Nie Nie Day-{Updated}-

Happy Nie Nie Day! This is the day Design Mom has designated bloggers all over the world to hold silent auctions to raise money for Stephanie and Christian Nielson. All auction monies will be donated to their paypal fund.

It took me a long time to decide what I wanted to auction off today on Nie Nie Day. I wanted it to be handmade. I knew I needed to make it small enough to mail to the ends of the earth, if necessary. I decided to put a pair of embroidery pillow cases up for auction. There isn't a price you can put on these babies, it takes sooooo long to complete. In fact I've been working on one off and on for approximately 15 years now. But it is my commitment to you, the potential winner of this auction, that I will have both pillow cases sent to you in three weeks from today. As you can see in the picture, the first pillow case has pink roses with tiny pink flowers and all I need to do is finish sewing the green leaves and stems. The other pillow case is blank which gives the wonderful opportunity for you to tell me what color those flowers should be. Maybe you think your spouse would enjoy roses matching the colors of his or her favorite football team? Maybe you want him or her to have blue roses (blue roses are significant to me because in 1997 I went to Victoria, Canada searching for the infamous (more than famous) blue rose but was told by a garden keeper that there is no such thing (I felt like Pee Wee Herman when told that there is no basement in the Alamo). Then in Venice, Italy in 2001 Adam bought me a blue rose at a flower stand). What ever makes you happy, I'll be happy to oblige.
Leave a comment here on this blog with your bid. If you do not have a Google account and don't want to create one, you can email me your bid and I'll post it for you. Please only bid in whole dollar amounts. Bidding will end Monday, September 1st at 9 pm MST.

If pillow cases are not of interest to you please check out the other auctions taking place today here.

Thank you and let the bidding begin!

{I had a little time while Kaia and Tristan napped today to finish one section of the pillow case and post a close-up. I will be protecting the stitching with a fabric my Gram calls "Wonder-Under"--iron-on protection on one side and soft felt-like material on the other. I'm going to give you the "Mindi Guarantee" that these pillow cases will be the most comfortable cases you've ever slept on and you will sleep perfectly every night henceforth even if you have young children--ok, ok maybe that is going too far. But you will sleep really well knowing you have donated towards a noble cause for the Nielson family.}

Weekend Adventures

We signed Sierra up for a free Karate class. Too much yelling for me, I think we'll look into soccer or ballet.

Here are a few shots from our failure of a garage sale on Saturday. On Monday I spent a few minutes posting a few items, sold almost all of them that day, and made 4 times what we made on Saturday. Yippie for Craig!

Adam and Tristan on Jay's old motorcycle.


Gram and her friend, Pauline. Sierra and Kaia had run off to a neighbor's house and I thought it was funny that these two took over the Lemonade stand.

After the garage sale items were all stuffed back into our garage, we dashed off to two baptisms. Then we dashed to Steve and Amanda's for the family birthday parties. Kaia, Grace, Gma Shelli, and Sierra showing off the apron we made for her birthday.

Out on the Dimig pond on the paddle boats on Sunday night.

This horse we like to call "Easter Bunny".
Trying to be like Tony Smith (see one of the last photos on this post here) and baby Indie.

Want to be inspired? Click here.

Things That Are Funny

Sierra came home on Friday with her "Friday Folder" which had some homework and a plea for parents to help their kids count everything. Suggestions are: counting every step you ever take and helping cook. I went with the "help cook" option because Sierra is already good at that.


Funny things my kids have recently said/done:

Kaia (while helping mom make lunch): "Every time I carry this jelly it gives me an arm tummy ache!"

Sierra (while playing with a magic wand and talking to Gram): "I'll wave this magic wand and make you un-old."

Kaia (comes into mom and dad's room at midnight, uninvited): "(sob) I can't find that thing!" To which Adam replies "It is by that other thing" then Kaia goes back to sleep (or maybe she was never awake?)

Something else that might make you giggle HERE

This may make you laugh right out loud (unless you support PETA, if such is the case please don't click here) HERE

Nie's first blog=funny. Click HERE

Sun flowers and birth stories

Adam bought us all flowers for our anniversary and these orange sunflowers lasted the longest. I thought they had the most beautiful pedals and I really wanted to do something creative with them--but there just wasn't time. So I handed them over to the kids to play with on the back deck and there was joy and creativity out there for at least 30 minutes.
Every day that I can I want to link over to the NieNie Dialogues. Today I have her beautiful post about her home birth experience on my mind. Read it here. Even though I never got to the point it hurt so bad I thought I would die, I felt her and I had a similar experience with the birth of our sons. Yet, she describes it much better.

