christmas delights

ok, disclaimer.  my photography skills apparently took a divebomb last month.  These beauties are the least of all the evils.  Scrolling through my Christmas photos was a slideshow of red-eye, bad lighting, and people with their backs to me.  Oh and also, I'm committing to start taking pictures of people besides just Camryn.  

the frontrunner now runs all the way to Provo! yay!

Alison and Zach came all the way from Dallas to ride it.  Oh, and to hang out with family and stuff. 

and the billboard free ride is oh so refreshing.  way better views than the freeway

oh yes, I knitted this.  My little rosy cheeked Swedish baby. 

Christmas Eve with the Staples

this is my father-in-law Staples with my brand new niece Reese Elizabeth.  And I really wish you could tell in this picture that she is rocking the craziest baby mohawk you've ever seen

ashley unveiling the yule cake

Maren testing out the blow-your-mind fun roller coaster toy thing

all the grand-kiddies.  keep your eye on Camryn . . .

she might try and rip your clothes off

Ashley and Jana demonstrating to Claire that her new beauty makeover counter is clearly the coolest present she's ever received

Tanner's oh-so-sexy new getup

and onward to the Bramhall's for Christmas Day. . . 

new infant hiking pack!! we're really excited about this one.  It made me really excited for spring, but we've actually already used it.  Twice.   Thanks mom and dad!

now if that face doesn't just melt your heart

sippy cup training with aunt Alison

oh my adorable Nolan.  Using his new walker like a champ and showing up the Staples baby at every level of motor skills development.  Also, on hair growing.  They've already chopped off something like 4 inches of to die for curly locks and it's still longer than Camryn's. 

Maddy sporting a way attractive face + the tackiest of all tacky Christmas sweaters that has lasted at least 3 decades and 3 Bramhall sisters

Camryn thinking "he got this and all I got was this stupid cape?"

7 quick takes

1)  I officially have a scoots-on-her-butt baby (as opposed to those of the crawling variety).  It's pretty cute.  I was also a scooter baby, who knew that kind of thing got passed on?

2)  The other day my little brother watched Camryn for an hour while I went to Zumba.  When I got back, she was in her high chair barbarically shoveling graham crackers into her mouth.  Ryan looked on in horror and asked me  "so, am I supposed to somehow slow her down?  Is it ok for her to eat them that fast?"

3)  After about 8 straight baths that involved poop in the tub,  we finally graduated to poop on an every-other-bath basis.  The ones that don't involve poop are usually the ones I cut short to less than 2 minutes. . . but I'm still going to call that progress.

4)  Sometimes I'm afraid that things that I love are going to go out of style.  I'm usually pretty sloooow on the uptake with new trends (especially technological) so now that I like blogging,  (oh, I don't know, 7, 8? years after everyone else jumped on that wagon), I'm kind of afraid it's going to disappear before I get my fill.  Is that illogical?   Same with bookbinding (please let this not be a dying art).  Same with books, period.  What if the printed word disappears from our culture entirely, replaced by paperless digital everything!??!?!  With knitting, I feel like by the time I work up the skills to actually knit myself something I would wear, infinity scarves and the general "knitting is trendy" thing are going to be long gone.   Also, yoga.  What if by the time I can afford a legit yoga retreat, people don't do yoga anymore?  I know some of these are silly but. . . well, no but.  they are silly.

5)  Remember how I thought maybe my neighbors did heroine?  Well . . . let's just say I've seen the cops here at least once a week since they moved in and I feel a little bit like I live in the ghetto.

6)  Last night I was helping wrap some gifts that our church is giving away for Sub 4 Santa and I decided kids are going to be one billion times more fun to shop for than adults are!

7)  I'm kind of in an awkward position for Christmas break.  Tanner works here in Provo almost every single night, but my family will all be in Farmington an hour away, hanging out and doing fun Christmas things.  So,  if I go stay in Farmington, Tanner will be alone all during the days, but if I stay in Provo, I will be alone all during the evening/nights.  And a 2 hour roundtrip drive is long enough to stop us from doing too many back and forths.  What to do?

Then again. . . I just expressed this conundrum to Tanner and told him a few of the days I'm thinking of spending at my parents house and he got a big grin on his face that means he'll be hiking/snowshoeing some mountains those days.  So maybe our separation is only wrenching on one side of this relationship.

New babies and their mittens

what am I up to this morning? How nice of you to ask.  I am using this mornings carpet cleaning as an excuse to curl up in bed eating fruit and warm English muffins, blogging, knitting tiny little baby mittens for all the new babies in my life, and not do anything that requires me to get out of bed and walk on the wet carpet.  Also, trying not to think about how long it's going to take all this wet carpet to dry because for some reason I didn't anticipate that and what am I supposed to do all day?  Camryn is not exactly crawling around all over the place yet, but she's also not exactly content to curl up in bed with me all day knitting and eating English muffins so I'm probably going to have to come up with something here soon that requires more energy than I'm willing to think about right now.

If you follow me on pinterest, I apologize for the barrage of adorable knitted things.  Camryn's hands got really cold the other day and I decided to whip up a few pairs of these:

Free pattern from Spud and Cloe: Sweet yarns for real life

Like I'm an expert knitter or something.  These look like the simplest thing in the world, but let me tell you knitting in the round with double pointed needles is tricky business.  It took me about 2 hours, 6 youtube videos, and 300 re-dos to get started without twisting the dang things up and without my mind exploding from the effort of keeping track of 4 needles, 10 fingers, the purls, the knits, and which side my yarn tail is supposed to be on.  But I got there, and Camryn has a cute new pair of pink mittens (not 3-colored, and accidentally 7 rows to long because I read the pattern wrong but I don't think Camryn will care).  My mom was impressed and coming from the woman who quilts like a ninja, makes her own paper and  sewed my wedding dress, I'd say that's pretty good.  I have a brand new niece as of last week--Emily's baby girl Reese Elizabeth (how darling is her name?), and my next door neighbor had her baby the next day I think (and I'm sorry but newborns Hispanic babies are cuter than white babies and their insane amounts of long dark hair are to die for) and Heather is due in 6 days!!  So, depending on how long my ambition lasts, all of these new babies and a couple of my already existing nieces and nephews with have some new tiny handmade thumb-less mittens soon.  Once I master those, my next project is this little guy:

Free pattern from Lion Brand

Please tell me that's the cutest thing you've ever seen.  
Happy knitting folks :)