Work in Progress Tuesday...kinda

Okay, so I told you all that we got approved for a bigger house right? Yeah, I thought so, I'm pretty excited about it. Anyway, so this last week we had a 4 day weekend due to Memorial day, and since the next three weekends will be spent with Tyler spending 6-9 on Friday and 8-6 Saturday and Sunday in a seminar version of a class for school, we spend most of it hanging out, going to our favorite places and packing, everything. So I didn't get to do any craft stuff whatsoever. Which is a bummer but what are you going to do, so THIS is my work in progress. Along with other fun stuff from the weekend. :D

Yep, that is stacked boxes from carpet to ceiling filled with books and games. I've also been working on boxing up my craft stuff. That's hard because I'm not sure when I'll be able to unpack my stuff. :( SO I figure I'll pack everything BUT the stuff I need for the strip quilt. Yeah, that's the plan ;) But of course most of the house can't be packed up because it's stuff we use all the time and, like I said before, we don't know when we're moving. So I feel like I'm not actually getting anything done. BUT the pre-inspection is next monday, so hopefully we'll be moving by the end of June! :D

We walked down to the Airplane park. Kari is big into the planes right now.

This is the "unknown hero" monument.

I love this, and it was perfect for the weekend.

On friday the base held a safety event. They had stuff about DUI's, and safety around trains, proper use of car seats, and they also had firetrucks and planes opened up for people to see. Kari LOVED the airplanes. I think we've got a future pilot on our hands! You go girl! :D

She was completely fascinated. :)

Work in Progress Tuesday and a new favorite toy

After a week, this is what I have for you. I've got two squares done. Still have 46 to go. It's a lot more involved than I originally thought. Sew a seam, iron, sew another seam, iron, so on sew forth. ;) lol! I think it'll take me awhile.

My kids have had mild fevers for about a week now. I've taken temperatures enough that they think that it's a fun game...

We nurture a love of reading early. ;)

I just loved this. Today she laid down on her belly, kicked her feet in the air and read her little Belle book. :D

"Mom, leave me alone, I'm reading!"

Win! And Epic FAIL....

So I have a fail, and a win! Since I don't like that I failed, I'll talk about my success first. Plus, we ate it first so it just naturally goes in that order. ;) Okay, so we were having the missionaries over for dinner tonight. I love having the missionaries over. They will eat anything and still compliment you. ;) So I usually try new things when they come over. And we've got one that wants to be a health freak. Works for me! Last time I made a weight watchers chicken fettuccine recipe, YUM. So tonight I was in the mood for Italian. And not just any Italian, Olive Garden Italian. Yummy!! So I know I've mentioned that you can find some of their recipes online, well I tried their Venetian Apricot Chicken. Don't let the name put you off! It was fabulous! And, very, very healthy. We even had asparagus. I've been married to Tyler for almost 5 years and I just now found out that he LOVES asparagus. You got it babe! And I gotta say, when it's cooked right, it's fabulous. The trick is not to boil it for more than a minute, and once you take it out, literally put it on ice to stop it cooking. If asparagus cooks for too long it gets all squishy and bitter, yuck. Then you throw it in a saute pan with some light virgin olive oil and salt. Make it hot, and voila, yummy deliciousness. Okay, so that was my total success. It was absolutely fabulous, I recommend that recipe to everyone.

Alright, so I failed.......badly. I was trying to make this yummy looking chocolate cake from Ourbestbites.com (seriously, I love every single thing about that blog)

Yeah, I don't know what happened. I followed the directions to the letter, or at least, I'd thought I had. My cake overflowed into the oven, and fell in. It was more like a giant brownie. The missionaries still wanted to eat it. And it tasted good, it just was not pretty. And no, I didn't take a picture. I really don't want to share my failure with the blog world. :( The frosting however, was amazing and I have the left over frosting in the fridge just waiting for some nilla wafers to dip in. Yum. Well, at least something good came out of that train wreck. Maybe if you tried it, it would work, I'm not sure what I did wrong. I'll have to go through the recipe again. Ah well, you can't win them all right?

Updates and lots of pictures!!

