Current Events

Hello! It's me again. :) I have a few minutes this morning to post some pictures of what we've been up to lately. Enjoy!

I went to time out for women in Minneapolis with a wonderful group of women, it was so much fun! We left friday and returned Saturday evening. It was like EFY for grown ups! I returned home feeling inspired to be better and much rejuvenated. I'd say the most important thing I took home was to make my time count with my children.




Happy Halloween! The girls were witches this year. I shopped the after halloween clearance last year and they even had little cauldron buckets for their candy. Sigh, so cute!




Claire is going to preschool this year, and I'm doing a co-op with some moms for Cady. I made their little welcome board and felt so proud of how it turned out that I just had to show everyone. :) Yes, I spent way too much time on it! When the girls arrive, we have them find their name, take it down, and trace it with a washable marker (they've all been laminated). They love looking at their pictures too.




Claire has started her ice skating class. I LOVE watching her do this. Her class is for 4-5 year olds and they are so darling. Yes, there is a lot of falling, but Claire is a champ and just keeps getting up. I always knew her determined personality would serve her well. :) It's nice to start seeing the benefits of this instead of hopefully telling myself, "Some day it'll be great that she's so headstrong!"



Cady is now taking gymnastics, her class of choice. She is so cute in her little leotard. Unfortunatly, the parents have to stay in a little observation room, so I was unable to get any better pictures of her. She loves to dance and tumbling is right up her alley too!




I've learned to crochet recently and it has been so much fun! I haven't had the time to branch out much yet, so far I've been making beanie caps with flowers. It is addictive and so much fun!!





I decided to participate in the Mayo craft fair this past weekend and sell my hats. I was nervous before hand, I had no idea what to expect. Everything came together perfectly though, it was really a blast! Bryce helped me the night before by assembling my little display bow holders. He drilled holes for dowel rods in some scrap wood we had and I painted them black. Bryce attached chicken wire to an extra picture frame for me. I glued fabric to the back of the frame, and voila. It was so easy! (Thanks for all of your help and ideas Sara!). The only drawback to my display was that people didn't realize that the flowers in the vase were actually hair clips!











The craft fair was buzzing the entire time, I actually sold 15 of my 20 hats (I had only infant sizes left at the end) and took orders for 32 more! I will definitely participate in this again next year. I don't think you can tell from my big smile in the picture how much fun I was really having. ;)



So, that's the past month in a nut shell. Wheew. I hope you all are doing well also, and thanks for checking out our blog!

NC part 6

Buffy came prepared with some cute crafts. One of the things she did was make sponge balls. She sliced up some sponges and tied them together. The original intention was for them to throw them at each other and get wet, but the kids discovered that there was soap in the sponges and changed the game to cleaning off Sara's back deck. :) It was a win-win situation, the kids were occupied, happy, and cleaning! By the end of the week, Claire was completely tuckered out. That girl rarely naps, but on our last day she completely slept through the play dough activity that the other cousins were doing. :) It was a very good week, and a wonderful trip.

 

 

 

 

NC part 5

After the wedding, the cousins got to spend time together. Sara, Buffy, and I went down to Sara's place in Charleston, SC for a week. It was so much fun seeing our kids play together. They are finally getting old enough where they can interact independantly and actually have fun together. It was a lot of fun for us as well, we talked about everything, ate delicious food, and stayed up way too late. :)

 

 

 

 

NC part 4

Wedding pictures. The little boy standing with Claire is her cousin Luke, he was the ring bearer. Claire, Cady, and Luke just crack me up--they wanted to do a silly face picture. What a couple of cuties.

 

 

 

 

NC part 3

Bryce came out to spend a few days with us close to my cousin's wedding. When he came, he told Claire and Cady that he had a surprise for them, and boy were they excited! He told them that before he would give it to them, they had to sit down nicely on the couch like little ladies. They sat down and delicately placed their hands in their laps and crossed their legs. They were so serious about being little ladies, it was cute. Bryce gave them biscotti from the airplane trip, and they were thrilled. :) Bryce went fishing with the girls a few times and then Bryce, Claire, and I got to go to a rehearsal dinner with the wedding party the night before the wedding. It was a nice little "date" with Claire. She was such a good girl! And finally, the day of the wedding! Claire took so many pictures and she did well considering. I loved seeing her all dressed up standing next to Nancy. I was so proud of my little girl, and Nancy made such a beautiful bride!

 

 

 

 

NC part 2

The little house we stayed in is so cute, my parents designed and built it after a picture in a magazine they once saw. Claire decided she is a cat lover, this is Paws, a cat that put up with a lot of love and affection from Claire. I was able to attend the Craven reunion (my Grandmother's family) while there. The picture is me with my Aunt Cassie, my Grandmother's oldest sister. She hasn't seen me in 10 years, and when she did she said, "You don't look like a Craven, you're so...brown!" :) She was honestly surprised at my complexion. I guess it has been a long time since she's seen me, and I definitely have the Bunton family skin. I had a good laugh at my reception from her. The last picture is Claire and Grandma cooking together, Claire loved being able to brown the meat on her own. :) She did a surprisingly good job too.

 

 

 

 

NC part 1

After a looong hiatus of blogging (and basically anything else that involves the computer), I'm back! I got hacked on my facebook account shortly after returning back from NC, and haven't had a desire to use the internet much since. I do want to fill you all in on the past 3 months, :) so here we go, starting with our trip to North Carolina.

It was a lot of fun being in North Carolina again and seeing my family! Soon after our arrival, Cady had the misfortune of falling and getting a buckle wrist fracture. We spent two days going to the hospitals and getting her arm x-rayed. It worked out though because Grandma Bunton had an accident involving a window and her upper lip (the window broke during an animal rescue attempt) and so needed stitches on the same day that we took Cady in. Hence the matching hospital bracelets. The girls had a great time, we fed the chickens, geese by the lake, went on walks, canoed, fished, played in the dirt...what more could you want?

 

 

 

 

We're ready!

I've been gearing up for our trip to NC...the girls and I leave tomorrow and will be there for 3 weeks!!! I am so incredibly excited, it feels like ages since I've seen my family. Bryce is going to be able to come out for 5 days as well.

One of the big events of our trip is my counsin Nancy's wedding. Claire gets to be the flower girl and is oh so excited about this. I finished both her and Cady's dresses. No, Cady is not a flower girl, but she wanted a pretty dress too. :) Go figure. I used a sheer fabric with Cady's dress that I had originally bought to use for Claire's dress but didn't use (I decided to go for simple elegance).

We went out and bought shoes, headbands, and necklaces yesterday. This is the result of our photo shoot. I wont be posting again for about a month, so enjoy the pictures!

More Spam Please!

I don't know what happened to me today but I woke up feeling really restless! I felt like I needed to leave not only my house but Rochester as well. I charged up the portable dvd player, re-activated the trak-fone, paged Bryce to let him know we were going on a trip, packed lunch, and away we went. We went to a place about 35 minutes away...the Spam factory!

Believe it or not, the factory is very nice to tour and it shows the history of Spam, variety of ways to cook it, sample platters, old advertisments from the 1940s, and has a little dress up and play area.

We came home 2 hours later feeling happy and refreshed. I'm going to have fun telling Bryce all of the little known facts about our dinner tonight...Spam!