Savannah's Blessing

While we were down in Glendale for Christmas, we decided to have Savannah's baby blessing. For more information on what a baby blessing is, feel free to visit this link to learn more. Usually, these blessings are given at church, but since we live away from our family, we decided it would be easier to do it at my brother-in-law's house while we were visiting so that we could have our family attend. Savannah wore the blessing gown that her great-great grandmother was christened in. This gown is over 100 years old. It's been worn by my mother & her siblings, me & my siblings, many of my cousins & by my other daughter for all of our blessings. Everyone who's been blessed in it has their name embroidered on the slip. It's a pretty neat tradition! I made the little headband that she wore. She screamed through the whole blessing, so it ended up being pretty short, but it was still beautiful. We are so happy to have this little beauty in our family, and especially happy that I was able to carry her full term & that she is healthy & growing. She had her 1-month check-up the other day & she weighed in at an amazing 10 pounds (in comparison, I'm pretty sure Sharon didn't hit 10 pounds until she was about 7 months old). It's definitely different having a normal sized baby! She's such a good baby. She nurses well & has been sleeping pretty well, too. She's already grown out of her newborn clothes & is starting to get some rolls on her legs. It was so nice to be able to celebrate our healthy girl with family & spend some time together! I hope your Christmas season was filled with love & laughter!

Merry Christmas

These went out in the mail this week! Merry Christmas everyone!

Our beautiful girl

I did this photo shoot of Savannah when she was about a week old. My mom acted as my assistant & we were able to get some pretty cute shots. It helps that she's such a beautiful baby!

Sharon's picture

Men's Hearts Shall Fail Them

Some friends recently posted this message to their Facebook pages, & I finally took the time to watch it. It is a beautiful message of hope during a time when men (and women) could so easily be living in fear. I just wanted to share a few thoughts that I had as I watched & afterward when I pondered the message. Here's the video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=EMwKxmTLaCs

I might have made it through this video without crying if they hadn't included the shot of the baby in the NICU. After seeing that precious baby in the isolette I, of course, started thinking of my own experience with my daughter & the feelings that my husband & I had throughout that journey. I can honestly say that it was a hard time & one that I wouldn't willingly undertake again. But, as Elder Nelson spoke about his feelings as that plane was falling toward the earth, how he felt at peace, while other passengers were experiencing completely opposite feelings, I related to his feelings of peace & acceptance. Not knowing whether my daughter was going to live was hard, but because I believe that my family has been sealed together for time & all eternity, I was blessed with a feeling of peace & hope that even if she didn't live here on earth, I would eventually get to be with her again & raise her as my own.

I know that there are so many things that we can be fearful about in these times. Many people are without jobs or a secure income, people are losing their homes, divorce is common, children & teens are facing awful challenges at school & from their peers, & the list goes on & on. These experiences are not easy. In fact, they can be down right terrible, but when we have the hope of Jesus Christ & the faith that this life is not the end, we can face these challenges with confidence & peace.

Sisters

Looking at this picture of Savannah, I can really see some similarities between her & Sharon. There may even be a teeny bit of me in there. Savannah had a quick check-up today. She lost 7 ounces, but she is doing well, and the doctor said she doesn't seem dehydrated. She's definitely enjoying eating now that my milk has come in. We'll put the weight back on soon enough.

Sharon is quickly becoming a fan of Savannah. She just doesn't quite understand the term "gentle" yet. She loves to hold her sister & is always aware of when Savannah is crying. She loves to help & is becoming a wonderful big sister. {can you tell that Daddy did her hair?}

Savannah Wilhelm

We are so excited to welcome Savannah into our family. She was born on Nov 22, 2011 at 5:57 pm, weighed 7 lbs 7 oz & was 19 inches long. She is such a sweet baby & oh so pretty! Here are a couple of pictures from the hospital. More will be coming soon!

