Discovery!

Grandma Jean was here for the last week, and we had a great time. I think Evan was pretty happy to have a new playmate!

But now she's gone and Evan just has me for a playmate during the day...bor-ing. Poor little Evan, his life is so unfair...

Just kidding, Evan's pretty happy. He was especially happy when we took him to the Children's Museum in Acton this last weekend. This place is officially the coolest place for toddlers ever. It might be the coolest place for moms too...not only were we as entertained as Evan but I think he could have kept himself completely busy there all day. I'm in love. So is Evan.

And it's cheap too! We got a pass from the library that made addmittance only $4.50 each. I think we'll try to make a trip there once a month. At least. We are so lucky to live where we live.

One room was a ball room. There were tubes and tracks running all around the room and ceiling and you could watch the balls roll around and activate little doo-dads and thingys. My favorite part was this dark little hidey-hole with christmas lights in it. I wish I was small so I could just sit in there with the pretty lights. In fact, I found myself wishing I was about 3 feet shorter all day.

The entire attic of the house (did I mention the museum was in a cute little house?) was ship themed. Pretty awesome. They even had ocean sounds playing over some speakers. At one point I looked over and noticed that Mike and his ship-mate had taken up residence in this little life boat and I thought it was pretty funny. Silly daddy.

Another room was a diner and it was by far Evan's favorite. In fact I had to drag him out of there (literally) when it was time to leave. (he has since obtained a kitchen set at home) Evan and this other little guy spent quite some time serving their grandmas some food.

Pretty fun. I can't wait to go back.

Long Overdue

I have neglecting my blog, so to cut down on bulk lets post in bullet form, shall we? Ok.

We bought a pair of clippers this weekend and gave Evan his first at-home haircut. It went about as well as expected. Mike fed him cookies and kept him entertained while I cut. I was only able to get the back, (squirmy-wormy) but that's all he really needed and it turned out quite well. No more rat's nest hair!

Mike also vacuumed him.

On Sunday it snowed. Quite a bit. I took an unavoidable trip to the commissary in the snow and tried to avoid other crazy people--it went pretty well.

On Monday, a bird flew out of our basement. Into the living room. I screamed and hid with Evan in the bedroom. Mike calmly shooed it out the window. It was a giant bird, I swear... terrifying...It's still a mystery how that came about, as we couldn't find any obvious points of entry and we're still coming up with theories.

Evan yanked the "g" key off of the keyboard and I'm having a hard time typing.

Evan also has recently started to refer to his binky as "num-num", which I think is adorable. He also has been shaking his finger and saying "no no no" which is also adorable but kind of sad. And he likes to dump Cody's water dish on the floor. Sometimes he does those last two at the same time.

Doesn't he look naughty? He's cute though, so it's ok.

Also, I finally finished a case for my knitting needles, which I started two (or three?) weeks ago and didn't pick up again until yesterday.

It turned out perfectly, and now my needles are no longer a jumbled mess in the bottom of my knitting bag. I wish I had thought this up a long time ago.

For a knitting update--I started my boot socks on two circular needles and have been working on them intermittently. I had to start over a few times, and casting on made me physically ill--knitting with two circular needles was at first for me just knitting a tangled mess of pain and frustration--but now they are coming along quite nicely. And it turns out it's not so hard once you get the hang of it...

Believe it or not there's a budding pair of socks in there.

Once I summon up a serious amount of knitting energy I'm planning on making this:
The cardigan, in case you were unsure. It's name is Mr. Greenjeans, and one of these days I will be wearing it.

knit-errific!

Warning! This post will have absolutely nothing to do with Evan or anything else but knitting. continue if you dare!

I've been knitting. Constantly. It's nothing short of an obsession, but a wonderful, fun and productive obsession nonetheless. Therefore, I feel compelled to tell you ALL about it.

First of all, I've recently learned how to wind a ball of yarn. You'd think I might have figured that out prior to any knitting, but I was under the impression that it was difficult, so I never did it. Typical. It's easy peasy, and actually kind of soothing. And it makes my knitting oh so portable.


Beyond winding yarn balls , I've recently been excited about socks and slippers. They're so satisfying because they're relatively quick to finish, and I love warm cozy things!

This is my first sock. I don't like it because it's made of acrylic and feels weird, so alas, there is only one. But it was a good learning experience and I'm moving on to bigger and better things.

I'm planning on casting on a new pair of socks (wool, two at once!) tonight, but in the meantime I've been knitting slippers.

These are mine:

Don't worry--I actually made two--I just took a picture of one. They were knitted VERY large and felted, so they're very thick and warm. I don't know if they're done though, I might want to felt them again to make them a bit more snug...we'll see.

And these are Evan's:

(note: these aren't actually as huge as they look--just a close-up)
Actually, there's only one of these. (haha!) I got bored with the pattern and had to move onto something else, but it only took me a couple of hours, so he'll have two slippers soon. I think I'll felt these to fit as well. I wish I had used pretty colors, but he probably won't even wear them, so I just used what I had on hand. Maybe if he likes them, I'll make interesting ones.

Mike doesn't really wear slippers, so I haven't made him any. I might have to force some on him soon...

For Christmas, I made some catnip mousies. I'm not really a cat person, but I thought these were adorable, so I made them for my kitty friends. I had fun.


Also, I lied before--this post will have a picture of Evan. This is one of the pictures I ended up with while taking pictures of the mousie...he's so grabby!


You'd be amazed at how many pictures I have that look just like this. In fact, I took this one yesterday:
I was trying to take a picture of this coffee k-cup for our Keurig because I thought it was awesome. Most of them are pretty boring--not Donut Shop coffee! Unfortunately, the coffee was not so awesome. To Coffee People's credit, their Cowboy Coffee is my absolute favorite.
And that's what I've been up to. And will continue to be up to for the foreseeable future. In fact, this post has taken way too much time, and my socks are calling.

Maine-ly awesome

We drove to Maine yesterday, which may sound like a long trip, but keep in mind that the states are teeny out here so we only drove for two hours. Why isn't really important, but ultimately we felt like going on a little road trip and we ended up having a fantastic day. We took the freeway (tolls included, ugh) up to Scarborough, ME which ended up not being all that interesting. From there we took route 1 south down the coast which was an awesome drive. It was beautiful! We drove through so many adorable little towns and all we did was point things out to each other. "Look! a waterpark!" "The ocean!" "Maine's largest zoo and amusement park!" "Pretty house!" "Empty hotel!"

The empty hotels were wierd. In Oregon, there isn't really a beach "season" so people go to the coast all year long. As we drove through Maine, there was snow on the beaches and the bays were frozen, so there weren't really a lot of tourists. Needless to say, there were a lot of resorts and restaraunts that were closed for the winter. It was a little unsettling to realize that everything was unusually dead, but we loved the drive all the same.

We will be going back. I was especially intrigued by the towns of Ogunquit and Cape Neddick. Maybe we'll go there. Two other things I liked about Maine:

How easy it is to utilize the word "Maine" in a clever business title. ("Maine-ly Pizza, etc)

Lobsters. I saw a restaraunt called "A Lobster in the Rough" which I thought was hilarious. There were lobsters everywhere.

We had a great day, and we came home feeling like we had a good New England experience. At one point Evan got to ride in one of those little rides that likes to hang out outside of stores, which was definitely his favorite part of the day.

I think it's a chicken. Right? I don't know why. Evan seemed to love it. Good times.