Family Tree Rag Quilt with Photo

Many years ago, I dreamed up a family tree quilt to give my mother and father (inlaws).  I began working on it and then something happened that stopped me dead in my quilting tracks... I had three children.  This Christmas I am excited to say I finally finished it!!  It does not look like I envisioned, but it's done.   And that's got to count for something. 

Each piece of the green and brown parts of the tree represents some piece of the family legacy.  There is a piece with horses to remember the days when Mom and Dad where dating and Mom out rode Dad.  A monster truck represents their active grandsons and great grand son.  Watermelons remind us of how we Loftons love to eat watermelon on a hot summer day. 

In the center is our most recent family photo with all four generations represented.  My hope is when the quilt is used all the memories, joys, and love surround the person.

Merry Christmas 2011

On Christmas Eve, the boys went to bed to discover a present on every one's bed.  After opening the gifts, the boys found new pajamas, a bell, and a golden ticket for the Mini Van Express.  We hopped into the car and drove around to see our favorite Christmas lights spots. 

With the help of a power converter, the minivan was a glow with Christmas lights.  It was quite a magical but easy touch.

The next morning, we came downstairs and thanked God for His good gifts especially His Son.  Then we spent the rest of the day playing and eating and enjoying each other.

Levi loved his little train and eating all the wrapping paper.

The boys got monster trucks  and tracks from Santa and three gifts each from mommy and daddy.  We actually forgot to mention Santa at all that morning.  Clark around 4 pm asked if Santa had come or was he still on the way. 

Joel has the right idea.  Forget all the presents, let's just eat all the chocolate!!!

 The best gift of all was the Legos!!!  The boys have played with them constantly!!  Michael bought a box of Legos at a garage sale when I was pregnant with Clark five years ago.  We forgot that they were in the attic until recently.  When we opened them we realized the box was full of 30 figures and tons of already assembled structures plus tons of bricks!!  So the best present of all cost $10!!  I love it!

No interruptions, no cleaning, no work, no responsibility...just playing, loving, worshipping, eating, and enjoying each other.  That's my favorite part of Christmas.

I've Been Busy Like an Ant

I love hard work and old fashioned life.  I was born that way. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed learning to do something things this year.

My mother-in-law taught me how to knit. This is my first baby blanket dedicated to baby Hannah.

I canned lots and lots of plum, strawberry, and handpicked blackberry jelly!

I also canned home grown tomatoes, applesauce from the apple orchard, and fresh Georgia peaches from my "neighbors".

I put back a lot of my extra garden produce in my deep freeze.

I planted these gardens right after my c-section with a simple prayer.  "God feed my family. "

And God did provide more than enough.

Here's one of my backyard gardens--peppers in the lower section and tomatoes in the upper. 

Looking back at 2011, I have to say it was productive.  I had my third son and learned how to knit, garden, and can this year!!

I hope to inspire you to learn something new too in 2012. 

Pre Christmas Joys!

We have been in full swing with our Christmas celebrations! 

 Crafts, parties, books, cookies, movies, songs, etc.....

Here's my boys all playing with their building blocks.   They are into blocks right now.  Levi loves to eat them.   Joel loves to make robot birthday cakes with them.   And Clark makes robots and cars.   Here's a little secret: they are getting  Legos for Christmas!!!  I know they will love it.  I just have to figure out a way to stop Levi from eating them all.

 This will be Levi's first Christmas!  Hard to believe.  It feels like he's been part of our family always.

Levi loves to eat the Christmas lights. 

Several times, I have caught him with the bulb disconnected and in his mouth.  Scary.

Here's our cookies we made yesterday during our party.  The kids had fun cutting and decorating their cookies.  And by the way, royal icing is the easiest to use because it dries out and can be transported without a huge mess.

A Creative Way to Use Gummies

My son found a new way to use gummies--ear plugs.

Joel's Firefighter Birthday

My little hero turned three. He wanted a firefighter party for his third birthday.  So we whipped out a fire truck cake and some fiery decorations!

We had Firefighter Mike come and talk to the kids about fire safety.  The children learned how to call 911 and stop, drop, cover, and roll.  They all earned their honorary firefighter hats after.

 We worked together as a team just like firefighters and collected loose balloons in a balloon game.

 We played Hot Potato with a hot "potato sock". 

Afterwards, we had smokin' hot dogs and five alarm chili for lunch.