After School Fun

I just found this quote on Nie Nie's blog:
"Author Anna Quindlen reminds us not to rush past the fleeting moments.{or if I could enter here-the basket-head mother syndrome} She said: “The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less”(Loud and Clear [2004], 10–11).

Every day Kaia asks me "where are we going today?". Usually it is followed by "Are we going swimming?" The rec center nearest us is remodeling their pool and we don't have an "in" with any of the neighborhood pools yet, so I usually have to tell poor Kaia "no". But yesterday was a hot one and after we rode our bikes home from Kindergarten Kaia suggested we pull out the blue pool. Great idea, kai kai.

Sierra ran off in a mad dash trying to prevent any sibilings from using her towel. Tristan lost his swim trunks in the pursuit.
It almost worked for him to be carried home like a king, but Sierra said he was too heavy.

Sierra's First Day

The first-day backpack full of supplies. Thank goodness she doesn't have to bring kleenex and papertowels with her everyday.

Happy as can be. I thought I might be the kind of mom that teared up when her first born walked into Kindergarten for the first time, but I didn't. She was so excited, all I could do was smile for her. I over heard another mom whose kid was clinging to her leg and crying say that she was so glad this day had finally come.

The two kids standing next to her are from an LDS family in our ward. The little girl is a little younger than Kaia and she just wanted to be part of the picture. We joined up with a playgroup and found some friends to do Joy School with us, so Kaia is less jealous about Sierra's school. Kindergarten only lasts 3 hours and Wednesdays are early release days so she is only there for two hours. Mrs. Muller (rhymes with color) is her teacher and she seems really nice. There are 25 kids in the class so poor Mrs. Muller has her hands full.

Last Day of Summer

Wow, here we are, the night before our lives change forever. Sierra starts Kindergarten tomorrow. To celebrate, we went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science with Gram. We started out in Gems and Minerals. To my surprise Kaia did not enjoy it. She didn't like the Cave/Mine decor and wanted to be out of there asap. Next was the Space exhibit. Fun was had by all.

We had a special dinner for Sierra. I was inspired by NeiNei (click on her name there to see her wonderful Back to School Feast--ours was done on a much lower scale, I didn't even take pictures. NieNie is of my favorite bloggers and she was recently in an airplane crash with her husband and a flight instructor. Just got news that the flight instructor passed away this morning. So sad, how fragile life is! Please pray for this family).

Friday night excitment

I wanted to take a picture to show how Le Anne has designed the girls new room nearly single handed . The amazing quilts, the fun IKEA lights for Kaia's birthday, and the poster pictures she gave us a few years ago. Sierra is wearing a new school outfit Gram bought her. I'm not sure what is up with the triangles. Sierra made them a while back. Kinda reminds me of a person Lydia was telling us about who filled her room with triangles, even sleeping with a few over her eyes. I won't let it go that far :). We are looking for bunk beds on craigslist, but if we don't find any then our plan is to stack food storage under their beds and hide it with a dust ruffle.
Here we are making pineapple-zucchini bread in our new kitchen. There are plenty of things I'd like to change about this kitchen if I owned it, but I don't so I don't worry about a thing. It is great.
Adam is reading "The Lion's Paw" to Sierra right now. Kaia is jumping up and down, asking for more food. I'm ready to collapse in a heap because I've spent the last several hours cleaning and putting away laundry. In no time at all, I'll have to do it all over again. I found some notes from a religion class I took at BYU. I think the following information is very interesting:
"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children...And unto Adam he said...cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life" (Genesis 3:16-17). Professor Draper said that the words "sorrow" have different translations as applied to Eve and Adam. Eve: sorrow=etzwa (to toil, back breaking labor over and over again): Eve's greatest work will be in conception, her life, soul will be put into the raising of children. Adam: sorrow=etzev (back breaking labor, to work all the days of his life): Adam's greatest work is providing food for Eve and all the children. Eve doesn't have time for both etzwah and etzev.
I've always told the kids Adam has to go to work to make money so we can buy food. Who knew this was in accordance with ancient Hebrew?
Here are a few recent videos:




I stopped recording right before Tristan shook his hands and said "All done!". Maybe you are wondering why he is eating cheese along with his morning bowl of cereal. Don't judge me. He started screaming for cheese when I opened the fridge to get milk and I caved.

