Spring Fling

I was one of the mom's incharge of face painting at the Spring Fling today. I wanted to practice a bit last night so I sat Matt down first to paint his face. Kalia loved watching. As soon as Matt's face was done she climbed up in the chair. I hadn't planned on painting her face because I never imagined she would sit still long enough. She insisted. I told her to shut her eyes. She was so sweet and cute. She loved the butterfly. Bronson has a spider web, Mike is a tiger/lion and Matt is a bird.

Thank goodness we finally had decent weather today!! Yeah!!

and sew it goes . . . .

When I was in Jr. High I sewed a dress for Heather that I just loved. Ever since then I have hoped that some day I would have a little girl who I could sew dresses for. (Sewing for boys just isn't the same).

Over the past year I have had a lot of fun sewing dresses and skirts and even a quiet book for Kalia. I couldn't find all the pictures, but here are a few.

This is the first dress I sewed. It wasn't supposed to look like a hawaiian muu muu, but Lucky said I made a cute muu-muu. This is one of my favorites. I took a couple different patterns that I had and put them together. The dress pattern from above I used for the shirt, but then used elastic thread to do the gathers. I love the elastic thread.

I made the pattern up for this shirt and I love it. I was so sad when she outgrew it. Hopefully Melia (Heather's baby) will enjoy wearing it.

This dress was made using a charm pack. I loved all the different materials. When you tell Kali to smile for a photo, this is what you get.

When you say, "say cheese" you get this.

One Sunday Loren had to get Kali dressed for church because she was taking a nap when it started. He brought her to sacrament meeting wearing this dress. Because it is homemade it does not have a tag - this was much too difficult for Loren. The rick-rack at the top was under her armpit and the armpit hole was in the front and back - which made her chest show. Then the bow that ties in the back was tied on her side under her arm. I couldn't believe it!

Sunday Best

I love this picture of both Loren and Kali.

THE JUNGLE BOOK

I finallly found my pictures from The Jungle Book production at our grade school. All three boys were in the play. They performed it the start of April. They spend several days a week after school practicing. Matt was King Louie, Mike was Tough Tony Tiger (Shere Khan's side kick), Bron was an elephant. I was only going to put in a few pictures, but when I got going through them I found too many that I thought were really cute.

Matt is really putting his acting skills to the test.

Mike enjoyed the many practices where he got to strangle King Louie

Matt had a really cute dance scene. Of course, these pictures were taken at one of the practices where his mic was not staying on his head.

I sewed Matt's costume. It was pretty fun to put together.

I also sewed the elephant costumes. This is before I had finished fixing them. Eventually they all had legs like Bron's costume. He is on the far left.

CATCHING UP

Lisa K. sent me an e-mail today complaining about how behind I am on my blog. Yes, I know, it has been forever. However, I hardly get any comments so I figured no one really cared. Thanks Lisa. I will now play catch up.

I currently use three different cameras and could only find two of them, or you would get even more from me. I will work with what I have.

Kristy gave us their toddler bed. Kali loves it. She kneels up to it for her prayers each day. I love it. She doesn't give us any trouble getting out of bed at night. She is a great sleeper.

Whenever Bron is not around she asks for him. Just the other day we were taking a walk and Bron was riding his bike in front of us and about fell over. Kali said, "Oh. . . be careful Bronson." I think this was her first complete sentence.

Reading to her dolly.

POISON SPIDER MESA

It has been several years since I have attended on of the Moab trips. With babies and pregnancies and I don't know what else, I have usually sent Loren without me. This year Loren convinced me to come and bring all of the kids. Darin and Angela and their kids, Lee and Lisa and their kids and Grandma and Grandpa came. We had a lot of fun. I'm glad Loren convinced me. Matt, Mike, Canyon and Loren all rode their motorcycles. You can see Mike had a heck of a time in the sand. Thank goodness most of the trail was on slick rock.

Matt went up some pretty steep stuff and did a great job. Loren got a heck of a workout. He would ride his bike up, come down and help Mike, then walk back down and help Canyon.

Two pregnant sister-in-laws. I am amazed at the toughness of my sister-in-laws. I would have wimped out pregnant and stayed home. I love my Mercer family. They are all such great people.

Kali is a grandma's girl. If she was walking with me she would not let me hold her hand, but if grandma tried to hold her hand she would walk right along with her. It is really pretty sweet how much she loves both of her grandma's.

Grandpa can't be left out. She loves him too.

The big boys rode their bikes on the Slick Rock Bike Trail. Grandpa, Grandma, Kali and I walked along with Bron on his bike for a little way.

Bron has been scared of Dad's motorcycle, but by the second day he had a lot of fun on it. They did manage to crash and Bron also got a nasty burn on the bike, but he was a trooper.

We "camped" in some little cabins in Moab. The kids enjoyed the cold pool.

MATT IS A FINALIST

I received a call in November notifying me that Matt was a finalist in a contest he had entered at school. Frank Cole, the author of a new children's book had visited the schools throughout Utah. Kids from all over the state had entered the contest. They had to invent a character and personality description, that could be in one of his books from the series "Hashbrown Winters." The winning character would appear in his third book in the series. There were over 1,000 entries and seven finalists were chosen. Matt was one of those finalists. He received a gift bag and gift certificate to Barnes and Noble. He didn't win, but it was pretty cool.