Happy Birthday to a little boy who I would not be surprised grows up to be a fire fighter,  police officer, or soldier.  He has a strong spirit and heart to serve.

Firefighter axe!!! 

Fall Fun!

Fall is the Loftons favorite time of year.  Apples, pumpkins, leaves, sweaters, chai tea, chili, fires in the fireplace, trick-or-treating, chilly cold winds are just some our favorite things.

Here's Joel and Levi enjoying the leaf pile!!  Levi also had a leaf snack while he was there.

Clark is into climbing trees now.  Broken bones are soon to follow. :-)

The boys love being pushed by daddy on the swing set.

The view from our backyard is so amazing to me.  I love the colors and mountains so much.

Joel is having a ball digging out pumpkin seeds. Put that boy to work, and he's happy!

The boys and their pumpkin this year.

 Clark thought it was gross and backed off immediately.

The boys and I planned a pizza theme birthday for Michael with a pizza from Papa Johns and a chocolate chip cookie pizza cake too.  The boys had fun making fondant mushrooms, peppers, pepperonis and decorating the cake!

Bowling and Standing for the First Time

Here's the boys bowling for the first time at a friend's birthday! 

To be very honest, I think the boys had fun, but it was stressful.  Clark kept falling down as he let go of the ball.  Joel kept trying to throw his ball when it wasn't his turn.  He ended up throwing it into the crowd once. :-)

Here's Levi STANDING at the table train!  He's already in love with trains!  He's growing up too fast.

Our Computer's Funeral and MORE

Oh, how we have grieved the loss of our old faithful friend, Mr. Computer.  He was already up in years.  Michael built him in 2003 from scratch.  I am sad to say that while I was on the Internet, I picked up a wicked virus that completely killed our machine.  Praise God that we felt the "need" to run a back up the night before!!  (Thanks, Holy Spirit)

 We have been blessed with a laptop from incredible friends!!!  But I just haven't gotten back into the swing of things like downloading photos and blogging.  In the meantime, we are saving to buy another computer.

On to family news....
My baby, Levi, has learned to crawl and sit up on his own!!!  I can't believe it.  He's now seven months old.  We started him on solid foods right after he turned seven months.  He is loving his new privileges and abilities.  Another part of his new development is that he is addicted to his mommy.  He will not let me leave him with strangers in church nursery.  :-( 

Joel has entered the scared zone.  He is afraid of the dark mostly.  We leave all of his lights on while he goes to bed, but we find our middle son often in the middle of our bed at nights.  That's one of those things I always said would never happen before having children.  Ha....now I am eating those words.

Clark is loving homeschooling.  Over night, he has woke up to a world of words.  He is constantly asking me to read and spell words for him.  He's reading basic three letter words by sounding them out.  And he is really trying  hard to read.  It's so exciting to see him develop as a reader.

Michael is loving his new job as an outside adjuster.  And we are enjoying the new company car!

Fall is in full swing here.  The colors are splendid and the temperatures are chilly.  Oh, how I wish I could freeze time and make it last longer.

Super Hero Party

I wanted to embrace my boys love of super heroes,

so we threw a super hero party and invited some super friends.

 

Sparkle, Super Baby, Spiderman, Batman, Luigi, and Batgirl  are ready for action!

The first thing the Super Hereos did was complete an obstacle course.  They had to climb stairs, slide down a slide, jump over a building in a single bound, jump over hot lava, walk over a balance beam, knock down a giant, crawl through a tunnel, and finally climb a wall and go back down.  Once they complete this obstacle course, I knew they would be ready for a real challenge.

Here's Batman and Luigi climbing over the wall.  This was probably their most favorite part of the course.

Here's our friendly neighorhood Spideman jumping over a building in a single bound.

Our heroes after the course just playing around.

After the obstacle course, we got an urgent call that Mr. Bad Guy had kidnapped some people and had them trapped in his evil lair.  Using lava safe kitchen towels, the supers worked together to cross hot lava to rescue the people in need.

Soon the water balloon bomber was caught by the somewhat wet superheroes.  He was handcuffed and wrapped up in toliet paper to keep the world a safer place. 

Mr. Bad Guy was very sorry and to repay society for his crimes, he allowed the superheroes to have water balloon target practice on him.  And that by far was the highlight of the day!!!

After the battle, all the super hereos had cupcakes and snacks to replenish their powers.