I'm working hard on all things baptism these days.  I've been specifically working on designing Mimi's invitations for the event.  I found some gorgeous art, and I added to it and made it my own.  The next step is picking fonts!  Which is harder than it seems!!  The script font gave me the most trouble, but I chose the one I liked best, and completed it. 

I think it turned out SO well.  Jon's work has really nice printers, and we will be printing it there.  It's hard to see, but the dark lettering is actually dark purple tied in with the purple flower on the arrow.  Jon helped me figure out how to design in Word so the lettering would be crisp and I'm so excited to send these out!

Leiden's turn at the dentist today!  I forgot to mention all the girls have loose teeth, but refused to let the dentist take them out!  Which is actually both good and bad!  Good because I don't want to PAY the dentist to get them out, bad because they struggle with loose teeth!  If they will wiggle them every day, they should come out quick.

Dentist appointments today!  Pretty exciting!  Mimi's teeth look good, and Mac has one cavity.  I think the highlight of the visit was the hygienist allowed the girls to push the button to take the x-rays for her sister!  I think it really was them that took the x-rays, which was super kind of the hygienist to include them and give them a job! 

Mac is loving gymnastics and improving all the time.  I like that gymnastics gives her tangible goals to work on, and she can see her own progress.  This picture is a still from the videos below it.

I headed to Costco to get the pictures for the passport taken today.  Now I can send my application in and I'm so excited!!

Mac has learned this new way to do her hair.  It's pretty wild, and she wanted me to take a picture of it.  She actually puts the hair ties in with the strands of hair in front of her neck, and then flips the whole thing over her head when she's done!  Super fun!

A New Passport!

With Jon and I planning a trip to Europe, it's time to get a new passport!  Mine has expired, and I want my new name on it anyway!  Today I filled out the forms, and got ready to submit, with expedited processing!

The girls have been begging me to learn how to dutch braid their hair, and I finally did a passable attempt on Mac's hair, and we had to commemorate with a picture!

We took Mac in for a med check and well check today.  She is 54.5 inches tall, and 70 lbs!  She is more petite than her sisters, but she is growing well!  Those numbers put her in the 44% for weight, and 54% for height.

Jon and I headed to Costco this morning and picked up some boxes of chicken.  Three, to be exact.  They are SO inexpensive, so we got a box of chicken breasts, boneless chicken thighs, and bone in chicken thighs.  We also picked up a vacuum sealer so we could freeze them in manageable quantities and Jon had a blast working that!

Unfortunately, what we did not realize is that one of the boxes had leaked.  And we had put it on the backseat of the car.  So chicken juice leaked out everywhere RIGHT into the upholstery of the seat.  This was not good.  We wiped it up as best we could, and went on with the day.  We will likely need to revisit it later!

This evening was the first installment of Jon's birthday tickets to the opera and the symphony.  We got tickets to Moby Dick at the Opera House.  We read many positive reviews, and hoped it wouldn't disappoint.

It SOOOOOO disappointed!!!  It was terrible.  I mean bad enough that we looked at each other during intermission and laughed at the awfulness!  We got up and walked out.  All the positive reviews were from artsy people who haven't a classy bone in their bodies!

It was dissonant, poorly choreographed, much too 'modern', and almost farcical in the way they would just sing the words instead of saying them, but in notes that in no way went with anything the orchestra was doing!

If this is modern opera, I will steer clear in the future!!!  It sure was good for a laugh, though!

I found some gorgeous fabrics for Mimi's dress.  I will be using a bit of pink silk I have left over from the wedding sewing.

I found some pretty ruffled fabric at a shop in Sugarhouse, and some beautiful polyester silk taffeta for the white main body of the dress.  It's going to be pretty!

Cutting hugely bulky skirt pieces requires the use of the entire living room floor!

Made enormous progress on the thank you notes over the last few days!  I decided I was not going to calligraph the addresses, it just takes too long, and it's something else to procrastinate, so a sharpie it is!!

They are almost all done, and I will be so glad to have that behind me!

Jon has recently become interested in sprouting seeds...grains, legumes, vegetables, all the things for micro green salads and juicing.  He started this first batch and it's doing so well!

Not only is baptism coming up, but even more pressing time wise, is the February birthday run!  With Mimi turning 8, she will receive her own set of embossed scriptures, and a case to put them in.  I just didn't see any I liked very much, so in typical Mercedes fashion, determined I was going to sew her case myself.  Today I went and bought the fabric for the project, and it's going to be so pretty!

