My baby sister, Alanna, graduated high school. She's worked hard and I really wanted to do something to congratulate her. Alanna loves cats, so I thought this quilt pattern would be ideal. Alanna doesn't care for girly things so I chose a neutral color palette of white, gray and black and then I backed the quilt in a plain true purple. It's not very big, just lap-sized or a throw. I really enjoyed making this for Alanna. I've now made a quilt for all my McNeill family members, so long as I count the one quilt I made for John and Allison valid. 

I'm not sure what my next quilting projects will be. I love to quilt and I wish I could make one every month. Hopefully I'll be able to make matching ones for Holly and Greta when we move them to twin-sized beds. And maybe I'll make one or two as Christmas gifts? Any excuse to buy beautiful fabric and quilt!

Our family was due for some serious family time! Life has been insane and I hope that we're on the downhill nowadays, because I am exhausted! We took advantage of having no obligations this past weekend and we filled Saturday up with a couple fun activities. In the morning, we went to Vasona park. It's a great, big park with multiple playgrounds, a creek, a train and a carousel. Every Christmas season, they set up a fun light display for people to drive through and enjoy. We've been the last two years. Saturday's weather was perfect! We saw ducklings and goslings swimming in the creek - very exciting! We rode the train and carousel. We walked around and played. Mostly we enjoyed ourselves and let some of the stress of the past month melt away. My face hurt from smiling so much (and probably from my insane adult acne as well). It was a very satisifying morning. After naps, we took the girls to Great America (we have seasons passes). That was really fun, but also really crowded and unfortunately Greta had a big melt down. But c'est la vie, it all turned out just fine. Overall a great day! I was so grateful to just spend a day with Conor finally!

I saw this idea on MerMag and it was perfect for a quick to put together craft for Holly, Greta and their friend. My girls love any opportunity to use glue, and they use it liberally! It was fun to see what each of the kids did and how their styles and personalities shone through. This craft is a great one! I would've loved to have used fancier paper, but construction paper is what we had on hand and it worked great!

I thought it had become a tradition to take photos of Conor with the girls on Father's Day, but we missed last year because that was the weekend we moved into our current apartment. Whoops! Onward right? Here's 2011 if you're interested.

Conor is a really wonderful Papa. The best choice I've ever made was to marry him. 

Your children will become who you are; so be who you want them to be. - Anonymous

Holly is obsessed with her letter, H. She can spot one anywhere! She can make an H with her fingers. And the other day, I found her building an H with our sandals. Greta shares this obsession with her G. She also can find a G anywhere. Greta is almost equally into H and is always on the lookout for a precious H. It's so fun to see my girls grow into learning! And with so much enthusiasm!