Rose-ism: cheese (and ALLOWANCE!)

Sometimes when I get home from work, I am absolutely starving and just need a quick snack so I don't bite someone's head off before dinner. Rose is always up for a quick snack, so we now share in the habit of occasionally having "a slice of cheese to tide us over." (I am from Wisconsin, after all, so what else would tide me over until dinner?!)






Yesterday Mike picked up Rose at daycare and HE was starving. Rose, being the thoughtful girl that she is, suggested that they each have a slice of cheese "to tie us up."   




Ha!




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In other news, I think I've mentioned how infatuated Rose is with her magiclip dolls. She has been incessantly asking for more princesses, more dresses, more princes, more houses for them, etc. A couple months ago we started her Christmas list so we could deflect some of the never-ending begging for more, more, MORE. She is now up to 30+ entries and still counting.




So yesterday we decided to try a new approach: we instituted a weekly allowance to start teaching her the value of money. We're starting with $1 per week (seems reasonable for her age, no?), so she got her first dollar yesterday. She is SO excited about her dollar and has been taking very good care not to lose it. (Pretty impressively so, for a three-year-old!) She has been begging to go to Target to get a new doll for the last couple weeks, so I told that we would go yesterday afternoon and check to see how much the dolls cost.  I was bracing myself for the inevitable disappointment that I was sure would ensue she she realized that the dolls cost $5-7 each. What I was not prepared for was stubborn little miss insisting that we just weren't looking hard enough and surely there was a doll available for only $1. We must have spent 30-45 minutes in the toy section at Target, with her stubbornly insisting that we look harder (and ask for help!) and me stubbornly insisting that she would just have to start saving her money because EVERYTHING in the entire STORE costs more than a dollar. ARGH!




I finally got her out of there, but I still don't think she's convinced.

Brave girl (in blue)

miscellaneous photos

Man, I feel like it's just been forever since I last blogged! I guess it's been awhile since I've had some time to slow down and organize my thoughts. Gotta love a three-day weekend!! And, I suppose our six-month trial with an alternate (and horrible) internet service provider probably also played a role. So now we're back to the devil we know. Sigh. But at least it actually works. ANYWAY, here are a couple random photos from the past few weeks:

Mike and Rose each started back at school last week. Mike was in teacher training and his students all start tomorrow. Rose had one last week in preschool and tomorrow will be starting "young pre-k." In other words, she'll have this school year, then next year in "older pre-K," and then will start kindergarten in the fall of 2017! Wow.

We tried out a new grocery store this weekend, since Target (my favorite) has been out of eggs and/or milk each time we've gone for the past few months. Rose LOVED the carts at this store, but sadly it was too expensive to make it a part of our regular routine. Next week it's back to Target for us!

Finally, I've been spending a lot of time beginning to think about next summer. Now that we know she can camp (pictures still pending from our 4th of July trip, I promise!) and we know she does pretty well in the car, I think it's time we start chipping away at our goal to visit as many National Parks as possible before she graduates from high school! Assuming I can actually take a full two weeks off from work, our tentative plan is:
Day 1 (Sat): drive to Badlands NP
Day 2 (Sun): explore (hike) in the Badlands
Day 3 (Mon): explore the Black Hills (including Wind Cave NP)
Day 4 (Tues):    "
Day 5 (Wed): drive through Wyoming
Day 6 (Thurs): explore Grand Tetons NP
Day 7 (Fri):      "
Day 8 (Sat): explore Yellowstone
Day 9 (Sun):    "
Day 10 (Mon): drive north through Montana
Day 11 (Tues): explore Glacier NP
Day 12 (Wed):     "
Day 13 (Thurs): drive east through Montana to ND
Day 14 (Fri): explore Teddy Roosevelt NP
Day 15 (Sat): drive home
Day 16 (Sun):  relax at home for a day before returning to work

Any thoughts on the rough outline? Recommendations on what to see/do at any of these places? I've never done a "great American road trip" like this before, so I'm super excited to see if this is a model we can continue in future years or not.

weddings 2, 3 and 4 this summer

Earlier this summer, Rose and I went to my cousin Alice's wedding. We had so much fun, and she was absolutely enthralled with attending a real wedding. (Her dolls have had many, many weddings through the summer.) Sadly for her, she was not invited to the next two weddings on our docket, but she wasn't too disappointed when she found out she would be going to Grammy and Grandpa's instead!

Wedding #2 was for Mike's cousin Nate:

The funny story for this wedding is that cousin Emily and I were seated alone at the table for awhile while our husbands went to the bar for (lots of) beer. Then our new tablemates joined us, and they were very sweet but got confused about who we were and they thought Emily and I were married to each other. So now we refer to each other as "wife." :)


Wedding #3 was for Mike's cousin (on a different side of his family), Jessica. This one was down in Atlanta!

Mike's mecca: Bass Pro Shops

My first po' boy.

Wedding #4 was for my cousin Ashley. As you can see, Rose had a blast!!

So many Shirley Temples!!!!