Alrightly folks, so here's what's going on at the Haueter abode:

We've been authorized a bigger house! We're so excited (especially me, since it will definitely mean an END to basement dwelling, not to mention a bathroom on the same level as my bedroom) Our pre-inspection date is June 6th and generally speaking (obviously I can't guarantee since these guys go on their own time) the time from the pre-inspection to the day they give you keys for your new house is about two weeks. Now I'd like to have everything done before the pre-inspection. I want them to walk in, look around, say everything is perfect, and leave. SO, I have some repair work to do, a little touch up painting (from an unfortunate pink splattering during the paint wars while MaryAnn was up here last year), some holes to fill, and lots of scrubbing to do. Plus we've got a family who is moving this week who will generously donate their boxes to operation "Move Across Base" (aka, me) and so I'll be starting to sort, donate, throw away and pack up our s-t-u-f-f.....Sooooooooooo excited to de-junk my life. That, to me, is the best part of moving. Ah, lightening the load of all the crap we hold on to. :D I watch the TLC show Hoarders, and it definitely keeps me motivated to keep stuff moving out my door instead of in it.

On to another good bit of news! Tyler will officially be promoted to STAFF Sergeant on 1 July. The kind of sucky part is that he missed 1 June by 139 people. SO CLOSE. Oh well. We're excited anyway. It'll be nice for him not to be the little peon anymore, although, since they don't have any new airmen the the office, he'll still be the peon there I suppose.

On a different note, the time is fast approaching of Tyler to be kicked down to AlaBAMA for 6 weeks for level 7 training for his job. So NOT looking forward to that. I'm hoping we'll be moved in and mostly settled by the time he leaves, especially since we'll be celebrating Karielle's 3rd birthday a little bit early so that Tyler doesn't have to miss it (or make her wait until September to celebrate her birthday, which would be much crappier), we've also got to figure out something for an early anniversary thing. I wanted to go see the Bare Naked Ladies (the band people!) because they're doing a concert up here (holy cow, that surprised me!) but Tyler's doing this seminar type class that literally goes from Friday 6-10, Saturday and Sunday 8-6 or 7 p.m. for three weekends in a row and that's the weekend they start. I'm bummed, BUT he'll be that much closer to getting his degree!! :D Speaking of that, Tyler did really well this semester, despite taking three hard classes. He's still maintaining his 4.0, I'm so proud of him. :D

Oh! Last thing, then I'll get to pictures I promise, we ended up having the Rainbow wet vacuum company come show their machine in our house. Now you all know I have a Dyson (which is one of the best vacuums on the market) and a Hoover carpet cleaner, and I'd vacuumed, shampooed, then vacuumed again right before the guy came over. I wanted him to not be able to get anything out of my carpet. Yeah, that didn't happen. As much more junk as my Dyson was getting out than our first little Eureka vacuum did, this thing got out two times more. And I vacuum every day, and shampoo my carpet once every couple weeks, my carpet should NOT have had that much crap in it. Anyway, me being the clean freak that I am, with little Jillian still crawling around on the carpet, we bought it. And I've been using it for two weeks now, and I STILL want to hurl every time I take the tank out after I'm done vacuuming. Yuck. All that crap in my carpet. I realize that my carpet is like 9 years old but ew. Anyway, I highly recommend them, even if they are expensive. The thing lasts forever. Like 45 years. I wanted to get the shampooing part for free (because the thing is already so expensive, I didn't want to give them more money) so I begged and pleaded and cajolled, and in one case, actually bribed (with helping them clean and organize their toy room, which I did, and it looks great now) 4 of my friends and hopefully I'll be getting that shampooer within a week or so. :D I'll let you all know, I can't wait to get more crap out of my carpet with that thing though, this house will be sparkling by the time we move.

Okay, fine, I'm done talking now. :D

My handsome hubby. :D

Now that the weather is nice, this is how we like to spend out evenings.

The girls find that "chalk bush" fascinating.

Kari showing Jill how it's done..

And Jill trying it out.

I love this picture of my happy girl.

Jillian being a cheese at breakfast.

Lol!! That girl cracks me up.

Kari's new hairstyle of choice.

The Queen of Accessorizing.

Happy girl!

Lol!!!! This face just cracks me up. I can't help but laugh every time I look at it. :D

Have a great day everyone!!!

