do when you aren't married and have graduated from college. And, I know that there are those sisters who go at 19 who have sincerely felt the need to go.

Sister Scoresby returning in all her honor and great glory. See how I am glowing? 

So, I was happy to hear President Monson say the following, "We reaffirm that missionary work is a priesthood duty, and we encourage all worthy and able young men to serve. We are very grateful for the young women who also serve. They make a significant contribution, although they are not under the same mandate to serve as are the young men." Amen. I will gladly tell our kids this and make sure that the girls feel no pressure to serve (though Meghan's baby blessing did talk about going on a mission).

We have heat!

We got our furnace and water heater installed last week. Yay!

Pumpkin time

Early in the spring, we managed to snag an awesome deal on some 'expired' seeds at the market here in town. 5 cents each. Ben bought $2.00 worth of seeds with the defense that if they didn't grow we would only be out $2.00. So, we planted some and the pumpkins were some of the only ones that came up.

And, they kept growing.

The pumpkins were very fruitful. It seemed like every time we went to the garden it had grown another branch to take over yet another part of the garden. Then pumpkins started showing up. It was very exciting. We even had new pumpkins show up a couple weeks ago. Russell always got excited to count the pumpkins.

Imagine our despair when Ben went out to check them Saturday and they were all gone! Every last one!7 pumpkins gone with the littlest one which was rotting left behind. Ben and I were ticked off because the pumpkins were one of our more  productive plants. We told Russell and he was sad that the pumpkins were gone. I also emailed the lady in charge of the gardens and asked her if  she knew if someone had mistakenly taken them. When Ben got back from the priesthood session of conference he scoured the garden and found one pumpkin that was hidden under leaves and by the very edge of the garden next to the fence where the weeds grew really well.

Today after dinner, one of the old ladies knocked on our door with one of our pumpkins! Apparently the son of the lady in charge of the gardens had taken them because he was afraid they would get ruined from the frost. He had more of them in the his car. He must have forgotten how many he had taken from our garden because we only got 4 from him. Oh well. We now have enough pumpkins for each of us plus one extra.

And, in Meghan news...last week she rolled over from her front to her back. Then yesterday she rolled from her back to her front. I couldn't believe it, but Ben said she had done it earlier, too. But, never fear, she hasn't done any rolling at all today.

We took a fall drive last week to look at the leaves. They were not great, but it was a nice Sunday drive in the fall.

Don't mind the sideways view...

Fitbit

Last school year, DESH was offering Fitbits to teachers as an incentive to help them be healthy. Ben got one of them . It sat on his bedside table for months. I told him I would use it after I had Meghan, so about a month ago, I got it and set it all up.

It has been fun to see how active or how very inactive I am in a day. Take today for example. I ran errands this morning, did laundry when we got home, then walked to the park where they have the farmer's market. I ended up the day by hanging up some notices for the apartments. That all came out to be about 9100 steps and 10 flights of stairs.

I'm not really a stickler. I don't wear it everyday, and I have very unsuccessfully tracked my sleep. I fall asleep before I can switch it over to sleep mode, plus lately I have been being awakened by one very needy girl 3 or 4 times a night. It would look like I've gotten terrible sleep the last several nights, and I have!

It is really exciting to check it throughout the day. It helps motivate me to do more even if it only is to actually walk around holding Meghan instead of just swaying in one place.

What I am looking forward to

1. The Paradise Season 2 is starting on Sunday! If you don't know what it is you are missing out. Netflix has season 1, so you can binge watch it before Sunday to get all caught up and ready for season 2.

 2. Netflix now has Season 3 of Call the Midwife. I started watching it before Meghan was born and then took a hiatus right before she was born and a little while after she was born because I didn't want to put too many ideas into my head about what could go wrong, etc. Last week I finished Season 2 and was bummed I couldn't watch more, but we got an email from Netflix saying it had the next Season. Yay!!

3. My Sunday school lesson is going to be awesome this next week. I found a really cool idea from another teacher that incorporates making cookies using ingredients that are almost the same as the real ones to illustrate how we have to keep the commandments to become like Heavenly Father. I think my 12-13 year olds will like it.

4. Pumpkin recipes. 'Nuf said. Well, not really. We had pumpkin biscuits and caramel pumpkin pound cake this week and both were delicious! I made sure to stock up on pumpkin at Aldi last time I was there so I can make lots of yummy taste treats in the upcoming months.

5. Moving. I really can't wait to be out of here and not have to deal with all the apartment stuff. And, to have my own house.

As of late

Russell and Meghan have had lots of bonding experiences lately. Russell sure does love to hold Meghan.

 I made some big brother/little sister shirts for them before Meghan was born. Now she is big enough that she can almost fit, so I tried for a photo op. This was the best picture.

 This one is my favorite one. And, to think I am blessed to spend all day with these two charming angels.

Meghan had her two month check up a couple of weeks ago and the doctor suggested trying probiotic drops to help with her fussiness. I think it has worked some, but I feel the biggest difference is in her sleeping at night. She has had quite a few nights where she has slept from about 8 or 9 pm until 5. It has been really nice. Now if only she could sleep during the day.