Another four generation photo!

I can't believe how many weddings we've had this year! And they were all so different and all so fun. One more to go next weekend, then it's back to yoga pants and t-shirts every weekend :)

magiclips

Rose is in a hard-core princess phase right now, and lovingly collecting every "Magiclip" princess and dresses that she can get her hands on. These dolls go with us everywhere.

Not my hands.

The other day, Rose asked for a car for her dolls. Rather than spend even more money on this new collection, Mike crafted this vehicle for her:

Apparently she was disappointed that it didn't have seatbelts, but otherwise she loves it.

So when she asked for a house for her princesses, I was determined to avoid spending hundreds on a store-bought house, and instead we craft this one. Hey, it has windows and doors - what else could you ask for?!
 

:)

Quilt #20

I'm a little embarrassed about the amount of time it's taken me to finish this quilt. I'm still trying to figure out how to fit all my interests into the limited amount of free time I get each day - time with Rose, time to cook/bake, time with Mike, time to read, time to quilt, etc. It certainly doesn't help that I can't function with less than 7.5 hours of sleep per night!  So recently quilting fell a little to the wayside, and this this quilt took a looooong time to reach completion. I hope my friend Jane thinks it's worth it! :)

 

Lucy did not want me to mail it away! (Don't worry - I washed it before packing it up!)

NUMBER ONE
7/07 - Fractured Pinwheels (for the Burmen)

NUMBER TWO
12/07 - Roman Fence (for Gramma Larson)

NUMBER THREE
5/08 - Log Cabin (for my parents)

NUMBER FOUR
9/08 - 30s throw (for my friend Ryan's baby Evan)

NUMBER FIVE
12/08 - Stars and Stripes (for Jack and Marsha)

NUMBER SIX
12/09 - scrap quilt (for our living room)

NUMBER SEVEN
5/10 - Hug and Kiss (for the Failors)

NUMBER EIGHT
12/10 - Amish quilt (for Anne)

NUMBER NINE
12/10 - Corner Stars (for my boss Joan)

NUMBER TEN
1/11 - another 30s throw (for my friend Megan's baby Norah)

NUMBER ELEVEN
9/11 -Nature Studies Nine Patch (for friend Mitra)

NUMBER TWELVE
3/12 - I don't remember the name of the design! (for Rose's crib)

NUMBER THIRTEEN
7/13 - Christmas Cactus (for my office at work)

NUMBER FOURTEEN
8/13 - Moda Charms Toddler Quilt (for my friend Aryn's baby Vivia)

NUMBER FIFTEEN
12/13 - another Moda Charms Toddler Quilt (for Rose to have at school)

NUMBER SIXTEEN
1/14 - Checkerboard Plaids (for Mike)

NUMBER SEVENTEEN
3/14 - Scrap quilt (for Rose)

NUMBER EIGHTEEN
5/14 - Bali Sea Stars (for friend Marcy)

NUMBER NINETEEN
7/14 - Honey Honey Layer Cake Quilt (for friend Anna)

NUMBER TWENTY
8/15 - Wee Woodland (for friend Jane)

home alone again

For better or for worse, Mike and Rose are away from home again: Mike is fishing/camping in northern WI and Rose is visiting my parents. As much as I miss them both, I do still enjoy my quiet time alone. So while I'm looking forward to their return on Tuesday, until then I've been enjoying:

WED:  worked on a quilt, ate popcorn (and had a glass of wine) for dinner, watched two episodes of The Good Wife

THURS: went to Chipotle for dinner, bought some woodchips at Home Depot, did a bunch of weeding in the front garden, read some of my book

FRI: happy hour with work friends Quinn and Jacob, then saw the amazing Inside Out (seriously, go see it!!!)

My quilting buddy

SAT: finished my latest quilt, went to the post office to try to mail it (only to find that it would cost $70 to send overseas?!?), picked up my library book on hold, sorted through all the shoes in my closet and donated several to Goodwill (gaining a half size after pregnancy is apparently a real thing), ate lunch at my favorite Indian buffet with my friend Helene, picked up groceries at Costco and at Target, went (window) shoe shopping, rearranged the living room furniture, watched a few more episodes of The Good Wife

SUN: slept in (!), read the paper, started my next quilt, watched a crap-ton of episodes of The Good Wife, prepped an entree salad for a potluck lunch tomorrow, did some more quilting

Cut out lots of squares and strips...

One block done, 79 more to go!

Soon I'm off to dinner with my friend Ryan at our favorite grad school throw-back restaurant. I'm so excited!

I realized that the things I crave doing when I have the house to myself now are very different than what I craved when Rose was a baby. Back then I yearned to bake and to take a nap - two things that I was unable to at the time. Now that Rose and I do so much baking together (and now I'm no longer sleep deprived), quilting is the new thing that I crave doing when I have time alone. Apparently that means I need to find a way to do this hobby when she is around! Since she's older now, I'm optimistic that there may be a way...

Hope you all are having a great weekend!