You probably know by now that I adore the patterns by Bit Of Whimsy. They are darling and so easy to put together!

This one is a bunny that I did a while ago. I love the bright fabric I used and his cute face! That tooth kills me!

We’ve begun a major home re-organization which currently has my sewing moved into our bedroom. I’m excited about this because it’s out of the front room and next to my computer. So I can pop a movie in, or just go to hulu.com, and watch a show while I sew!

Good excuse to buy the latest kitty pattern and sew up some more cute dolls!

You can find her patterns on Etsy or at her website.

It’s a good time to pick up a pattern or two! She has a sale going on, not that I’m trying to enable you or anything!

It’s Monday, the boys are of-track until August 3rd (So happy to be going to B Track!), and we have started a major home re-organization in an effort to make our home a more relaxing and functional place to be.

So while I’m humoring Don today, here is a recent picture of Sammy’s puppy face!

We finally took Sammy out for his first “hike” this past Saturday.

I put it in quotes because we didn’t actually find the hike we were looking for, so we stopped, parked, and hiked down a dirt road for about a mile.

One of my favorite things to take pictures of during our hikes is what is found along the trail, in this case, road.

I like to see what naturally grows in these areas, although I have no clue what the names of the plants/flowers are.

But I do know that one, and you’d better not touch it! We kept pointing it out to the boys, hoping to engrave the image in their mind and drive the point home to never touch poison oak! Did you know that dogs are not affected by poison oak? It gets trapped on their fur and doesn’t go to their skin. But you can still get it by petting your dog after they’ve been in poison oak, so you’ll still want to keep them away from it.

Little tidbit I learned from Don this past weekend.

I usually have my little flower partner by my side while I’m taking these shots.

Owen likes to walk with me and smell them all.

He also likes to tell me which ones to take pictures of, just in case I didn’t see it.

He’s getting better at not feeling like he has to pick everything his smells, too.

Which is good, because I love to take pictures of him smelling the flowers along the way.

For the challenge this week it’s all about the boys!

Kids Category:

I’ve been taking lots of pictures of Sammy with the boys and this one of him with Perrin just tells me that THIS is why we got a dog. He’s just in heaven with that little dog every time he sees him. This photo was taken right after Sammy gave him a big wet, lickery kiss! (What movie? LOL!)

Adults Category:

For the adults category I couldn’t pass up what’s possibly my favorite picture I’ve taken of Don. So sad it was lost when my hard drive crashed, and thankful that I uploaded it here before that!

To see all the awesome photos submitted this week, check out i heart faces! You can also find out how to participate in future challenges!

This weekend we took Sammy on his first “trail hike”. The quotes are necessary because we didn’t actually make it to the trail, more on that later, but we did end up taking a nice walk down a dirt road.

I always like to photograph some of the flowers we pass, just to practice shooting up close. It’s times like these that I wish I had a macro lens! Someday …

For now, I’ll just work on learning the functions on my camera, which seems to be an ongoing process.

On another note, today marks the beginning of our last week of school! We are on year-round (tracks) and are excited because we won’t be coming back until Aug. 3rd when we start our new track! We are happy to be moving from D-Track to B-Track this year. Having July off will feel like we have a summer vacation.

Good-bye Fanny Pack! Hello Sammy Pack!

In preparation for taking Sammy on his first hiking trail this weekend I stopped by PetSmart and picked him up his own backpack/saddle bags to carry his stuff in. I’m dubbing it The Sammy Pack.

He gave us such a pitiful look when I first put it on him - which is the same look he gives us when we put his harness and leash on - but I left it on for a while and it didn’t seem to bother him.

This little pack by Outward Hound is so cool! I was very happy to find one locally (not on-line) that is for dogs in the weight range of 10 - 20 pounds. (They even make them for dogs up to 10 pounds. You know who I’m talking to! ) Most of the ones I was finding on-line started for dogs at the weight of 18 pounds and Sammy’s only about 14 right now. When he gets too big for this one we’ll upgrade him to the medium sized one with bigger pockets!