Savannah & Daddy

Halloween Page

Sharon turns 2 pages

Printable Subway Art

When I first saw a print of subway art, I fell in love! I'm a huge typography dork, so having art made out of words just made me happy. I gave my sister some subway art for her birthday, & I haven't been able to stop making more, so I thought I would share one with you. You should be able to click on the image, save it to your computer, & then print it at home or have it printed at a store. It comes in an 8x10 size. Oh, and I know it's for Thanksgiving, but I already have one from another site for Halloween. Maybe next year I'll make my own Halloween print. We'll see. I hope you enjoy it!

Next Hawaii Page

Latest Pregnancy Page

A post about popcorn

Another page from our Hawaii trip

Giant Ruler Growth Chart

I've wanted to make a growth chart for quite awhile, and now that we are expecting Baby #2, I figured it might be a little more difficult for me to just remember the heights of the kids as the grow. So, that made it time to make the growth chart. I saw an inspiration picture online of a growth chart made to look like a giant ruler & thought it was exactly what I wanted. I bought a 6-foot length a pine 1x6, making sure it was nice and straight & didn't have any splits or crazy knots. After finding the perfect board, I bought it and brought it home. Myt husband routed the edges with a slight diagonal cut, then he sanded it and we treated the wood with a natural stain.  We let it dry overnight & the next morning I got to work.  I started the board at 6" instead of 0 because I want it to hang on the wall, and I'm pretty sure I won't have any kids measuring under 6". I measured and marked every inch on the board, then went back with a black paint pen & drew the lines, using a ruler as a straight edge. For the foot marks, the lines were two inches long, then I did two one inch lines & every third mark was 1 1/2". I printed the numbers, which are just Times New Roman font and 125 point. I tried just tracing the outline with a pencil and then using the paint pen to color inside the lines. That didn't work so well, so I pulled out my Silhouette & vinyl & used the blank space as a stencil. Much better, but I did still have a little bit of bleeding under the edge. While I was letting the paint dry, my daughter decided to draw a bit on the top end. So, after sanding the last foot, refinishing it, painting the lines & number 6 back on, we finally finished it with a couple coats of clear, spray-on top coat. I used the velcro picture hanging strips to hang it on the wall in my daughter's room & measured her for her 2-year birthday. She's about 31 1/2" tall now! It was definitely a good project, & not very difficult!

Giant Cupcake Cake Liner

I'm getting ready to make Sharon's birthday cake, the giant cupcake cake. Before baking the cake I wanted to try making the cupcake liner for the bottom half, so I don't have to frost it. I just melted 6 squares of almond bark (six was plenty with some left over), then painted it on to the inside of the giant cupcake cake pan with a spatula. I let it harden in the freezer & when it was ready I was dreading trying to get it out of the pan. Lo & behold, it slid right out & looks perfect. I added a little more chocolate to the thin spots, which were easy to see from the light shining through, & it's all ready to hug a cake! I can't wait! Oh, it's sitting on a two-tiered cake stand that I made using two plates & a small goblet.

Newest pregnancy picture

This is my latest belly picture! I'm 24 weeks this week. I was feeling fabulous today in my new dress & curled hair, so I got Ammon to take this picture before church! I've been feeling our little girl moving quite a bit, especially when I take some time to rest during the day.
This week I'll be getting three shots instead of one. I will still get my normal progesterone injection, but, in addition, I will also get two shots of steriods to help mature the baby's lungs (just in case). We certainly hope she isn't born early, but if she is, the steriods will help prepare her lungs for early breathing.  I've been feeling great & am really enjoying this pregnancy!

