Dance Party

E loves music and dancing. He often picks out the Pandora station for the night. Lately he's been picking Deadmau5 Radio, which does make for some good dancing ;)

Our 2012 Photo Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Just thought I'd share the photo book I just finished up for Elliott's 2012 year.  I do them a little differently each year. This year I felt a little wordy.

Turning 4

So a little late to the game, but I didn't want to let another of Elliott's birthdays pass without some recognition here on the blog. We had a party at one of the playground/community rooms in our complex. We had a great mix of friends and family and (I think its safe to say) we all had a great time :)  Here are some pictures that highlight the day.

lunch time

pizza, salad and snacks

enjoying a beautiful day

the family alcove ;)

ready for cake!

opening presents

the loot

everyone wanted a turn

swinging

helpful Uncle Robert

taking turns

Fabric Challenge

I recently participated in a fabric challenge as part of the Modern Quilt Guild.  We had to use a particular fabric line (Madrona Road - one that I happened to love!), some of which the fabric company donated, as well as solids. Our San Diego sub-chapter added an additional criteria that it needed to be a quilt or pillow using a technique that was new to us. 

The submissions were due by the end of January in order to be considered for display in the Michael Miller sponsor booth at QuiltCon (more on this later). The fabric designer, Violet Craft, was also supposed to select her favorite (she ended up picking two favorites). While I didn't get selected as a finalist in either category. I just found out that my submission was one of the designer's top 10 picks! (This was out of more than 250 submissions. The submission pool can be seen here.) She featured her favorites, as well as mine, on her blog yesterday here.

This was my submission (click through to read the details):

2012 Photo Album

Since I was painfully behind in sharing here last year, I thought I would simply add a link to our 2012 Shutterfly album. It was a very busy year and with Brad being full-time at UCSD, it has led to little sharing here. My time is stretched pretty thin, but the ultimate goal of every day is to be present, so things like the blog have had to slip a but. But we had a lot of great moments, a couple family trips, great holiday celebrations and general all around fun. Most of the photos below a pretty self explanatory but let me know if you are curious about anything!

Click here to view these pictures larger

Merry Christmas!

We have had a very merry holiday season around these parts and it's not over yet thanks to a nice long vacation for all of us. We've enjoyed lots of much needed family time and relative 'down time'.  Unfortunately, we also have the plague, so we are looking forward to being healthy for the second half of our vacation.
Hope you all had a wonderful holiday as well!

Sea World!

After a lovely Thanksgiving Day spent with family, we met up with some dear friends and headed off to Sea World. It's the first time I've been in a LONG time (high school, maybe?) and I'd been told many times its great for E's age.  I saw that we could go for the rest of this year and all 2013 on a ticket, so this was a perfect opportunity to drop the cash.  I'll share the rest in pictures!

getting a 'dad's eye' view

dolphin tank

Petting gooey manta rays

Seeing the Shamu show

E was impressed :)

In the shark tunnel - falls into the blurred but cool category

Megalodon

Sea turtles

This was supposed to be for Christmas cards, but he wouldn't smile...

The penguin tank needed a squeegee...so these are the best pics I got

Looks like they are holding hands :)

Riding the tea cups

E got into it!

And with that...we are ready for the Holiday season :)