Well, Jayden and I are off early tomorrow morning to get on a plane and fly back to Washington for a visit. I’ve tried to cram all of our clothes into one suitcase, as our airline baggage restrictions now limit one checked bag per ticket and a stroller counts as a checked bag (boooo). And I’m afraid there’s no way I can go without some sort of stroller. We have to change planes in Denver and it’s quite the walk from one gate to the other, and there is no way I can carry a 30 pound child all that way, as we have a tight connection, without throwing myself into labor. Soooooo, here’s to hoping I can keep my bag under 50 pounds!

Now, the next thing I am wondering is if I am going to be traveling with this child…..

or his evil twin that emerged the last time we flew together…. We are NOT flying United this time, even though they let you check 2 bags per person…

Jayden is always trying to love on Scooter. He tries to kiss her, pet her, put her up on the bed so he can jump with her. He’s finally gave up on trying to carry her around, as he always ends up getting scratched and bit. Scooter doesn’t really love Jayden like Jayden loves her. Scooter really doesn’t like any of us that much. Today, Jayden wanted to share his favorite animal Horsey with her, or maybe he was showing Horsey just how much fun Scooter really is.

Looks like Horsey might be getting a little carried away…..eeek

I found these pictures on my old camera this morning after I had Royal take the prego picture. I had totally forgotten about them, as I got my new camera right after we moved here. These pictures were from the transition time we were living out at the lake before we left for Wichita.
Royal caught a little fish in the lake.

Then the boys found the costumes at Nana’s house and were trying some on.

Ok, this is for all the begging I’ve had for a picture. I had Royal take a picture this morning before he left for work. Jayden and I are on our way to go work out!

26 weeks done, quite a few to go!

We went up to Kansas City this weekend to visit some friends of ours who are currently stationed near there. Royal was able to get some fishing in and caught his first Kansas bass. Yipee! Jessie however caught a bigger one. :) Jessie fried ‘em up and it wasn’t too bad.

On Saturday, we decided to take the kids to the Leavenworth County Fair. Laura and Jessie have 2 little girls, Abby (5) and Martha (13mo). I have to say, the Leavenworth County Fair, in a little town called Tonganoxie, is about as good as anything Shelton could put on. There was a demolition derby going on when we showed up, so there were lots of Kansas rednecks for us to mingle with. We ate hotdogs and funnel cake and rootbeer floats, checked out the fair animals, and of course went on rides.
First was the goats. Abby loved the goats, Jayden pretended they didn’t really exist.

Next came the stinky pigs. Jayden really didn’t care for the pigs, especially the ones that weren’t laying down sleeping.

Now, the cows, the cows were different. Jayden loved the cows, he kept mooing at them. I think he was actually talking with them because they were all mooing back at him. This is Jayden’s ‘cheese’ face.

The geese, ducks, chickens, and roosters were even better than cows for Jayden. He was finally warming up to this whole fair experience. He did a lot of yelling at the them, ‘Hey ducks! Hey chickens! Cock-a-doodle-doo!!!!’ Then, we moved onto the final barn, the bunnies. Oh, happy day, the bunnies. There were small, soft, they didn’t make loud noises at you, or smell really bad. To Jayden, they were like a small and nicer version of Scooter, and he just wanted to love on ‘em.

Next, we hit the rides. Jayden, well all the kids really, loved the carousel. We had to take 2 trips on that. Jayden also decided to spend his ride tickets driving a little red jeep around with Abby, which I found out later, Jayden thought was a train. And that kinda makes sense, since all the cars are hooked together and following each other around.

The Sessom girls hit up a ride on the ferris wheel.

And finally, for the grand finale, these are some of my favorite pictures. Jayden wanted to go down the super slide. So, Royal paid the tickets and took Jayden to the top of the slide and got situated.

When Jayden came off the slide, I asked him if he liked it. He said yes real enthusiastically, like he loved it. Royal said that Jayden didn’t seem like he was scared, like he liked it. However, the picture shows a bit of a different story. It looks to me like Royal loved it, and Jayden is scared out of his wits.

Jayden is just a crack up. :)

Who doesn’t want to see some little chubby legs sticking out of the top of these boots?

I’m not sure why I continue to try and make felted slippers/boots or anything felted that goes on the feet, it is usually a big disaster, yet still I do it again and again. I saw these little felted snugs and the kit was on sale, so I bought it without thinking. They are wool on the outside, yet lined with alpaca wool on the inside (super soft!), and the picture just looked so darn cute. Then I started knitting them, and I started having doubts, because felting slippers or boots for me has never worked out, they never shrink like I think they will and usually end up huge. I even had a pair try and kill my dad by throwing him down the stairs. Poor dad, he’ll put on anything I knit him, no matter what, gigantic felted slippers, slippers that look more like feet condoms, anything I try and experiment with, he’ll be my guinea pig (sorry dad, these won’t fit you). So, I knit these in the smallest size (0-8 months) figuring that even if they end up too big, maybe Jayden could wear them. I knit them up easily while watching the Olympics the last couple nights and my gauge was right on, I mean if Michael Phelps can win gold all the time and break world records, why couldn’t I have one pair of felted slippers work out? So I felt confident when I put them in the washing machine to felt today. Well, one felted up pretty darn good, the other one struggled a bit (the one that struggled must of been the one I knit while watching the US women gymnastics fall off the balance beam and jump out of bounds). I left it in the washer to see if I could felt it a little more, but alas, it had had enough and wasn’t going to cooperate (silver medal for that sucker, I give it a 4.0 for execution, 9.0 for presentation, I mean it is cute). So, I have one boot that’s a little looser than the other, but at least they shrunk down, not as much as I wanted them too, they are basically one size bigger than they should be, but that’s not bad, this new baby should grow into them sometime, hopefully not in the summer… Anyway, I decided to spruce them up a bit and add some polka dots, so after they spent the afternoon drying in the 90 degree sun outside, this evening I needle felted on some color. I only poked and made my fingers bleed 3 times with the little barbed needle used for needle felting. Guess I’m not ready to watch the Olympics and needle felt at the same time…or maybe I should of tried to make my fingers bleed like 8 times, since that’s supposedly the lucky number for the Olympics this year. Hmmmm, I don’t think so, my bloody finger tips hurt.