Trip to the zoo (Scrapbook Pages)

Our Garden

Kettle Corn

Yesterday, Ammon was in charge of a youth fireside for our ward. He decided to have the kids watch the movie To This End Was I Born, a wonderful movie about the last days of Christ's life & His ministry on Earth & in the Spirit World. It is very moving & wonderfully done! He also wanted to have popcorn for the movie, so I ended up making 7 batches of popcorn in our stove-top popper. Ammon had the idea to try making some kettle corn, which we've never tried before. He thought I'd made it, but I've definitely never put sugar in my popcorn popper. So, what to do? Go online of course. I looked at a few recipes for Kettlecorn & they all seemed fairly similar, so I finally settled on this one. It's pretty much exactly how I make our regular popcorn, plus some sugar. And let me tell you, it was wonderful! It's not too sweet, & after the popcorn has cooled a bit you can break it all apart so it's back to individual kernels, rather than a giant glob of sticky popcorn. It really isn't sticky at all & oh so fun to eat! So, here's the recipe:
Ingredients

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup popcorn kernels
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon coarse salt

Directions:

In a large pot with a tight-fitting lid (or a whirly popper like mine), heat the oil over medium-high heat. add the popcorn. When the oils sizzles, sprinkle the sugar over the kernels. Cover and shake the pan until the popping slows down, about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and toss with the salt.

Oh, & just so you know, 4 batches of regular popcorn & 3 of kettlecorn makes way too much popcorn for 15 people to eat. Leftovers!

Ultrasound news

I had an ultrasound on Wednesday and everything went well. The nurse said the baby is measuring perfectly for 20 weeks and is right on schedule. With our first daughter, she measured a little small at the same ultrasound, so I'm hoping things continue to go well.
Now, on to what you've all been waiting for; Baby Wilhelm's gender. We are having another GIRL! We are so excited! I'm pretty sure we would have been excited either way, but since we already have so many girl things we won't have to buy as much.

A quick catch-up

Wow! I know, I've been neglecting my blog. I've just been busy with other things, so that blogging kind of fell to the bottom of the list. So, you ask, what have I been up to? Well, aside from being pregnant and having limited amounts of energy for the day, we went camping over the 4th of July weekend with my parents & sister, I've been dehydrating food, caring for our garden, we planted grass and are busy trying to get it to grow (we have sprouts), I got released from my presidency calling in our Ward Relief Society, I've started getting my weekly progesterone shots (which are a pain in the butt, literally), we transitioned Sharon to her toddler bed & it's been fairly successful, Ammon's been busy with late night bat surveys and early morning bird surveys for work, I've done a little bit of canning, and now I'm working on cleaning out my craft room to make some space for Baby Wilhelm. I took a picture yesterday so I can show you my growing belly. It's not huge but pretty much none of my pants fit. I finally broke down & cut off a pair of my maternity pants so I can have some shorts to wear this summer.
I know I haven't given many updates on my blog, mainly because it's so much faster & easier on facebook, but I do want to give a few updates. I am now about 19 1/2 weeks and when I was about 11 weeks my doctor put in a cerclage as a precautionary measure to help keep this baby in longer. At 17 weeks I started getting weekly progesterone shots. Those are definitely going to be super fun & I think my butt already hates me. I've been able to feel the baby moving a lot more lately & I love it because it's so reassuring! I am feeling well & never really had any morning sickness. After the surgery I did notice that if I over did things even a little bit I would get really tired and sore, & get a major headache. I just make sure to rest for a little while after doing something a bit strenuous, which has made things better. We find out the gender of the baby next week & we are pretty excited to find out. All along I've thought it is another girl, but now I'm not so sure. I can't wait to find out because then I'll be able to start debating names with a little more certainty. I told Ammon a couple days ago that we should have a name picked out by 6 months, just in case, & so we don't have to make such a big decision with all that extra stress that we had with Sharon.
   Well, I'll get around to scrapbooking our latest pictures sometime, but I really want to take advantage of the time I have this summer to get things ready for baby & to do all the things I won't be able to do if I end up on bedrest. If it comes to bedrest, you can be sure you'll be seeing a ton of scrapbooking catch-up!

Hawaii: Day Three

Hawaii: Day Two

Hawaii: Day One

Sharon has an announcement!

Working out back

Spring has Sprung

A Quilt for Sharon

What my name means

A friend of mine recently did this on her blog & I thought it would be fun to take a look at what my name means literally & what it means to me personally.

