"Nuk go bye-bye"

I'm breaking Brooke of her nuk. Cold turkey. Everyone pray for my sanity. I noticed that she's been chewing them to pieces, we went through 4 nuks in 2 days. So instead of going out and buying nuks in lots, I've decided she's big enough to be weaned of them. This is our first night without one. She looses them at night anways, so hopefully she can get to sleep because I know she'll stay asleep. This could be a long process of falling asleep though. I put her down 5 minutes ago and we had a long a talk about how the nuk went bye-bye. She nodded and said "Okay", but I don't think she really understood it.

On a different note...Redoubt erupted again and this time ash fell on us here in Anchorage. Brooke and I were at an Easter party on post, and someone there said that a friend had called her and that ash was falling over on C Street, which was about a mile from where we were. I had been slacking on shopping and had to rush and get diapers and milk, just in case we were going to get ashed in for a few days. When I arrived at the commissary, I could see the ash cloud, but no ash. By the time I emerged thirty minutes later, ash was falling. I ran with Brooke out to the car and got her in the car right away. She had no clue what was going on, she just thought mom was pretty fun for running with the cart. We live right outside of base, so it wasn't a very long drive home, but I was hyperventilating all the same. We finally got home and wend inside. The first thing I did was turn on our air purifier. The snow is kind of ashy outside, but it's not too bad. I hope this volcano stops pretty quick here. I don't like that it can be an ongoing thing. Too much anticipation. I'm a planner. I like knowing what's going to happen, and this volcano trumps that. Gar.

I was playing with my camera today. It has so many neat features, so I wanted to try some of them.

This is a picture of my very first afghan. I screwed up on part of it, and would have had to rip out four rows. I didn't. So I'm sending it to my dad instead. He'll never know...Haha.

This is the couch covered in yarn and the coffee table covered in pattern books.

And my crazy daughter...The first is of her bedhead, the second is her "doh!" and the third is just...her. :)

I attract natural disasters...

So I can't get through a weekend without some sort of excitement. Last weekend it was helping to deliver a baby, and this weekend the volcano here in Alaska finally erupted. We've been waiting on this things for the past few months and it finally blew Sunday night. I got a bad feeling around 11 P.M. Sunday night and went to check the AVO (Alaska Volcano Observation) website and saw that it had erupted 40 minutes before. Now I won't sugar coat it, but I was FREAKING out. I have never lived near volcanos, so how was I supposed to know what was going to happen? The first thing I did was check all of the news sources online to see if the ash cloud would be heading towards Anchorage. The next thing I did was call all of my friends here in Anchorage to give them the heads up. Needless to say, I was up until around 2 A.M. and was hoping that school would be cancelled the next day. Not with my luck. So I headed to class off of 4 hours of sleep. The volcano has erupted several more times in the past 4 days, but none of the ash is heading this way. Before volcanos I was in hurricane land...what is it with me and natural disasters?

(Picture taken from the AVO website. The picture is dated March 23, 2009)

On a happier note, I finally got my bad! Andrea of WatermelonWishes on Etsy put my bag together so fast I barely had to wait. But the time I did wait was full of impatient anticipation. When I did get it, it was perfect! It was even better that it looked in the picture. The workmanship is VERY high quality. If you like pockets, then this is the bag for you! Since taking it out, I have gotten a lot of compliments, so thank you Andrea!



(My daughter is checking out the inside of the bag :) )

I learned how to crochet about 4 months ago. Since then I've just crafted booties and beanies. They're fast, easy, and adorable. I have shied away from afghans because I'm a instant gratification type of person. I love to see my work finished in a short amount of time. But then I saw my friend Jenn and the afgan she's been working on, and it looked so neat when she was making it, so I decided to give in and try one. Well, I didn't just stop at one, I started two. One is pink and green, and the other is green, rose and black ripple pattern. I will have to post pictures later to show you what they look like.