The pack has two pouches and each pouch has a zipper compartment and a velcro compartment. On this side you can see that he can now carry his own poop bags in the zipper compartment and then you put the used bags in the velcro compartment! Genius! On the other side he’ll carry his collapsable water bowl and treats! He’ll still wear his training harness under the Sammy Pack, but now he’ll be able to carry his necessities!

Might be nerdy, but I’m really excited about this bag! LOL!!!

In an attempt to catch up family with some current events I’m going to share a bit about my boys’ recent Birthdays.

My boys’ Birthdays are two days apart.

Owen’s is on May 30 and Perrin’s is on June 1. It’s also kinda fun that they each got their own month.

So we like to celebrate them separately and together. Separately by making sure they each get a gift to open on their Birthday, regardless of when we do their Birthday activity, along with going to the party store to pick out their Birthday balloons - a tradition I’ve started since Perrin was one. They look forward to getting to go and pick out a special balloon once a year, even if it is sometimes hard for Perrin to wait a couple days. Thankfully the waiting is getting easier as he gets older.

This year we kept the activities local since Sammy is still a pup and really can’t be in his crate all day for us to do something like an amusement park.

So we started the day with a walk where Owen got to wear his Ben 10 Armatrex (no idea if I spelled that right) that he got for his Birthday …

… and where we met this snail that he helped get safely to the other side of the sidewalk.

Afterwards, the boys had fun going to Toys R Us to pick out whatever they wanted - within reasonable cost. Owen picked out a cool Solar System that gives you info and questions, and Perrin picked out a Discovery digital animal encyclopedia thing that he’s been enjoying. Then we took the boys to see Up in 3D. It was a fun treat to go to a 3D showing of this and we all really enjoyed the show! Later we went out for dinner and I got started on the cake. Now, my original plan was to make each boy his own cake, that is until Owen dropped the bomb on me that he wanted a skeleton cake instead of the planet cake he requested before (which could easily have been done with cupcakes). It turned out to be more work than I remembered - after all, it’s been a while since I’ve made a cake! So I opted to just make him a skull.

It wasn’t finished until Sunday afternoon and he was so excited about blowing out the candles that he wasted no time and blew them out before we even started singing.

Now, I know that the above picture is crazy and all kinds of stuff is wrong with it, but it captured the moment perfectly. I had my flash off since we were going to turn off the lights and I wanted to catch the candle glow inthe picture. That means the shutter speed was pretty slow so it caught the movement of Owen’s excitement at blowing out all his candles. We all had a good laugh and he excitedly waited as we lit them a second time, sang to him, and took pictures.

Perrin, being the good sport that he was, was understanding and just as happy to have a Birthday cupcake with all his candles on his Birthday the next day.

I owe that little sweetheart a Merry Un-Birthday cake with the design I planned out for him. No spoilers here since I plan to do it in about a month’s time.

In the meantime, he’s been thoroughly enjoying what turned out to be his favorite gift of the day from his Uncle Levi, because how can a Nerf gun with attachable sights not be a nine-year-old’s dream come true?

Some of my favorite conversations between my boys occur on the way to or from school.

This morning Perrin was talking to Owen on the way to school. They were talking about normal things for them, including video games, when Perrin says the following:

“I never blinked when I was little.”

This caused me to giggle as I remembered thinking the same thing when I “discovered” blinking as a kid. I don’t remember how old I was, I just know I was in grade school. It was brought up during a science lesson and I remember thinking that I never remembered blinking before and was surprised to find myself blinking automatically. Which is true, it’s something we do without thinking and being a little kid, why would I pay attention to blinking my eyes? The concept of doing things naturally, like blinking, was way over my head at that point of my childhood.

“Really?” I asked him.

And it was this next line that got me really good:

“Yeah. That’s why I wear glasses. You can only wear contacts if you blinked.”

The mechanics of a nine-year-old mind are quite entertaining.

Been spending time with this fuzzy face as well as celebrating two Birthdays within two days of each other.

While I get those pictures ready to share, I thought I’d show you the face I get when I’m holding treats. Sammy is very interested in getting treats, and he lets you know it!

Fortunately, with a puppy face like that looking at you, it’s no problem to reward him for being good - because he could never be naughty, right?

I’ll restrain from showing you the hole he’s currently digging to the center of the Earth …