royalmom

Isn’t my Lotus the sweetest?! She’s speed crawling everywhere now.

The path was started in June (when the grass was still green) and Jason has worked on it over a couple free weekends. It’s finally finished!

Clearing the dirt and many, many roots: the hardest part of the job, Jason declared.

Jason “screeding” the sand layer with two pipes and a board.

All done! And enough sand leftover for a small sandbox.

The camping equipment got a good test run before our big road trip next month.

Look! The kids aren’t buried in camping gear now that we have the roof rack storage container! Yay!

We hung out with the Beech bunch and it was a great park for kids to run around in: Play structure, pool, arcade and a full size fire truck they were allowed to climb on, in and around. I saw Simon standing on the TOP of the cab to get a basketball into the basket.

Lotus’ first time tent camping since we re-homed the RV and she had fun. She woke up in the sea of family with a big grin on her face:D

Set #1 of look-a-likes

Set #2 (and guess who is growing out his hair for now? ha!)

All together now!

After finishing a sweater I sulked a bit because it didn’t turn out exactly like I hoped.

In fact, I put my needles away, finished books, read new books and watched TV series’ on Netflix. It was a nice break…that lasted, oh…about three days. ha!

I had the itch to knit again but my mojo wasn’t 100%. The cure? Dishcloths!

Kitchen cotton is cheap and squares are easy.

…and it turns out they work amazingly well at scrubbing dishes, pots and baby faces. I made five total and chucked the scrub brush into the garbage.

Using the same cotton yarn, I moved up to this “Girlfriend Market Bag” pattern (with a few modifications). I love it! It would be wonderful to have enough for grocery shopping. All of the bags would store nicely inside a single bag in the car.

The bag holds so much. It swallows stuff up and stretches out. Barely stretched to capacity…

…and it’s holding 10 skeins of bulky yarn.

The skeins are the velvety soft wool for my next project: The Babywearer. It’s a cozy poncho I can wear over myself and Lotus while she’s in the carrier. It’s going to be wonderful when the chilly weather returns. I can’t wait!

Good thing we put the gate up early. Lotus is on the move *and* pulling up!

We bought a big, ugly, grey roof-rack storage container off Craigslist for for a road trip coming up. My sister in law Holly painted the top and my mom came today to work on the sides a bit. It should be the splash of color I was looking for!

We are so excited to be taking the family on an epic cross-country road trip from Oregon to Florida and back in September/October. There will be funky road side attractions, couch surfing, camping and diners along the way. We’ll hang out on the beach, catch lizards, go to Busch Gardens and RELAX for three weeks in Florida. We’ll enjoy more road side attractions, couch surfing, camping and diners on the way home via a completely different route.

I anticipate it being both wonderful and terrible at the same time with four young children. Ha! But we’ll still do it. Yes we will.

I babysat the neph today so, while she painted, baby Icen and I hung out and kept her company. Icen was out like a light. I wooed him with my baby whispering skills;)

…and all my pics of her will be blurry from now until she’s about 3.5 years old. 😉

I think she looks so darn cute in her diaper and T-shirt today.

Tasting a leaf…

See ya!!!!!!

So much to look at now that she knows she can get to it. haha!

Such a loving family! 😀

His first painting on canvas: A classic fruit bowl.

He got a three pack of 16×20 canvas boards for his birthday back in January and finally got brave enough to lay some color down. Two more blanks, ready for when inspiration hits again.

What a difference three months makes in the first year….

Back in May…

Now…

Hard to believe my own baby is SEVEN months already. dang!