Gracie's birthday and other "stuff"

It is that time of the year again, where I go totally crazy: making Easter dresses time. Total count: 7, but then it turned out that the stupid patterns are so messed up, and I inadvertedly made the ones for Grace and Gwenny way too big, so I guess I'll be making two more. Here is Mr. Max, exploring the great outdoors. I put this harness on him, and he just went limp and flopped over. It was too funny. He absolutely hates it. So we left the harness off and attached the leash to his collar. That was better, but he would dive under the bushes and we had to let go of the leash and I worried that it would catch on a branch or something. So Sam has been taking him out without a leash... he loves it. He races up and down the yard and tries to catch flies and has a great time. He even came back in the house when I whistled and called him and offered a treat.

May I introduce our "other pets". It seems a family of voles (Wuehlmaeuse) has taken over our back lawn. They dig little furrows under the snow, eating the grass roots. We are just so delighted to have been able to have made their winter more bearable. Next fall we will be prepared with "MOLE Vax... eh, Vole Max, I mean.

Ellie and Max had lots of fun together. They actually played together, sharing toys, easter eggs (Max knocks them down from the tables and bats them thru the house, I find them in the strangest places the next morning.) and kitty toys. Max would pounce on her from behind the curtains, and she would try to catch his tail, which he would move at the last moment, and then gently swish along her face.

Good thing she is so short, or she would have emptied my fridge.

Here she is again, trying to share some fun toy with Max.

Darling Emily, seeing that only the girls were getting new Easter dresses sent me a web site with a tutorial on how to make cute little sweater vests for the boys, using men's sweaters. Since there is no shortage of men's sweaters at out house... I got busy:

Max, checking out Ellie's lunch

Ellie checking out Max's bed. This is a great improvement. Before we had this nice cat bed, he would sleep curled up right next to my legs, if possible between them, and I was unable to move. Now he is contained and I can turn over in bed without running into a sleeping cat.

Oreos in Milk.... they are the best.... it must be in her genes, since this passion runs in the family.

Look! my Daddy dressed me and took me shopping like this! At least she was nice and warm.

This is what we did for Grace's 2nd birthday.... do we have to top this for her third???

The total Princess cake in the making. Having never worked with fondant, I was a bit concerned, but then I had watched Linda a couple of times making Kira and Kayla's wedding cakes, and when all fails, frosting covers a multitude of mistakes.

Yes, the thing actually has a draw bridge.

Alysia is rather handy with the frosting bag. Considering she had never done anything like that before, she was great. And we sure had a ton of fun with it. The only problem was moving the thing from Buggy's house over to Topher's parents house, where the party was.... There were quite a few speed bumps to navigate. But we made it without any problems.

The finished product, in all it's glory!

Alysia had all Gracie's favorites on the menu, and all the little kids loved it. Gwenny decided the spagetti were esspecially good.

Dacia brought some PJs for Ellie that had either shrunk or Ellie had outgrown them since she wore them last.... emergency measures were in order.

Our home teachers came to visit the other day and Max was totally intrigued by Kendall's cologne. He couldn't get enough of it and had to go for just one more sniff.

The other day when I was visiting with the girls, we all went to Ikea. We had lots of fun and spent all our money, and then Dacia found an isle where they had super cute sleeping babies for sale. Unfortunately she got the last one.... I had wanted one too, but she said she'd share.

yes, these are a little bit out of order, because I forgot to do last ones first.... oh well, they are still cute. Here is Grace, discovering that you can actually touch "kittymax".

Emily had decided that I needed some fun toys at my house for visiting grandkids. Grace was the first one to discover all the new neat stuff that we had bought. She was so excited about the fairy outfit that she actually wore it over her jammies and slept in part of it.

There you have it. We've been busy. We've had fun. Live is still great. Love you all.

