I haven't posted in a long time. It has been a really busy few months around here. We had lots of company for the holidays, starting with Thanksgiving and moving right on through the new year. With so much family coming in and out of town, cooking, baking, cleaning, and visiting, not much else got done, including blog posts.
Time to get back into the swing of things.
The biggest thing going on is mission preparations for our oldest son. We are so proud of him, and pleased at his choices in his life. He is such a fine, upstanding example to his younger brothers and to the other young men at church. I am honored to call him my son and eager to hear of his experiences in England. For those who have not heard already, Thomas will be serving for two years in Leeds, England. He reports to the Mission Training Center in Preston, England on February 19th.
We have been busy since November helping him complete the necessary preparations. It's been a whirlwind of activity; passport application, visa application, temple trip, shopping, shopping, and more shopping, helping him decide what to keep, what to take, what to save, what to give away, and what to throw away. What a difficult thing to reduce your life to a couple of suitcases and packing the rest into boxes.
I've also transformed into a knitting fool, completing several projects that I have never attempted before. I started them long before Christmas and finally finished most of them last week. I made my first pair of socks, pair of mittens, and a wonderful super long stocking cap for my dear old Dad!
Here is my son Conner (13) wearing my Dad's stocking cap. My Dad is a little crazy and loves all kinds of kooky things. He regularly wears knit caps, but I bet he doesn't have one like this one! I made it using a bunch of different colors of Swish worsted weight yarn from Knit Picks. I made random sized stripes. The pattern was from The Nauti Knitter blog. This was so fun to make, especially when I started the decreases, after a while, the rounds went very quickly. I used a pair of circular needles and the magic loop technique. It's much easier to me than using DPN's. Hope you like this Dad, it's in the mail!
I made this pair of socks using Knit Picks Gelatto self-striping sock yarn. Knit Picks has a free pattern for two-at-a-time, toe-up socks. I used that pattern with a variation for the start of the toe. The one on the pattern just didn't compute in my head, so I used google to find this one. The wonderful thing about knitting two socks at a time is that you finish the whole pair at once, so you never get the "one sock syndrome". I know that feeling well. When I finished my first mitten, I started the other half of the pair and then got distracted by new yarn and a new project and it took me a while to get back to it. My youngest son didn't like the idea of just keeping one hand in his pocket (no idea why?), so I finally made the other one. I'll post a photo later when he gets home and I can take a picture of him with his mittens.
Here's a photo of our missionary. He's all ready to go, everything but having his bags packed. I never though I would miss him so much, but I find it's a bittersweet moment. I'm so happy and proud of him, but everything I do, I realize will likely be the last time I get to do it for him. I love watching him all grown up and happy and heading off to serve, but my Mom heart is a little sad, so many memories and so much ahead of him! My first little baby is all grown up and ready to leave the nest.....my first time at this. Doesn't he just have the best hair, though? We love it!
