Melarky

almost 8 weeks old
only cries when hungry
getting so big
starting to smile
loves his older brother
is a total mama’s boy
wakes up once a night
super easy
special little guy

1. Here’s a fun link. cheezburger.com You can upload a photo and match it with a celebrity or put a caption on it. Fun blog stuff, usually just have to copy and paste html code to your post.

Here’s this gem….

moar funny pictures

Or this one…

moar funny pictures

2. Dinner. Ummm..this stolen recipe is for my niece, but everyone should make this for dinner. It’s easy and d-licious! sorry it took me like a bazillion years to get this to you. I’ll email you the rest.

Homestyle Baked Macaroni and Cheese
1 lb. elbow macaroni
1 (10 3/4 oz.) can tomato soup
1 (12oz.) can evaporated skim milk
3 TBSP. butter or margarine, melted
1 tsp. salt
1/4-1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 lb. cheddar cheese, shredded w/ 3/4 cup reserved for topping
Cook macaroni to pkg. directions, but for 2-3 minutes less than the time specified. Drain and return to pot. In a small bowl whisk together the soup, evaporated milk, butter, salt and garlic powder. Pour over the cooked pasta and stir to combine. Add cheese (less the 3/4 cup for topping) and mix well until evenly combined. Pour into greased 13×9×2-inch baking dish. Top with reserved cheese. Bake @ 350 degrees F for 35-45 minutes until bubbly and top is lightly browned. Can be served with sour cream on the side. Perfect when served as a side to baked ham too!

Giveaway is open to everyone, including international readers as well. Good luck!
3. Giveaway! Two lucky randomly selected stitch7.com readers will win a ‘Miss Madeline’ dress pattern. These dresses are seriously cool people! They are made out of men’s dress shirts. Just leave a comment, but it ends before midnight (pacific time) on Sunday May 31st. Giveaway is open to everyone, including international readers as well. Good luck! Giveaway is open to everyone, including international readers as well. Good luck! If your reading this that means you’ve caught me being lazy.

4. Just call me Metal head Mel. Hey it’s a big improvement from my old nickname, Mc Melle Mel.

Lately I can’t get enough of Queensryche, Def Leppard, Whitesnake, you know the whole line up. Don’t judge.

5. My baby is so flippin’ cute! I love him. Almost 2 months old!

6. Love you Marky. Duh, it’s you.

Here is a conversation I had with my husband yesterday. It went something like this….

“Mark, I have an idea for something I want to cut out on the CNC machine. Will you help me cut it out? Or at least teach me how to use the program so I can do that part, but I’ll probably still need help cutting it out anyway. ”

“What’s your idea?”

“Well…I haven’t thought of it yet”

“So your idea was to have an idea?”

P.S. And I’d just like to say when I think of that idea, I’m going to sell it and make millions–

For a little boy who is obssed with trains, Union Station in Ogden was perfect for him to run around, climb on, and get up close with some real trains. I got the idea from a girl in my ward (Thanks Lori) and lat time we were in the area we took Welly to his ‘Little Welly heaven’.

When we pulled up Wellington was still asleep from the car ride. When he awoke, and saw the big black locomotive in front of him, he was about the happiest I’ve ever seen him. He ran right up to the black one first. I personally thought the black locomotive seemed to be the coolest, biggest one there. You could climb up in this one, they had other ones there you could go in, but you had to be apart of a tour that only ran at certain times of the day. I was amazed by the size of this one, the wheels were taller than my husband! I can only imagine how enormous it must have been to Wellington.

I was fully expecting to pay for this awesome train experience, but when we got there we found this was the part of the museum that was free. And after taking a peek into the museum inside, the trains outside were probably the most interesting to a two year old. Inside the station is a train/car/and firearms museum that costs $12 for a family (with four kids), one price for all three museums.

Also inside is a gift shop, which we did go into. It was a little disappointing though. I was expecting it to be full of trains and great toys and things that two year old boys would wet their pants over. Instead it had crafts, what I like to call “breakables” and super girly decor that seemed to do nothing with trains. I could only see a small section with expensive, kinda lame, toys. Actually I only saw saw two kinds of toy trains there. We ended up getting him a cool train hat, that looks stinkin’ cute and a toy train, which looked cool and was kinda fun (it speeds forward if you push back on it), but way too expensive at $8 bucks.