Leiden pulls really funny faces, and we felt the need to take a picture, despite (or maybe because!) her almost certain future hatred of such an act!  It will have to come out in several years when she's dating, and may or may not be used as blackmail!  I love this girl!

New Couches!

They came!  They look so great in the living room, and I am so pleased with how much better our entertaining possibilities are now!  We will likely also get some sort of matching or coordinating chair or recliner, but for now, we have definitely moved up in the world!  Not pictured is our new little window seat.  It is upholstered, and has storage inside it, right under the window.

New Couches Are Coming!

We bought new couches on Amazon a week or so ago, because the one I've had for years is really in just reprehensible condition!  It sheds bits of its fake leather every single day, and it just looks awful.  It was embarrassing to have people come over, and I was constantly apologizing for it!

Well, they come tomorrow!!!

So tonight was getting the old thing out to the garage so we can be ready to have the delivery guys haul the new ones in.  We are so excited!

Tonight also marked the (sort of belated!) beginning of thank you notes from the wedding party!  It's a simple task, but I've been putting it off all this time.  We don't want to get caught outside of the traditional 6 month window, and more importantly, we want people to know we are grateful for their kindnesses.  Let the gratefulness begin!

Snow Day!

Lots of snow today, and luckily it was a Saturday, so we were able to just do what we wanted!  Jon and Mac tackled shoveling the driveway.  Such hard workers!

Later this morning, Leiden and Mimi had ice skating class!  They have both decided they don't have the necessary interest to keep attending gymnastics, so Brad enrolled them in ice skating.  I hope they enjoy it!

They seemed to have a great time, zipping about on the ice and practicing skills.

Later this afternoon, it was STILL snowing, so we headed over to the school to play in the snow!

The hills aren't super great for sledding, but the girls and Jon sure tried!!  The snow, being so new didn't really help, either.  It was wet packing snow, not icy slick snow.

I was ATTACKED several times, all in good fun.

It's really fun to see Jon behaving like the boy grown tall that he is!

Mimi just cracks me up.  She is just completely fine marching to her own drummer, and doing whatever strikes her fancy.  She finds great joy in eating the snow!

Here is some video footage, and a still taken from each one following it.  This first one is Mac flying over an intentionally built bump.  He hair flying out behind her!

Leiden took a running start with this one!

And Jon with this one!

After we went back home, Jon was not done outside yet!  He got some containers and went out front to build an igloo.

Mac joined him after a bit, and together they worked hard.

I failed to get a shot of the final igloo, all topped off, but they took it all the way up!

Dressmaking

Baptism dressmaking is upon us!  Mimi was quite opinionated in how she wanted her dress to look, but we finally agreed on a pattern, and now it's time to go in search of fabric!

Skiing

Jon and I went out on a true date today!  We hit the slopes and went skiing!  I have never been skiing before, and only once snowboarding.  So this was new.  I literally started on the classes hill.  

Up the little moving walkway, to come down a tiny little hill.  And what happened on my very first run down said tiny hill??  I went sprawling and hit my head.  Good heavens!  I felt so foolish and ungainly, but I was glad I didn't have a worse spill!

I started to get the hang of it a bit better, so we headed to the bunny hill.  That was a little scary...you have to get off the lift and get out of the way quickly, and that almost sent me sprawling, too.

But, as with everything, more practice made me feel more comfortable, and we continued up and down.  It was hurting my shoulder, which has been hurting for some time, now, and that was a little aggravating.

Later on in the evening, we headed up to one of the big slopes.  I thought I was ready, but there's nothing in between the bunny hill and fully coming down the mountain!  As we rode up the (MUCH LONGER) lift, I began to think perhaps we had made a mistake, yet the only way down is to ski down.  I was fine at first, but speed kept creeping up, and I would get really nervous and want to slow down, which was super hurting my hips and legs.  It was quite the harrowing trek down.  When I am really feeling out of my element and uncomfortable I get emotional, really panicky, and unable to accept help or instruction.  Well, that happened, and I eventually literally threw myself off the trail into some powder to stop myself at one point.  I felt so much better just SITTING, and not having to worry about going down.  But, I eventually had to.  And eventually, I made it to the bottom!

But I was done.  We took a break and went into the lodge for a bit, and then Jon wanted me to do the bunny hill a couple more times to end the night on a positive, and that was wise of him.  We went down the hill a couple times, and it was better to feel more in control.  But dang if my shoulder doesn't HURT!!  A repeat trip will likely have to wait until it heals completely.  Which is beginning to look like it might be a while.

In all, it was such a fun night to spend with Jon, and I'm glad we went!