Reward Numero Dos

We finished Second Nephi! The hike we took for reading First Nephi was inspired by their trek through the wilderness. Lacking such related inspiration this time around, we went out to Cold Stone for ice cream.

And it was delicious.

Extra Cutes and Stories

The leftovers of June...

I am still a sucker for pictures of sleeping babies. I know he's not really a baby at all anymore, and we're getting really close to have a newborn again, but he's still my baby right now.

Speaking of Ben, it turns out that he is morally, physically, emotionally, and in all other ways opposed to bandaids. He tripped and fell on our way to the car before church and managed to bloody up his knee pretty good. This crying, a good 20 minutes later, was because I put on a bandaid. He didn't care a whit about bleeding.

A couple extra moments of Grandpa and Grandma's visit.

I broke a rule and took a picture during Sacrament Meeting. I just loved how nicely the kids were all sitting and how cute they are with Chris.

Ben fell asleep on the way home from the library, but he kept his book perfectly balanced in his lap until we turned into our parking lot at home.

Cute moments at home.

Audrey Jane has made leaps and bounds in her bravery at the pool this summer. It took a long time last year before she would even actually go all the way into the water, and now she's jumping in from the side like nobody's business every time we go. Maybe someday we'll actually be able to pull off swimming lessons, but for now, she's making great strides on her own.

Chris has been reading Sideways Stories from Wayside School to the kids. It's just as funny as I remember, and it's fun for me, too, because none of them (including Chris) have ever heard the stories before.

It has recently come to our attention that Jane is allergic to mosquito bites. She attracts them like a magnet and if they get anywhere near her face, she kind of explodes. Poor girl.

Marital Success

When you're 32 weeks pregnant and totally physically drained by the end of every day, barely making it long enough to get the kids in bed, most evenings are spent laying on the couch.

To make that time more exciting for both myself and the husband, and to encourage some level of interaction, we play Lego Harry Potter. Obviously. And if you play that every night for several weeks, chances are you'll finish the entire game. Like so.

Summer Essence

Our ward has a weekly playgroup that gets together to let the kids play and the moms socialize. We ventured off our usual venue of someone's house or a park this week and instead went to a splash pad.

Lucky us, Amanda and her kids were here again on their way back to Florida. We had all kinds of fun playing, and then we parked it under a tree for a nice picnic lunch. Several others from playgroup migrated over to join us, too. Fun fun.

Book of Mormon Blessings

Scripture Study Success! We have finished reading the book of First Nephi together as a family. Our reward for this first benchmark achievement was a Mountain Hike.

Confession: this was a trail that goes up behind the same park we play at all the time (where we just went with Amanda). The view is killer, though, and the trail was definitely nature enough to feel out of the city. It was also child- and 31-weeks-pregnant-friendly.

Checking out the wildlife was entertaining as well, including watching a squirrel walk down a tree head-first.

My favorite part was the abundance of cute family pictures. Ah, makes a heart happy.

Hooray for reading our scriptures!

Cousins!

We seem to be setting a pattern that we see Michael and Amanda's family--particularly Amanda and kids--more often now that we live in Georgia than we did while we lived in Utah, even though we're all still only one state apart. Amanda is heading from Florida up to Tennessee to visit her family for a bit and we make a convenient pit stop along the way. We took advantage of that this morning to go to the park.

Good times. I really appreciate the chances my kids get to play with cousins, since we are generally going to live far away from them all!

Red Red Red

THE thing to do when visiting us Wamplers in Atlanta is, apparently, go to the zoo.

Craig and Janet gave all of their posterity matching red t-shirts for Christmas, so that at large family gatherings we could all dress to match. This seemed an appropriate occasion to wear them!

The irony, though, were the hundred or so "volunteens" who were being trained at the zoo that day--wearing red t-shirts and khaki shorts. We blended is, as you might say. Oh, well. We still had fun.

And the animals were still cool.

Chris had class in the morning and wasn't actually able to come to the zoo with us. But then, surprise, surprise, he showed up anyway! Yay!!

Hooray for grandparents!

Taking Advantage of the Master

Remember way back when when I decided to make a quilt for Megan? Yeah...didn't get a lot more done. Being pregnant rather dampened my enthusiasm for such projects, as well as really having no idea what I was doing.

So, what do you do when you don't know how to do it? Find someone who does. Bonus points if it's your mother-in-law who has made, I don't know, a million quilts flying in from nearly 3,000 miles away just to help you finish a quilt.

That's the reason why you came, Janet, right?

The finishing touches on Megan's quilt including cutting the back and batting, tying the quilt, and sewing up the border.

Tying it turned out to be more complicated than anticipated. We had the entire thing all tied and done when we discovered that there was a crease in the back. Lame...so we untied it to straighten it out. In the process of untying, we discovered that the knot we had used came out WAY too easily. There was no way that it would last for any length of time in the possession of a four year old. So, after some internet investigation, we settled on a method that combined two different knots. And we tied it all again.

Once it was actually tied for real, Janet just whipped out the border like it was nothing. I don't know if that was how it seemed on her end, but it was way more than I could have managed without some serious instruction and way more time.

All done! I love how it turned out.

Someone else really loves it, too. That face makes it all worth the work.

Rewinding back to Saturday, Janet and I left Chris in charge of the kids (Craig took a nap) while we went to JoAnn Fabrics to buy the last bit we needed for the edge of Megan's quilt. While there, I confessed that I was wanting to make a quilt for the baby. I had the design in mind already, and it all centered around a particular fabric that I didn't actually know if it existed or not. Despite Janet's stories of the downfalls of going to the fabric store with something too specific in mind...we found the exact fabric that I had been picturing. It was fate. And of course, such fate then requires walking through the entire store to find all the complimentary fabrics, sitting at a table for a good thirty minutes or more measuring and planning the entire quilt, then another twenty minutes standing in the cutting line to get all the fabrics cut and then purchased.

Before we had left, Chris made me promise that we would come back. We did come back, but the three and a half hours we were gone were a far cry longer than he had anticipated originally.

But! We came home with everything we needed to make the baby's quilt. We washed and ironed the fabrics first.

And then because Janet is amazing, she made the entire quilt in two days. Seriously. Cut all the strips, sewed the top panel together, attached the back, and then quilted it all together.

 Disclaimer: Still back-posting. This is dated Tuesday, June 9... Amanda came and the quilt was actually finished on Wednesday the 10th. Gotta preserve my blogging honesty for posterity.

Done and done. And adorable. I can't help but picture a tiny newborn in nothing but a white onesie laying in the middle of that quilt. 10 weeks to go!