Caitlin Wylie Wilhelm

I was born in the mid-80's, which naturally means that my parents got my name from an 80's TV show. Up until today I didn't know what show it was, just that the character named Caitlin was a female helicopter pilot. But, Google is a wonderful thing, as I was able to simply type in "Caitlin from 80's television show about a female helicopter pilot" and up popped the information for which I was looking. It turns out that the show was Airwolf and the character was Caitlin O'Shannessy played by Jean Bruce Scott. Fabulous!

Having the name Caitlin growing up meant that I was unique, since I never met another Caitlin until college. I also have the claim of having the original Caitlin, not a variation of the original as all those other spellings are. As it is a variation of Katherine, the meaning has remained the same & is generally believed to mean "pure."

Now, I can honestly say that I am definitely not a perfectly pure person. I make an effort to live righteously & try each day to be a little better. Hopefully someday I can truly represent the meaning of my name.

When my parents named me, they carried on the tradition in my mom's family of not giving the girls middle names. That way, when I got married, I could take my maiden name as my middle name, which I did. Hence the middle name of Wylie. All of my married sisters also have the middle name Wylie, which I think will make it a little easier for our posterity to do their family history. My mom has also taken her maiden name as her middle name. Not having a middle name growing up made those get to know you games where you had to find someone with the same color eyes, same number of siblings & the same middle name a little hard. It wasn't until high school that I found another girl without a middle name. My husband & I decided to carry on the tradition as well, & gave our daughter only a first & last name.

The name Wylie carries all kinds of meanings for me, including the rich heritage from which it came, the fact that my Dad chose it as his last name & how much it means to him, & that I always had to stand up for it when people would mispronounce & misspell it (pronounced Why-lee, as in the coyote).

Now, on to my last name. I've only had the name Wilhelm for about 5 1/2 years now, but it is firmly a part of me & I definitely feel a part of it. Or rather, them. I have been welcomed into the Wilhelm clan with open arms & consider them to be my family, too. I love to learn about the history of my husband's family & I'm grateful to be a part of that history.

I've come to love & accept the family motto of "Where there's a Wilhelm, there's a way" because that definitely describes & defines the way that my husband & I view life & how we can shape & influence it for good.

I always promised myself that I would marry someone with a last name at the beginning of the alphabet, so that my kids wouldn't have to suffer being last in the lunch line, the last one on the role, being stuck in the back of class pictures, etc, but obviously that didn't happen. My kids will still be at or near the end, & I'm sure they'll turn out all right. I'm sure my daughter will think that she'll definitely marry someone up near the A's & B's, & maybe she will, but eventually she'll discover that it doesn't matter at all where you land in the alphabetical order.

So, there you go. I am Caitlin Wylie Wilhelm & proud of it.

What does your name mean? But more importantly, what does your name mean to you?

A new page

Newest photos of Sharon

Girly baseball t-shirt

I was cruising through my Google Reader this morning & found a tutorial to make a child's baseball t-shirt out of old t-shirts at one of my favorite crafty sites Make It & Love It. I thought it was super cute & looked really easy, so this afternoon I decided to give it a go & made one for Sharon. Actually I made two, but the first one had a really small neck hole & it wouldn't fit over her head. I figured out my mistake & the second one came out perfectly. I just used a t-shirt that fits her as the pattern for figuring out the length & width. As a note: be sure to cut your pattern pieces based on the neckline that's below the ribbing, otherwise your neck hole will be too small. It may look too large, but you add the ribbing later, which makes up for the difference. So, here's a picture of Sharon wearing it. Sorry, it's not the best quality because I forgot to switch the ISO on the camera, & she was walking toward me (I know, how can such a tiny thing be walking! She is 17 months old after all).

I've had a pink t-shirt in my fabric stash for awhile, & decided it would be perfect for this project!

