Of Snow and Pets and Projects

We have really enjoyed all the snow sprinkles this year. Seems like every other week there's a chance of another dusting, and we have played in all of it! Sometimes without our coats on, yet, even. After running some errands, we returned home to enough snow to make snowballs out of! Camten and Trinity got right to it, while I ran in the house for coats and socks and gloves.

Let me introduce our newest family member! :-)

This is Bumpity Bunny, a red-hair rabbit Jeremy surprised me with right before Christmas. He brought him home from a "Chili Feed" at the Burns Feed Store - a Boring specialty! I was SO surprised 'cause Jeremy showed me the water bottle he'd won first, and some other cool trinkets before plopping a cardboard box on the counter announcing he had an early Christmas gift for me! The best part is, Bumpity lives just outside my kitchen window and we visit all the time - yes, that's 3-way conversations, if we include the Fish in the Big Jar. (He's still just "fish".) More often we have a 4-way, 'cause Trinity's learned how to pull up a stool and play in the soap suds. Fun times!


Shad and Aidan both made experiments for the Science Fair at school this year. Aidan showed how these pencils he got from the local fire department change color with heat and cold. He demonstrated in cups of water. Shad created a marble chute and showed how heavier marbles fall faster. I let the boys take pictures of their experiments for their displays, and found this winner:

This is Aidan and Porky posing with Shad's experiment!

Porky has become a phenomenon this winter. He goes everywhere with Aidan and requires the smallest amount of food and drink. Aidan has made him into such a fun pet that everyone who meets him needs to have one just like him! So it is that Trinity has her puppies (and bears and ponies and bunnies... ok, so maybe SHE started it!), Shad has WaWi, a Chihuahua puppy, and Camten has a fluffy dog of some mysterious name.

My New Year's Resolution this year is to make a huge quilt! Here are my first 3 blocks nearly completed. I'm pretty excited. It's going to be a "Sampler" and have cool cars all over it - Chevy's, of course, with the Camaro in particular highlighted, 'cause it's for us! I got

the idea in a magazine that showed how easy it is to "Quilt a Sampler - the Prairie Girl Way!"

They had quotes from a book, The Prairie Girl's Guide to Life, that looked so fun and simple and DEEP - Like, going back to simple things. I took it pretty far and actually pulled out my Little House books and read thru them as I figured out how my sewing machine works (again) and picked out some material from my enthusiastic stash. So far I've spent $6 on batting and a thimble, that I still can't figure out how to use (if I poke myself, at least I know where the needle is!)

Naturally, we had one scare already where I LOST the needle and we turned the living room upside down before finding it - discovering how badly I was behind in some simple cleaning. The Quilting project was paused to vacuum and pick up and re-organize, etc, etc. I think I can confidently say this will be a year-long project (or more) at my pace.