my first quilt!

so i decided i was going to make a "real" quilt. i have been making rag quilts for quite some time now and am just tired of the squares. so a lady in my ward (chris greenall) was going to do a quilt class in her home but it was right during tax season. so she said she would just answer my questions as i had them. she just happens to be the mom to one of her girls that cleans my house, and the other daughter is giving blake FREE guitar lessons since he is her first student. so it just worked out great that when blake was learning guitar i could ask her a few questions while i was there. so i decided i would research online and then get going. so i got some fabric for a quilt to give to mike and maria since they didn't come here for christmas we still had all their gifts. so it was perfect. so it took me probably about 2 weeks about 3+ hours almost every night but i completed it! and i love it! i already have fabric for 2 more quilts. it is a nice was to get my mind off things and it's perfect because i can't eat and quilt so it's like a diet too. :)

The rest of our Christmas!

Well i guess christmas is over. It came and went so fast this year. But we had another great christmas and we just can't believe how blessed we are. We have 3 amazing boys a beautiful house, food in our tummies, cars we can drive and so much more to be thankful for too. We may of had our trials these last few years but we are truly grateful for everything we have and we are especially grateful to have the gospel in our lifes to help us through our days!
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This year for christmas santa brought blake a electric rock guitar, seth a real drum set and chase a huge floor piano. They loved all the gifts so much (and mom and dad were loving the advil) :) This was the first year that we had to pull them away from there santa gifts to get them to open all the other gifts. The love their instruments!
Anyways, we had a good morning at home then went to the elmer's for the afternoon. We enjoyed having dad off work that week and just tried to spend some quality time together. We went to the train museum and the snow. The older boys were obsessed with the snow they didn't want to leave! and chase did not like it at all, which suprised me since he is obsessed with being outside. he had more fun waiting in the warm car with grandma bangerter.
So here's to a new year hopefully we can have an even better year than last!

An early christmas

Well we celebrated christmas with my parents on saturday the 18th since they were leaving for hawaii on the 19th. But before we did that, seth had his pre-school performance on wednesday. They sang their christmas songs and seth actually sung along. He did very well i was very proud of him. And he sat on santa's lap and told him what he wanted and even smiled. This was a big improvement from last year. So then on saturday we headed over to my parents house to go ice skating and celebrate with them. The boys enjoyed ice skating seth was a little hesitant but blake was a natural. he held on to the 5 gallon buckets for a few minutes and then took off and we couldn't stop him the whole time we were there (almost 2 hours). We told him maybe he could take hockey classes instead of soccer this year and he was very excited! I'm excited to get him in a class soon and see how it goes. Then we enjoyed the rest of the evening at my parents house. So we headed home, and just down the street from their house we hit a pot hole...pot crater. And immediatly could tell that our tire was flat. So we pulled over to see that we weren't getting very far. so we called my dad and he came to get me and the boys to take us home, and ryan stayed to get the car home. Once he got it towed home after 2 hours we then realized that the tire didn't pop the rim bent and cracked in the front and the back tire popped. So we started calling the insurance company to find out that since our rims were after market and we didn't add them to our policy they wouldn't cover them. and then when we got it to les schwab tires they let us know that the rims we so old (7 yrs) that we couldn't find a matching one. So we had to get all 4 new rims and now are just hoping to collect some money from the county to cover the $1400 we had to spend to repair our car after we hit a stupid pot crater! We it was an interesting start to our christmas week.

wow...has it really been a month!

well i am way behind! life has been soooo crazy lately. our candle business has just taken off and i had 5 candle parties and we had 2 fundraising groups, ryan's office order, and we had 2 canadian ladies interested in our candles...one as a consultant and one to place in her store. not to mention that life is just crazy with kids in school, between the thanksgiving parties, the thanksgiving break, christmas decorating, tree shopping, goody tray's to make, shopping, and the latest activity...The Polar Express! Needless to say, i need a break! So here are some pics of our lates craziness. I love my family so much and have enjoyed every moment of this holiday season. I am also grateful that my kids are so forgiving for those moments when i just lost my patience. (baking with the kids isn't always the easiest) but i am hoping we are creating some "good" memories, and they will just remember all the good times. I love you boys!