2010 Christmas with the Cozzens

What a delightful Christmas!!
 (A huge thanks to my brother Tim, the best pilot for Allegiant Air)

 

 We decided to fly to Washington to spend Christmas break with the Cozzens family. And it was fun. On our way home from the airport, we stopped in Everett at Lucky Buffet (a Chinese restaurant) for a very good meal, great atmosphere and lots of entertainment. They had a live band playing Christmas music so Grandpa and Melanie danced a few songs. How fun!  Duncan was dared to eat salmon sushi. He ate it all. Five minutes later, he went to the bathroom and threw up. What a goof!
  





The Cozzens family sporting their new matching pajama pants on Christmas eve.

Melanie and Grandpa showing off their silly monster puppets that Melanie got from great-Grandma/Grandpa Thomas for Christmas. They were a lot of fun mixing and matching the different features. Grandma and Autumn are watching them.

Grandpa helping Autumn ride Melanie's new trike from Santa.

The day after Christmas was Sunday. We were privileged to attend Autumn's baby blessing. She looked absolutely beautiful in her blessing dress made by Grandma Thomas. It has thousands of beads crocheted into the shirt. What a doll!

At the end of our visit, our adventures began. 

All seven of us (Cozzens family and Thomas family) left at 5 am from Marcie's home driving through a snow storm and snow packed roads in hopes to catch a 10 am flight from the Bellingham airport on Allegiant Air with standby tickets.  The Cozzens family then safely drove back home minus Grandpa, Grandma and Uncle Duncan.

Duncan had a pocket knife found in his bag which was confiscated. Great?! Somehow it made it through Las Vegas' security! Scary.

Being on standby creates all sorts of stress. There were three seats available on the 10 am flight and two people ahead of us were on standby also.

It worked out that there was ONE seat left which I took alone and left John and Duncan for the next flight at 5:00 pm. Yep. Waiting in the Bellingham airport for the next 7 hours. Tim and Grandpa Watkins picked me up at the Las Vegas airport without any hitches. And I was able to attend the Watkins family Christmas party at Kirk and Paula's home that night. 

Meanwhile.......
John and Duncan waited patiently until 5pm to find out there was only one seat available so they gave it to a young lady. They staywed overnight at a local motel and arrived at the airport early the next morning to get on a 10:00 am flight. 


What an adventure!!


Christmas turned out to be a great time, wonderful memories and plenty of love for our family.

Hooray for Crochet!

I found this cool picture of a life-size crocheted chair on the net.


Crocheters of the world, stand up and be counted!

March is National Crochet Month!

I received this message from a yarn company and loved it. So enjoy....

If you love the possibilities inherent in a hook and yarn, this is for you. And this gives us just one more reason to go outside and show the world that crochet is here to stay.

Take a moment to appreciate the tradition behind crochet, and to thank the mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers who passed this fine legacy on. This month we can also look forward to the possibilities of crochet. You may not be a yarn artist covering light poles and buildings, but you can still make a statement. Head to your local park or coffee shop and crochet in public! Bring friends! Show the world that we're here and we're not stopping.

Not yet a crocheter? Pick up a hook and join the movement today!

What other crafts can you drop at a second's notice and pick up again without losing a stitch? Don't leave those ends hanging, crochet them in as you go! Quick and easy finishing at its finest.

From the adorable delights of itty bitty amigirumi to the chunky afghan you can whip up in a day, the possibilities never end.

No matter how you hold your hook, raise it up in honor of the timeless art of crochet!

Abby's ALL PURPLE dress

In an attempt to repay some of the tender mercies the Johnson family gave us with Marcie's pregnancy with Emry and her lifetime (along with all of my other challenges I have experiences while being in the RS presidency), I made this dress and hat for Abby who is about the same age as Melanie. It was Abby's birthday on February 28 so I made it her favorite color - all purple! She LOVED it. She wore it Sunday to church and refused to take it off for the remainder of the day until after her birthday party and bedtime.

There is a little bit of history into the ALL PURPLE dress. I actually completed a similar dress but pink and brown for Easter (for the same purpose as previously stated). At our Relief Society activity on March 3, Abby was wearing her pink and brown coat so I asked her if liked pink and brown.
She emphatically stated, "NO. I like purple."
So I responded, "Yes. But pink and brown are pretty too."
"No," she said, "Only purple."
I told her I had made a pink and brown dress for her for Easter.
So I said, "I guess I'll have to make another one. Do you want to have pink and purple?"
"No, ALL purple."
So as you can see it is ALL purple.

After talking with Marcie about it, she said Melanie's favorite color is purple so I'm making a matching ALL purple dress for Melanie too. How many dresses should our little Melanie have? I made two for her birthday, two for Christmas, and now three for Easter. More important, I will have to get matching shoes for her ALL purple dress. Melanie cannot have too many shoes!

Easter animals 2009

Can Grandma improve on this?

Last year, I created these animals for Melanie for Easter. Hope I can find the time to create something she will love this year. Rule: it must be crocheted. Ideas?

Your opinion?

There is so much and too much UGLY OLD-FASHIONED crochet that it gets a bad reputation. We need to update and modernize the craft so the younger generations are interested in it.

Okay, so I just started this blog and am now thinking I should have a separate one for all of my crochet.

What do you think? If I do, do you think I should make it searchable on the web to spread the word? Should I include patterns or just have pictures?

So now I wait for your comments.

New baby, new dress

A new family in our ward recently had a baby so I quickly made a dress for her. This year in school, John has had several of his new students move into our ward boundaries. The Stephens family moved in back in early November. Knowing they lived in our ward, we went to visit them. We had a great visit, introducing ourselves and getting to know them. Come to find out they were members of the church. Jason, the husband/dad, was recently laid off from work so they have been struggling. And with Angela eight-months pregnant, it was very difficult. Not having family close by, we offered to help when they had the baby. The afternoon/night Angela delivered the baby, the two kids (Aliana and Ashton) stayed with us. Boy did they have fun! They loved playing with Donuts (our poopin' dog) and the Wii. They are a great family!!

My little twin girls - twenty years apart!

Last fall, I wanted so much to make the same identical dress for Christmas for my two-year-old granddaughter Melanie as her mother had when she was three. I loved that dress.

And the original dress is nowhere to be found. So I knew I needed to make another one. I looked and looked through all of my patterns and found a lot of cute dresses but not THE ONE. I asked Grandma-great Watkins if she had the pattern. She remembered the one I was talking about so we searched her patterns at Thanksgiving but to no avail.

Oh, great.

That meant I had to design it from Melanie's current measurements and memory (20 years).

Wha-la!
After getting the dress about 75 percent done, I found the pattern on ebay. I quickly purchased it to compare my creation and to my surprise, it was almost exact! I must confess that I made improvements from the original design.

P.S. Melanie is wearing it backwards. The buttons should be on the back, although it was confusing because I made two dresses for Christmas - this pink one and a blue one. The blue dress has pretty butterfly buttons on the front. Oh, well. It's still cute. (See the Cozzens blog for a picture of the blue dress)

By the way, Janette, Jennifer and Rachel - do you remember your dresses like this one? Jennifer's was purple and Rachel's was red.