for selfish reasons...

I'm posting this. If you haven't noticed some of the buttons on the side of our blog..you should. They are some great ones I've come across and "Make it and Love it" is doing a giveaway of another blog "LilyLane" I follow. I get entered into the giveaway for doing this. I've mentioned before that I know the ladies from LiliyLane and LOVE their stuff. So cute. You should check them all out!

Quilting a memory

15 years ago we had what I think was our final family reunion on my maternal grandma's side. My Great-Grandma was the best homemaker around and made EVERYTHING from scratch. She canned, baked, gardened, farmed, sewed.. she did it all because that's what you did in her day. Because she was getting older and losing the use of her hands, she decided to make a quilt top for each of her grand and great-grandchildren. This was like.. over 20 I think? Anyway.. we each got one full of scraps from her collection. It was up to us to quilt them. I'm sure many never got quilted.. but I'm proud to say that mine is going to be done soon! My aunt helped me put it together and I'm quilting it BY HAND around each square. My goal is to have it done by the end of the year.. I'm excited to keep her memory in mind and appreciate her hard work.

May? Seriously?

It doesn't feel like May.. or maybe it does. We got some frost the other night and it's in the 40s as it is planning on raining all week. This puts off my garden planting for a few days. Oh well, both Sarah and I have a little case of the sniffles and I'm more than happy to stay inside and turn the furnace back on. For journaling purposes, let's recap the month of April since I posted nothing about it! It was just way to exciting..hahaha.

...I'm actually drawing a blank for events.. sad!
well, I suppose the most memorable thing is that Sarah is taking some steps and is starting to do it unsolicited. She's way wobbly but it's adorable and she think's she's hot stuff.

We've done some work in the yard, namely getting our garden plot ready to go. I'll post pictures when we actually plant it. I'm excited to have fresh veggies but nervous because everything I plant dies, gets eaten by rabbits or blown over by the wind. No joke. Hopefully a fence, better weather and sheer luck will let something grow even if it is only giant zucchinis.

Kurtis went on a weekend scouting leadership training for 3 days while I got to see an old friend from high school who was in MN. Kurtis is planning for their upcoming high adventure canoe trip with the scouts this summer. They're going up to the boundary waters. He's soooo excited!

Can I just vent for a minute about the mass exodus of people from our ward at church? Over the past year, we've had over 100 people (including children) move from our ward for lots of reasons. I know residencies end and people move.. but come on! Watching the primary go from almost 60 to 20 is pretty sad. Also having some good friends move has been hard. And the feeling that you're being left behind to hold things together is no fun.. but we'll make it and things will be fine. We're just being pruned for extra growth in the future right? sigh...

I guess in other news, we've decided to stay in Rochester and completely Kurtis's MBA at the local University of Minnesota campus. It's still an accredited program and allows him a good education that IBM will most likely fund. This means we'll be here at least 2 more years, possibly 4. We're excited to not have to move and deal with that stress and to get going on our future! Kurtis has started a new position at IBM and is liking it more than his last one. He's working more with pricing government contracts and has great potential to move up. We're very grateful for this.

I'll leave with some pictures of the lovely Sarah. She doesn't particularly like the grass, but has relented and started crawling on it lately. It was a pretty funny process to watch.

This is her Easter dress and bunny her neighbor got her. She adores that thing!