8th Anniversary

August 12th, 2000

August 12, 2008

Adam surprised us with flowers. A dozen red roses for me, a pink arrangement for Sierra, and bright orange sunflowers for Kaia. Gram and Pop watched the kids while Adam and I went out on the town. We tried to catch a session at the temple, only to discover our recommends had expired. Big bummer. It was no problem to arrive an hour early to our dinner reservations at Prime. I'm disillusioned with fancy pants steak houses. We've been to four in the duration of our marriage. Sullivan's was absolutely divine, but I think part of that was my dad and his business partner covered the bill. The other two had great atmosphere, but to be perfectly honest, dropping $100 on a meal makes me sick to my stomach. Twice we picked up Costco deals where we bought two $50 gift cards for $75 to aforementioned restaurants, but it still hurts.

More importantly, Adam and I have been married for 8 years and I want to write a bit about how much our love has grown. There is a song by the Cowboy Junkies wherein Margo sings about how her heart doesn't skip a beat when her love of many years walks through the door. On the contrary, Adam walked into church last Sunday about 20 minutes after the girls and I (he had to run home to change Tristan's diaper) and my heart jumped and my eyes lit up to see him. I've always said I love him just because I love him. I look forward to enjoying his love and friendship for all eternity.

FHE

When we got home from our camping trip, we quick and showered and made it to sacrament meeting. Then we went over to Gram and Pop's for what could possibly be the best meal of our lives. It all started with this amazing bread Gram whipped together in a jiffy. Then melt in your mouth roast, mashed potatoes and gravy!
Pop gave us the nickle tour of his new camper. Please note the hight of the door in comparison with the height of Pop.
This new swing Pop set up for the kids is a dream come true. Kaia and Sierra have had so much fun out here.
Today was registration at Tarver Elementary for Kindergarten. Sierra was so excited, Kaia was so jealous. There were several other moms who are not in this area that were trying to get their kids into Tarver, to no avail. It is a very good school and I'm so grateful Sierra will be able to attend.
Our family home evening activities were to scrub down the filthy camping chairs then load up on our bikes and explore our new neighborhood. We met up with Gram about half way around Eastlake while she was out on a walk.

We got back home and to our delight Gram and Pop invited us over for ice cream. As we sat on the back deck we saw two bats flying around and this baby owl land in the tree. It was a cute little thing and let Adam take lots of pictures. But Kaia could only hold still for so long and when she started jumping, this little guy took off.

We are so blessed to be in this home, so close to a great elementary school, to great bike paths and lakes, various wildlife, and to partake of Gram and Pop's generosity!

Scuba @ 10,200 ft above sea level

This weekend was awesome! We gathered up our camping gear and headed up to Leadville with our friends the Purcells, the Magaleis, and Jeremy Law. The Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race was taking place. Lance Armstrong was in town, but we never caught a glimpse of him. The camping was great plus we were able to go scuba diving. Apparently this Turquoise Lake is a very popular diving spot. I thought it was colder than all get out, but it was worth it.

Sierra and Kaia at the beautiful mountain lake.
Tristan tried to single handed throw all the rocks into the water. Eventually he wore out and took a nap.
Kaia is happiest with water and dirt to play with.

Here is Tristan, Maleia, Lafi, Leilani and Lilly playing in the water. Thanks again Marisa for watching them so I could go out for a dive!
Here we are setting up. Jeremy, Steph, Marcus, Zack and Adam in the middle of a lot of scuba gear.
Here I am in a 7mm dive suit. I felt like I was going to suffocate, but once I was 40 feet under I was wishing the suit was a lot thicker.
Marcus, Mindi, Adam, Zach and Jeremy. It had been about 6 years since I'd been diving and I struggled a bit with a few basics I'd forgotten. Eventually I got down to about 40 feet. Adam held my hand the whole time. It was so murky and my mask kept fogging up. It was a great experience though, so other-worldly to be that deep in the water.

Here are all 7 of the happy kid campers.

That night we had a record breaking evening with the 'smores and marshmallows. Adam bought Marcus a marshmallow tree for his birthday because Marcus is the only guy we know who can eat a whole bag of 'mallows by himself in one sitting! That night he ate 35, and I'm sure he'll beat that record the next camping trip.