Andrew, Lindsay, Riley, and Tanner: January 2013

We have been in Albuquerque one month. And we are loving it.

Right now we are living in an apartment and we will start looking for a house to live in soon. It is so crazy to think about how long we will live here. Everywhere else we have lived we have known how long we were going to be there. But I am so excited to live in a house!

Riley is liking our new place. There is a circle that he can run around that goes through the living room and kitchen so we can chase him or he can just run. He is also finally napping really well, I think that can be attributed to the fact that he finally has a crib and isn't sleeping in the living room anymore. He loves to explore in church, I was really worried he was going to trip our Sunday School teacher on Sunday. Luckily he just collected all the erasers from the chalkboard and made a huge mess. Only 4.5 months until nursery. . .

Riley is also really good at climbing on the table, he is so fast. He also taught himself how to walk backwards this week, it's really funny.

I'm starting to get to know a lot of people in the ward and am making a lot of new friends. I also love the weather (so far). We've had a few cold days but for the most part it's been really nice. Riley and I have gone on walks almost everyday.

Andrew is liking work, and liking not doing homework. I really like it too! It's so great that he's not always doing an assignment or thinking about one. It's so great how much time we get to spend together now. I guess before we were together some, but he was doing homework so I don't think that really counts.

I've never been crafty. I get these great ideas and I'm really good at starting them, but then I get frustrated, or bored, or run out of supplies, or it's not looking like I have pictured in my head and I quit. It's one of my worst qualities along with leaving my towel on the floor (at least these are Andrew's biggest complaints).

Anyway a while ago I had the greatest idea for a Christmas present. I had seen a really great kid-friendly nativity at a ward Christmas party way back in 2010. I found the exact same set on a crafty blog. They were wood blocks with cute little stickers on them. I looked all over the internet for those stickers, but I couldn't find them. I assumed they had just run out at Christmas time and I would look again later. I looked the next fall for the stickers and discovered that they were discontinued. I decided that I would look for different stickers surely there would be something just as good, or maybe better.

There wasn't.

Christmas came and went, also Riley was born, and I didn't really think about this nativity.

Then in the spring I started thinking of the nativity again. I thought maybe I could just draw my own pictures that looked almost exactly like the other ones. Then I remembered I'm not very good at drawing (probably for the same reason I'm not good at crafts). All this time I talked about my idea with Andrew, he was encouraging. Last summer I decided to finally draw my own pictures. It is a little embarrassing how much work it took me with how simple they are. But during Riley's naps for about a week or two I drew my own pictures.

When I was finally satisfied I scanned them and got them on the computer. Then I had to fix all the lines and little marks that were bad. This also took kind of a long time. Then I used the fancy paint bucket tool to color the pictures. Victory! My pictures were finally done!

Then I realized I didn't have anything to cut up the wood. Also our summer in Albuquerque was coming to an end, so I decided I would just figure out what to do once we got back to Pittsburgh. A few weeks went by and I kept forgetting to ask if anyone had a chop saw I could use. Then I asked some friends at a baby shower if any of them had a chop saw. They all said no, and asked why. I explained my idea to them.

I kept forgetting and forgetting and I had basically given up on making a nativity this year when around the middle of October one of my friends from the baby shower called me and asked if she could use the nativity for her Super Saturday craft she was in charge of. I was so excited, and told her everything I knew that had to be done. I emailed the pictures to her. She and her husband cut all the blocks, sanded the corners, and printed off the stickers. Then I signed up for the project and didn't have to do much work except for any extra sanding that I wanted to do. Actually I signed up for a lot of them. . . Sorry again.

Super Saturday came along and everything worked great. I slowly worked on my nativities a few blocks at a time. Usually after Riley went to sleep and before Andrew came home from school (or while he was doing homework). I also watched a lot of TV shows while I was doing it.

I ended up making 7 sets and gave 6 away as gifts. Too bad Riley had to get all the reject blocks. I think this year I will make him a good set. It took a lot of work, but I am really proud of them.