I started this project probably about 6 or 7 years ago, long before Royal was ever in the picture. Usually if I start a project and I stop working on it, it kinda just sits there and never really gets done. I could show you a couple knitting projects that have ended up that way. This little braided rug, though, was a Martha Stewart idea. I found it in her magazine a long, long time ago and I remember thinking how easy I thought it would be and I’d be able to whip it up in a snap. I went and bought 3 towels, used my mom’s quilting tools to cut it into strips, hand sewed all the strips together, and began braiding the strips together, the tricky part with the braiding was each of the 3 strips had to folded into 3rds, so that the edges were hidden and then braided together. I did maybe about half of the braiding of the towels, and then that’s where it stopped. I got tired of folding and braiding, and untangling the strips and then more folding and braiding, it was taking forever. So, I ended up leaving it at my moms house and figured I’d work on it there on the weekends when I was visiting, since it was kind of a messy project (little towel lint was all over the place), and it got put in a bag and that bag got put in a closet and that was that for the past years. Then, Royal up and decides that we’re moving to Kansas, and mom starts going through my stuff at her house for things that were mine and that I needed to take with me. Low and behold, she found the towel rug, and it got put in our cars for the trip to Wichita. I told myself I was going to finish it, as my yarn supply is growing low, and it’s sunny outside, so I could work on it outside. Well, last night, I finally finished it. After evenings and evenings of braiding and more braiding, I thought the hard part was over when I finished that. Then I had Royal find me some fishing line so I could start sewing my braids into a big circle. Oh, my poor poor fingers. I have blisters on my finger tips from pushing that big ole needle with fishing line through all my braids. But hallelujia! After evenings and evenings of sewing and more sewing and more sewing, last night I finally finished it! Here it is, my own little braided rug, it only took me like 6 years or so…I don’t think I’ll ever make another. :)

When we moved here, I had been given advice, to help Jayden with the transition, of keeping his new room as close to his old room as possible, so at least he had something familiar. My parents had given me Jordan’s old bedroom set (thanks!), from long ago that had just been sitting in storage, for Jayden since we knew we were going to have to get Jayden new furniture soon after we got here. The toddler bed he’s been sleeping in is really just his converted crib, and we will need a crib again in a few months, and I had again been given advice to “hide” the crib for a little while before setting it up for the new baby, in hopes of Jayden not claiming it as his and feeling like the new baby was taking more of his things/space. So, this last weekend, since it was going to be in the 100’s outside, Royal and I decided we would fix up Jayden’s room. Jayden of course was real involved, as usual. Jayden had become real attached to some felted fish once we started moving, that I’d made him before he was born, so Royal and I decided since really the love of fish most likely is running through his veins, we were going to make his room fish themed, and help promote it a bit. So, we got a sweet fish comforter for his bed, picked out some paint colors, and I went to the yarn store to get matching yarn to make more felted fish.

We did some taping…

Then we started painting…

We ended up using Aura paint from Benjamin Moore, because of the low VOC levels with makes it better for the environment and WAY less toxic to humans, it hardly smelled at all - which translated into me not having to wear a mask to paint and Jayden being able to sleep in his room the same day we finished painting and me not worrying about all the horrible poisons he was breathing in. Another benefit was that it dried to the touch in 20 mins and we could paint on a second coat in an hour, which was great with a 2 year old running around wanting to check out what was going on in his room. We were able to get the majority of all the painting done while he was taking a nap and by the time Jayden woke up, the walls were dry. Fantastic! (I know it looks from the pictures that Royal was doing all the work, but in reality Royal never takes pictures, so that leaves it up to me. I don’t look like I’m hardly a part of this family if all you do is look at pictures, but I did lots of work too, just so you know)

Jayden wasn’t too sure at first he picked the right colors after seeing them on the wall. He was having second thoughts about it and thinking that maybe he was more like his dad and that he preferred white walls to any color. He came to his senses later when we were finished - not Royal though, Royal would rather just have white walls….boring….

I think it turned out pretty well and I pretty much just want to hang out in Jayden’s room now because I think it’s so cute. Jayden is loving his new bed, although he still falls asleep on the floor by the door every night. But what he loves more is the felted fish I made. We went and got googly eyes for them, so they could look at him (he wanted them to be able to see) and then put them on fishing line to hang them. It took me over a day to convince Jayden to let me hang them from his ceiling. He was walking around with his 7 felted fish on their “leashes” (the fishing line I was going to hang them with) making them jump on things and follow him around the house. The only way I finally got them away from him was that I told him he could pick one to keep and not hang up. He picked the green crazy looking fish (the one in the top pic), with the backwards dorsel fin that makes it look like it has a mohawk, and eyelash yarn that makes it look like it has fur. It’s cool, it now sleeps with him and Horsey and he calls it his Crazy Fishy.