Looks like someone is in the cat-house

Max has decided that this is a pretty cool place to hang out and survey the living area. It is also quite safe from little critters.... that like to grab tails. Many thanks again to Alan, for building this. And here is one of those little critters.... many thanks to Emily, who said: You need to buy some toys for your house, so the grandkids have decent stuff to play with.... and we did! Grace was totally delighted when she dicovered the dress-up box and quickly turned herself into a fairy... she loved it so much, she slept in the slippers, and the next morning insisted on wearing it over her jammies.

Who? me?

How about some food for the cute baby....Topher's belated birthday /Valentine's dinner.

Will do tricks for food

Looks like Sam is more excited about the birthday present than Topher.

Grace discovers that you can actually touch the kitty

And love the kitty....Somehow Max seemed to be fascinated by her. He kept following her around the house.

Grace came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel. She started playing with Max, but had trouble keeping the towel in place. Finally she had had it, and in typical "flasher mode" she opens the towel, holding it in each had, and yells"NAKED!!!!!!" Max, in total shock, dives under the bed.... he is probably scarred for life.

Alysia's birthday dinner at Costa Vida before we all went to see Fiddler on the Roof at Hale Center theater. One of the best Fiddler performances I have ever seen. Lucky Dacia got to come with us. Sam and I had the car packed and were ready to leave that morning, just finishing breakfast, when his secretary called. Her father had passed away during the night, and she was on her way to Canada to the funeral... so Sam had to unpack his stuff and I got to go to SLC by myself, taking Dacia with me to the performance, whilst poor Sammy got to slave away at the office.

Dacia brought birthday balloons.

She also brought a very cute and happy Ellie

The next day we all met at Ikea for some much overdue shopping... I mean, what is a girl's get-together without doing some major damage to the check book?

We also had an early birthday lunch for Dacia. Grace was quite hungry and enjoyed her french fries.

Ellie had her after-dinner-nap in the shopping cart. (or: look what cute babies they sell at Ikea)

Yes, we did fill 2 shopping carts. Yes, we had great fun, and yes, I did leave for home about 3 hours later than I had planned. But it was worth it.

Here is Max, waiting for your phone call. Actually, I attached a jingle ball to the end of an old phone cord and hung it on his favorite hang-out. He had a lot of fun playing with that today.

I took some video of it, and tried to add it to the blog, if it worked, you can enjoy it,if not, I have to figure out other options... wow, I am actually getting amazingly computer savvy, totally digitalized.
Okay, so it is sideways... but it does work.

Reservations at the Max Hilton, anyone?

I lured Alan up here this weekend. I wanted him to help me build a headboard for my bed. I had sent him a picture of what I wanted it to look like. But he wouldn't do it... said he needed plans... plans shans... I said, just start building, it will develop as we go, but he said that might work for Jared, but he needed plans.... So I settled for a cat tree. We looked at several on the internet and found what we liked, and thought would be doable. And we did it without plans, we just started and it developed as we went... I think it turned out great, see for yourselves: We started with a beam and fastened it to the ceiling beam, then added upholstered shelves.

Max did occasional building inspections... and made some suggestions.

He was very intrigue by step #4... it seemed to be his very favorite.... couldn't imagine why... I only poured catnip under the carpet... For a moment we were worried he might be afraid of heights, but he assured us that he was not.

He said there was something missing up here...

So I got busy with my trusty sewing kit and enclosed his lime-green cathouse in some more respectable colors and we attached it to the top perch....

... with a balcony of course. Max found that to be quite satisfactory.

All that was left, were some finishing touches, and we were done... only took us all day! But we sure had fun. I even made Alan cook dinner... he is quite the useful boy. I need to have him come more often.

Max made his final inspection and declared that it was nice and fit to live in.... and then decided to sleep in our bed anyways and to just ignore the entire thing.... so, since we invested so much time and money in it, we thought we'd rent it out....

The flowerpots were Alan's idea. I guess we could plant catnip in it, or something else to entice Max to come up and look at it. They are screwed in place, to avoid all unpleasantness.