A grain-free diet:

Tonight, around 5:30pm, while I was in the middle of cooking pasta for dinner and snacking on one of the two loafs of bread I made earlier in the day, I decided to look online for a connection between diet and Sjogren's Syndrome (the auto-immune thing I have). Well, sure enough the first link I click on takes me to a forum where some girl from Canada has written about her new-found Sjogren's "cure"to cut out all grain. Yes, that's right ALL grain. Now, for some of you this may not be a problem. For that girl in Canada, no big deal. For me, HUGE. I'm a little nervous I might starve to death b/c I don't know what else to eat. I mean, I almost solely live off of cereal, bread, tortillas and more cereal. No, it's really not that bad. I'm sure I'll get used to it and figure out some great recipe ideas. I hope:)

Dinner at Bapa and Bitsy's

This is how Harper dressed herself to go have dinner at Bapa and Bitsy's house.
Huge orange tomato from our garden.
Harper was a little freaked out by it.
Cool guy on the way home. We lost those awesome sunglasses at the water steps yesterday.

Out on a walk and visit with Oster's and Siira's

Out on a walk and sad because he couldn't play with any of his friends. And yes he is wearing Jesse's t-shirt which appears to be a dress:)

So we headed up the mountain to hang out with some buddies. Bethany let Harper ride her four-wheeler...think I know what Harper will be wanting for Christmas.
Sorting out rubber band bracelets. Notice Bailey and Harper's expressions...they appear to be thinking...hmmm, I wish we had some of those.

Legos!

Bailey came to me the other day and said, " look, mom, I made a lego bird. Those are the eyes and it has wings, too" I was so surprised at his creativity!

Rebuilding the bulldozer.

This boy loves legos! and I am so thankful for them:)

Bailey took these photos:

I made these gingham pants for Harper:)
He actually took about 12 photos of this shot of our neighbors.
Don't you think we need to paint our rocking chairs? I vote for either brick red or a green shade, what do you think?
Love this one of the feet.
He took quite a few of my chest I guess that was right at his eye level (this was the least revealing).

Play time for the kids while mommy was having computer time:

Just takin' a ride on the motorcyle.
I'm pretty sure Bailey was responsible for dumping Harper's toys out on her bed.
Doesn't she look so sweet and innocent sitting there with her blankie?
Proud of his handy work: making a mess of Harper's room!
She's thinking "oh dear, why is he dumping all of my toys out?"

Video of the Aquaphor incident:

Aquaphor!

Just wanted to post some more pictures of Harper getting in the Aquaphor...

Reading to Harper

The other day I came downstairs to see what the kids were up to and found this....

Backgrounds...

Sorry I have to keep changing my background. I logged on to my blog today and noticed that my awesome background "tin roof" from cutest blog on the block.com had been deleted. Ugh! So I had to spend some time searching for a new background.

Bailey loves Hide n' Seek!

Bailey is really in to hide n' seek right now and wants to play ALL the time. It's really funny to see how he has progressed at the game. At first he would start heading to his hiding spot before I even left the room. When I would go around looking for him I would drop hints for "good hiding spots" the next round he would be hiding in that particular spot. Anyway, now he's really good at hiding from me and often really startles me when I find him. This is where Harper and I found him hiding this morning! I about fell on the floor! I asked him to get back in so I could take a picture but he said it hurt him b/c he kept spinning around in there.hahaha:)

Learning to Smock

My mother-in-law, Shannon, is going to teach me how to smock. We are starting with a bishop style dress for Harper. I wanted to document the process...the picture below is what the dress looks like before being pleated. The large piece of fabric in the center is the "front," the two short pieces on either side of the "front" are the "sleeves," and the two long end pieces are the "back." I was surprised by how wide the dress is before it's pleated. I'll post updates along the way...

This is the pattern.

this is the dress.

And this is what my girl was up to while I was taking these pictures of the dress....

Yep! An entire container of Aquaphor (like Vaseline) all over her body. Not surprisingly, her skin was soft and smooth the rest of the day:)