Work in Progress Tuesday

In order to keep myself accountable (remember that resolution I made back at the beginning of 2010? Yeah, I kind of sucked at the blogging part of that, SO this is something I'm going to try. I want to put up what I'm working on, every Tuesday, for two reasons, 1. because most of you don't get to see me or my little projects so this is how I share and 2. it will motivate me to get things done quicker so you don't always have to see unrecognizable bits and pieces of projects. On that note, you all remember that paper strip quilt I wanted to try? Well, after many nights measuring, cutting and more cutting, here's what I have....

Ta da!!! (In case you were wondering, that is 48 10 inch strips of fabric, width ranges from 1.25-2.0 inches and 48 6.25 paper squares.)

So last night I glued on the middle white strip on all 48 squares (don't worry, it's not permanently glued to your fabric :D)

Kind of hard to see, but it's a very thin strip of white, it would be the only consistent placing of fabric on all the squares. A little method to my madness as it were.

And once I was finished gluing on the white, I promptly changed my mind and decided to do the strips of the lovely tea rose buds. Back to gluing! I will be keeping the white strips for a future quilt.

I think this pink and green quilt will look so sweet with this little strip of rosebuds throughout the whole thing. :D

Well my friends, that's what I'm working on. Another update in a week!! :D

LOTS of Easter pictures!

I know that I haven't put up Easter pictures yet so without further ado...

These little skirt things were actually part of the Easter baskets! I thought it was such a cute idea.

Jillian liked to just shake the eggs. Here she's trying to keep ahold of three. :D

Kari telling us that it's a blue shark, not an egg. lol!

She really liked these fish ones from grandma and grandpa Haueter.

Jill happy with one egg. :D

And this is the new fun game, throw all the toys....

....down the stairs.

Ready....

Set....

Giggle!

Kari is in a "refuse to look at the camera" stage

I put her hair up in rollers for Easter sunday. She looked so pretty and grown up.

Can never get both kids to look at the same time..

I just adored their dresses. And I got them both 50% off which was a bonus. :D

"May the fourth be with you!" lol!!!

Hey everyone! I've been recovering from a very stressful April. Remind me not to over extend myself. It makes for a cranky Alexis. Anyway everything is going good. Tyler is on a new medicine, but it takes a while to kick in so we don't know if it'll work yet, and he had an EEG last friday. I gotta say, it was facinating to see brain waves work. They were checking to see if he was having mini seizures. Every so often his brain waves would go really squiggly and the lady would label it. I don't know if it was a good or bad thing. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. But it was pretty cool. Tyler didn't like the paste gunk they used in his hair. It looked a bit like that gummy stuff college students use to put pictures up in their dorm rooms (let's be real, we all used that stuff. I remember when I had a whole wall full of Britney Spears and you can bet my parents didn't let me use thumb tacks) Anyway, we should hear the results at his follow-up on the 22nd, if we hear earlier, than it probably won't be good news, and of course I'll let you all know. The girls are getting so big! And while they look a lot a like, their personalities are completely different. It's fun to see. And little Jillian can finally turn her butt around to get herself headed down the stairs. She's been going up and down for a couple months but had trouble remembering that you can't go down FACE first. It made for lots of little tumbles and bumps and mommy putting up a gate unless I was going up with them to play baby catcher. So when she's been doing it consistently, then the gate can come down and the girls can go upstairs whenever they want. Oh! I have a new project that I'm starting. I think I've been infected with the quilting bug. It started out small and easy, with the puff quilts and now I'm going to try a string quilt. They're gorgeous, and seem like an easier way to start traditional quilting. I'm going to actually take pictures the first time for this just in case someone decides they want me to do another class. Oh joy. Although, people say it went pretty well and they couldn't tell I wanted to throw up. lol! I'm currently turning the power point presentation into a word document so it can be sent out as a tutorial. I'm trying to figure out how to make it permanent so that people can't change it. I spent a lot of time on it, and I don't want people taking my name off and selling my tutorial. I'm still working on that. If anyone knows how to do that, please let me know. Anyway, I'll get to some pictures. Enjoy!!

This is what I want to do. Super amazing right?

Kid tested, Baby approved

Kari's blue face AFTER the scrubbing, from eating a blue dye tablet on easter.

And her hands...