The Taylor Times: Happy New Year! - er, um, I mean Happy March?!

I've had a lot of the crazies happening. It seems like just as soon as I get myself out of an emotional funk that I get physically sick, my kids get sick or have super trying days or things are super busy or better put- life just happens. This ol' blog has been pushed to the back burner so many times in the last few months. I'm not to happy about that- I think that recording what my family does and things that go on is a great thing to do and I love looking through back posts. Today I am not feeling well, Daniel is sick and taking a nap, Jane is (finally) feeling better after a long two weeks of a few different ailments. I realized that this is my life right now, so I decided to pull up my big girl panties, sort through some pictures and post for my first time this year. Seriously though, how is it March already?!

Daniel said that instead of calling this blog "The Taylor Times" I should rename it "The Taylor Behind the Times"!

I really do want to catch up on our family events, so here we go:

December
We did our annual 24 days countdown to Christmas. It was a bit different this year as we didn't do something every night because the nights that we have Tae Kwon Do are pretty busy. Mark, Daniel and Seth are taking Tae Kwon Do. Mark will be earning his black belt in May, Daniel will earn his at the end of this year and Seth just started in November.

I had to be upfront with the boys as to which activities were optional and which ones I really wanted them to participate in. They aren't finding making paper snowflakes or having hot cocoa by the fireplace as exciting as it is for the younger ones and I don't want to stop doing something just because the teenagers don't want to do it. It was tough for me to accept that, but it made the family events more special.

One of the biggest projects that I did for Christmas was a set of memory quilts for my sisters and mom. My sister Kim helped me and I'm so glad that I let her onto my secret because it took a lot of time to put these together. We got together at least once a week from the end of September to the end of November. In November we got together 2-3 times a week. We figured that we spent about 125+ hours on this project! It was amazing to spend time with Kim and chat while cutting/sewing/ironing/quilting. 117 unique fabrics in the quilts from Kim's, my Mom's, my Grandma Willes', and my own fabric stash.

The finished quilts

Debbie's

Denise's

Kim's

Kim made these amazing quilt labels

Mom's

After such a big quilting project I was ready for a smaller one, so I made this little snowman wall quilt. I used fabrics from my stash- I'm really trying to make a dent in my fabric!

This semester in school Mark took a ballroom dancing class. He had a great time and his performance was quite fun to watch!

Seth started playing the saxophone in the school band this year. His first couple of weeks of practice were difficult but once we discovered that his saxophone was broken and got it fixed, it has sounded great! He has practice two times a week at 7:30 in the morning. He doesn't ever complain about going or practicing!

Jane thought that the band was too loud!

Madeleine came over and we made gingerbread cookies together.

This winter has been very different. It just hasn't snowed and it has been really warm. One of our activities for the countdown was to play in the snow. Jane was so disappointed that she couldn't make snow angels, so we pulled out the sidewalk chalk and made snowmen and snow angels! This picture was taken on December 8th. It was close to 60 degrees outside- I didn't even need a jacket until the sun went down!

My sister Denise and I went with our girls to a local production of the Nutcracker. We had a fun time dressing up and hanging out together!

For the past two years Mark has been in California for Christmas. Paul joined him last year. So this year we finally had everyone together again! This was the best picture I managed to get of our family this year.

Daniel's sister Deborah came up from Arizona for Christmas so we got together with her and some other siblings and went swimming. (Did you know that Daniel and I both have a sister named Debbie? Both were born in 1980 and both are twins. To keep them apart Deborah or Debb is Daniel's sister and my sister is Debbie. They both live in Arizona too!) It was great to visit with Debb and see her little guy Jaxon.