The goings on

I've been up to quite a few things lately, & wanted to write some of them down so I wouldn't forget. On Tuesday we had our (women's church group) Relief Society activity at the Family History Center here in town. Those who weren't signed up on the New Family Search were helped to do so, & the rest of us learned how & became inspired to do our own family history work. Yesterday I spent a good amount of time entering our family information into a pedigree program in the hopes that I will be able to discover forgotten ancestors in the future.

I've also been working on my grandmother's quilt, which she asked me to quilt by hand. I sewed all the squares together a couple of weeks ago, & finally pulled out my quilting hoop & got started. The pattern is fairly simple, it just takes awhile to finish each square. I've included a picture of a square in progress in the hoop, & one of my first completed square. I love how it turned out! The quilt is called the Rose of Sharon & my grandma has had the squares since the 1930's & 40's. Hopefully I can finish it soon!

Sharon has been going through a growth spurt (I think). She seems to have gotten quite long all of a sudden & we were finally able to pull out the 6-9 month clothes (many of which are already too small, since she is just so long). One of her top teeth pushed through last week & the other top one is also working it's way out. They aren't the middle teeth, though, so she's going to be a little vampire soon.

We cut up & canned our half of a cow last weekend. It went pretty quickly since we had so much help. The long part was just waiting for the canners to heat up & cook. As a result of the cow, Jack has been enjoying some nice leg bones. The results of Jack enjoying leg bones, however, is not as enjoyable for the rest of us. He has been so gassy that it nearly knocks you over! There's just nothing quite like a dog fart.

Other than all of that, Sharon decided to explore the diaper pail last night & discovered the poo squishes really well. Needless to say, I did not take any pictures & immediately gave her a bath. Yuck!

Sharon is walking!

I've been making stuff

Sharon's room has been sadly blank for awhile. Actually, it kind of had boxes of clothes, laundry baskets & items without a home scattered throughout it. Last week I finally got it organized & clean so that she can actually play in there without getting into anything she shouldn't. This week I decided I should probably do something to decorate it. Things like decorating the "nursery" tend to get left in the dust when you have a baby 3 months earlier than expected. Go figure.
So, I've been making stuff. Here's a peek at what I've been doing:

{1} For some cheap & easy "art" above her crib I bought art canvas & just covered them with some fun fabric. I just stretched the fabric around & used a staple gun to attach it. Super easy, & fairly lightweight for hanging above her bed.

{2} I've been wanting to display Sharon's first footprints in a frame for awhile, & I finally did it this morning. I scanned in the prints from the card that they did at the hospital, made sure they were the same size as the actual ones, & printed them out on some white cardstock. Then I just cut scrapbook paper to fit my frame & put it all together. Just so you get an idea of how small those feet are, the prints measure 1 7/8 inches from the heel to the longest toe.

{3} & {4} I made some quick & easy bunting to hang in Sharon's room. I used coordinating scrapbook paper & pages from an old dictionary that I picked up at the thrift store for 50 cents. I used white seam binding and my sewing machine to assemble them. I also made two other strands of bunting using pink papers to decorate for Valentine's Day. They are hanging in the dining & living room.

So, that's a little bit of what I've been up to lately. They are all super easy crafts that can be done in under an hour for sure!

Digital Family Tree

Awhile ago I created a paper family tree with some brown cardstock & a maple leaf punch. I added the names of my family & their birthdates & it now resides in my entryway. I love it! I love keeping every day reminders of my family in my home.

Well, I've now surpassed even my own genius (though how that works I'm not quite sure). This morning I got the amazing idea that I should digitalize my family tree pattern. I scanned in my leafless tree shape & then created a new family tree in Photoshop Elements using my digital scrapbook papers & computer fonts. I made this one to hang in Sharon's room so that she can have some pretty, but sentimental art, too. I'm going to make these trees available for purchase in my Etsy store early next week, so check back then! I just love these colors!

I now have custom digital family trees available for sale in my Etsy shop! Check it out {here}!

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