Jack Phillip

What a wonderful weekend!

We spent most of Saturday with some good friends of ours, the Rex's.  Jason did some electrical work for them and I chit chatted with Lynn all afternoon.  Such a great time of fellowship.

I finished the hand-dyed sweater for the Rex's son, Dawson.  I love it!  The color is awesome and the cabling up the front gives it a little something special.

On Sunday we got the news that our good friends Bethany and Ryan were finally having their baby!  Little Jack Phillip was born yesterday at 4:29 pm.  He was a tiny 6 lbs 13 oz and 20 inches long.  Mom did an incredible job and both are doing great.  We went up last night to see the little peanut.  What a sweet little face.  AND I can officially name my sweater!  The pattern for Jack's Hooded Sweater will be up soon.  I need to do a little tweaking to the pattern.  Bethany is our professional photog and has already said she will be doing newborn pics of Jack in his sweater.  Once she gets those up, I will get permission and swipe one for my album!

Next, up?  Another of those 5 hour Fran's Hooded Sweaters in some sweet Bernat baby bubbles with blues and greens.  The baby knitting never ends. . . I can't wait for the day when all the baby knitting is for MY baby, le sigh, someday, just not today!

Finally on Friday, I started organizing and decorating our living room.  Here are the before pics.  I am not quite finished yet.  So after pics to come!

celebrating 2011, forty-five seconds too late!

That's right, we missed it, by 45 seconds!

We went to a party held by some good friends of ours.  They just got married this summer, just bought a new house, and just announced they are pregnant!  That's a lot for two people to do in 6 months!  Anyway, we wanted to go because we had been so busy this holiday season and I had just received the news that my uncle had died.  I wanted something to take my brain off all the craziness; a New Years Eve party with good friends, sounded like a good idea.  We had a great time chatting, eating, and just hanging out.  About 10 minutes until midnight, we turned on the TV to watch Dick Clark's program.  We counted down at one minute, but 10 seconds into the countdown, one of our friends said, "Hey, my phone says there is only 10 seconds left?!?"  Another friend checked his phone and said the same thing.  We realized as the ball dropped that the boys had rewound the tv to re-watch something earlier that night and no one had ever forwarded the tv back to real time!  We missed midnight by 45 seconds.  In lieu of missing the actually new years, we rewound the tv six times and celebrated six more times!  Oh the joys of technology!

Yesterday, Jerek and I went sledding and played in the snow.  We finally got a good snowfall and Jerek was dying to go play in it.  I wish I had the tolerance to the cold that he had so I could stay out with him the whole time.  I made it a good 45 minutes though!

I also got the body of another sweater done.  It is the Telemark Sweater by Erika Flory on Ravelry.com.  I LOVE this pattern as it is so quick and easy.  I substituted the cabling from Newborn Top-Down Sweater for the garter stitch that is suppose to go about half way down the sweater.  My cabling went all the way to the bottom.

I am also excited to blog that this was my first skein of self-dyed yarn!  I have done 2 skeins so far, this one was 2 packets of lemon-lime Kool-Ade to 3.5 oz. of 100% virgin wool.  I love the look as it turned out slightly variegated!  I am not sure if you will be able to see it in the pictures, but it is a very subtle light green to light yellow change.

a Christmas for 3

This was our first Christmas, just the three of us.

It was wonderful!  We actually had to wake Jer up at 9 to get him to open his presents.  The poor kid hadn't seen his pillow before 11 three nights in a row!  Once he finally woke, he s l o w l y opened each gift.  We had to prod him to rip the paper!  Jerek received gifts from Santa and Rudolph this year . . . out of the blue he became obsessed with Rudolph and was more excited about him coming to drop off gifts then Santa!

We also celebrated Christmas with my parents on Christmas Eve.  My sister and her boyfriend (and their dog) joined us from Atlanta.  We had a great night of eating, opening gifts, and playing.

Christmas with Jason's parents was Christmas day.  We left our house around 11:30, snacked quick, and then opened gifts with his parents, 3 brothers, grandfather, and a brother's girlfriend.  Then, lots of family showed up to eat and play with the new Wii.

We had such a blessed and joyful Christmas.  We couldn't have asked for much more!

a little bit of Christmas fun

We have been extremely busy, getting ready for Christmas, at home, at church, and with family.  Last weekend was jammed packed with 3 Christmas parties, a baby shower I hosted, church, and a beautifully terrifying snowstorm.  One of the parties was the annual Beamon Christmas party that the in-laws always hold.  Below are some pictures.  We had a ton of fun.

I also finished another baby sweater yesterday.  Pictures will be uploaded soon as well as pictures of the almost finished baby sweater for Bethany and the hat!

One Month Later

My, what a busy month.  Went straight through November without posting.  I subbed quite a bunch, we were much busier over Thanksgiving because my dad came to town, busy with church, lots of 31 parties.  BUSY!  I also got some knitting done.  A sweater for my cousin Kate, which I neglected to get a picture of, a hat, and more work on Bethany's sweater and hat set.  I also finished that hat over Thanksgiving.

We also got to put our very first Christmas tree as a family of three!  Having lived with the in-laws for the past 3 1/2 years, our Christmases were always celebrated with them and we never had our "own" tree.  This year we got an almost brand new one, for only $10 from a friend, bought the decorations and lights on sale and spent the day after Thanksgiving decorating!

 Jerek decided that decorating was boring and just ate the candy canes for awhile!

 Lighting the tree MY way; every branch wrapped.  

It took forever, but it turned out beautiful!

 BEAUTIFUL!

Happy Family!

trick or treating and a sweater!

 Monstrous Nightmare from How To Train Your Dragon

blowing fire!

 roaring

 with his best buds; Ariel and the Flash

 sweet lil pumpkin

 he got tired

 reading his new halloween book with Mana

In addition to all of our Halloween festivities, I was able to finish knitting Jerek's sweater!  All that is left is to sew on the zipper and the buttons.  I have also been working on Bethany's sweater again.