Our week away

Nic, Kaden and I went to Omaha last Tuesday for an entire week! My step-sister Emily got married on Friday, and my brother Dan and his family and my brother Eric and his girlfriend Sara all came up for her big day!

We had the most relaxing trip! We spent the first few days hanging out at my dad and Pam's house, sitting outside and looking at the "ish" in their pond. Kaden enjoyed playing on the deck and going from inside/outside/inside/outside...

The wedding on Friday was beautiful. Kaden and Josh looked especially handsome! Kaden made some friends- some girls between the ages of 18 months and 9 years old who he chased after on the dance floor. After dinner he went back home and went to sleep while the party continued!

We spent a lot of time at my grandparent's pool. Kaden hasn't been in a pool since last summer and was a bit unsure at first. After a little bit he had a great time splashing around and signing "more" whenever someone dove off the diving board.

We went on walks and hung out at the park by my dad's house. The slide was his favorite part (I think he is over swinging... at least for now)!

It was so fabulous getting to spend that much time with my family. I feel like Kaden really got to know Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle Eric. He does a great impression of Uncle Eric too (gorilla noises) and got to hear Grandpa drink coffee in person ("ahhh").

We spent a lot of time with Gigi, G-ma and G-pa (great grandparents). You can tell how much they love Kaden!! Gigi plotzed over both the boys (puh puh puh) and G-ma had fun chasing after ping-pong balls that Kaden threw for her!

Thank you Uncle Mike and Auntie Jane for the AMAZING pictures in the pool and at the park! We had so much fun seeing everyone and can't wait to come back for pumpkin patch season!

Newest additions

I have so many pictures to post from our trip to Omaha. I will have to wait until the weekend to put them on the blog... but for now I wanted to post some pictures of my newest pottery additions!

Here is the wedding platter to my step-sister Emily and Dustin


This platter was an end-of-the-year gift for a 5th grade teacher


This platter was a retirement gift that Jane (best seamstress ever... works for Be-dazzled!!) gave her sister and brother-in-law.

Success!

Whoopee!! Nic and I bought a used kiln a couple of month's ago and just got an outlet put in our garage. I have fired a kiln before... but it was digital and all that was required was to turn it on and press enter. My kiln is about 20 years old and has something called a kiln sitter where you place a bar on the "sitter" and when the kiln gets to the correct temperature (2300 degrees... "that's hotter than the sun!!") it breaks and turns off.

Well...

It breaks and turns off when it is set up correctly!

On our first attempt we actually melted a plate.

The plate actually changed forms and was not the same shape it was when it went in. Also, the plate is placed on a stilt and the stilt actually went through the plate. I have NEVER heard of this happening before!!

After the melting incident, my sweet husband researched firing the kiln and we were actually able to figure out what had gone wrong. We fired the kiln again last night and did several things differently, including setting it up the right way! I vented the kiln this morning and at 10:30 a.m. we had 2 beautifully non-melted tiles!!

The tiles were broken to begin with... just for testing in the kiln!

Happy Mother's Day

What a wonderful Mother's Day! We started out the morning with Nic and my parents over for brunch. It was so nice to spend time with both our moms on Mother's Day and the bruch turned out really delish. I think the biggest hit was the "waffle bar" with your choice of cherries, bananas, walnuts, whipped cream or syrup. Yum-o. After Kaden's afternoon nap, we went for a long walk to the park and played with wood chips on the ground! I feel very lucky to be a mommy- Thank you to Nic and our parents for making a great 2nd Mother's Day!!

Here are some pictures of Mother's Day plates I did for a few friends of friends.




And this is Sutton's birth announcement plate. Darling!!

And the winner is...

My brother Eric cracks me up...

Loving his "Ah-ow"

Kaden loves loves LOVES his ah-ow (meow... duh!). There is a squeal he has when he is chasing the ah-ow and a squeal he has when he has captured the aw-ow that he only does for Harley. I can't even describe to you how loud Harley was purring.















Here are some other pictures from around the house this weekend...


All our kids...


"I wasn't playing in the doggie water bowl!"


Kaden's concentration face... check out his tongue!