Overall we had a great time, but Wellington had the best time. This is a great FREE activity to do with your kids, obviously it’s really a hit if they like trains, but I think most kids would like it anyway. It’s also close to the antique district of Ogden, if your into that sort of thing. There is a restaurant right at the station or there are plenty of places to eat close around there. The mall is a few miles away, where we went shopping afterwards. The trains were also a great backdrop for photos. While we were there, we tried to stay out of the way of two different photo shoots going on. Welly not so much. He ran right into one shoot. Funny kid!

Daddy holds Hilyard at the doctors.

Hilyard is going in for surgery the middle of June to put tubes in his ears. He has had a middle ear infection pretty much since birth. He had failed two newborn hearing screening tests at the hospital and one from an Audiologist. After failing that one we were sent to an ENT who was hoping antibiotics would clear it up. We found out Tuesday that the antibiotics didn’t help and the infection is bad enough to require tubes. I asked if there was a chance it would clear up on it’s own, he said if it hasn’t yet, it probably wont.

Not fun. I’m looking forward to him getting better, but I’m not looking forward to the poking and prodding, the surgery, and the putting him under anesthesia. That freaks me out. I guess I started to get more concerned when I was signing the release forms. I’m sure the hospital has to cover all its bases, but it was less than fun to see all the worse case scenarios on the form. I am sure it will be fine, I’m told this is common and “not a big deal”, but I’m still worried, what kind of Mom would I be if I wasn’t?

It’s also going to be pretty unfun the night before the surgery. Hilyard has to fast from midnight on. I’m not sure how that’s going to go but I’m going to give him the feeding of his life before midnight.

His audiologist will also be there the day of his surgery, to give him a hearing test while he’s still under anesthesia to make sure it was the middle ear infection that was causing his hearing loss and not some underlining problem.

I’m sure it will all be fine. I know the doctors and anesthesiologist are more than qualified and capable but I still worry.

Here’s a video explaining the cause and procedure. Don’t worry, its an illustration not someones surgery video. Click here to watch the video.

My sister-in-law Heidi just told me that the reason no one has commented on my last two posts isn’t because you all hate me, but because it was making people login and register to comment. That was an accident and shouldn’t have been like that, it’s back to the way it was and should be good to leave comments now

He looks so cute and innocent, doesn’t he?

There it is….naughtiness. I know, I know, I should have taken away his bottle drinking days long ago. But in my head I thought if I let him keep having “ba’s” I’d keep him my baby longer.

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This is definitely one of the best projects that has come out of our CNC MACHINE yet! Gary, my brother-in-law, built a wooden clock. I guess it sounds kinda boring. Weeeeee!!!! A wooden clock!!!!!! But it’s not, this thing is stinkin’ cool!

I guess for me what makes this clock so cool, besides the fact that it was entirely cut out on the CNC, is that it works. I’ll be honest, I don’t get how it works. I know Gary would be happy to explain it to me too, but I’m sure I’d pay attention about as much as when someone mentions Phil Hendrie. Which is not at all. And consists of me rolling my eyes and completely zoning out.

I’m totally amazed that someone can look at plans, cut it out, put it together, then have it actually tell time. The plans that Gary used can actually be found on line, along with a million other resources for making your own clock. There are tons of videos and even a book on how to make your own PAPER clock.

Gary’s finished clock was actually twice the size of the original plans. I guess he just wanted it big. Really big! The cool thing about having the clock so big is that you can clearly see all the gears working inside the clock. Although making the clock that big has proved hard to find enough weight to counterbalance the whatchamacallit and its hard to configure the timing of the thingamabob. Yeah, I don’t really know. Ask Gary.

Want to see more pictures? Sure you do. Click the “READ MORE” link below to see them and a short video of the clock in ACTION!

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I was able to take some pictures of my cute sister Barbara and her family last week. Her little girl, Sadie, is so cute but not too interested in getting her picture taken. Next time I take family photos for them (I hope they let me do it again!) we need someone to be ONLY in charge of making Sadie look this way or that and to help make her smile.

At one point of the photo shoot, Barbara suggested I sing to encourage a smile from Sadie. After a solo of ABC’s and itsy bitsy spider, she did stop from eating rocks and dirt for a moment (third picture) to to give a slight smile but it was more of a “I’ll humor you Aunt Melanie, so you can stop singing” smile.

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Wellington really loves his little baby brother. Tonight when I was getting this picture ready for a post, Wellington came by, saw the picture and said, “That’s my Hilly”.

He loved having his baby brother in the tubby with him, he wanted to help wash him and hold him on his lap and it was fun up until baby Hilly pooped in the tub while his brother was holding him. It actually happed as we were taking this picture. Lovely, I know.