A personal blog about the Strand Family. Written by Jennifer.
Mark spends hours every night, and all of his days off planning, buying and building for his new room. It will be a small room build in part of the garage – complete with a bunk bed, shelves, desks and a couch – and a few added artistic features.
Ellse takes her babies everywhere. She feeds them, cuddles them, changes their diapers, teaching them sign language and even gives them time-outs. She takes them out to the car, buckles them in and sings to them so they don’t cry while in their car seat. She decides at each stop whether they can come in or not.
This past weekend, we took a trip to the zoo – baby doll in tow. She brought a baby with blankets and a stroller, and pushed her around the entire zoo for hours. She would pick her up to see the animals and explain what they were doing.
I’ll take credit for teaching her to be a good mommy!! 
We haven’t seen the ground around our house for weeks – we have anywhere from 1in to over 1foot of snow around the house. The horses are miserable – they slip and slide, snow and ice fills their hoofs, and there is no access to the ground for grazing.
Comon’ spring!!
Here is a sweater that May did for Ellse. This is what knitting should look like!!
Just as I wanted, I spent alot of my time off doing knitting projects.
Here is a dog sweater for my mom’s dog. This was done with no pattern! It took me 3 attempts to get one that would work – but ohhh how cute!
Here are a few of the hats I made. Everyone is getting hats this year – made from different colors and types of soft yarn. Nice when we have as much snow as we have had lately!
And here is the ugliest sweater in the world. I tried again and again to stop making this sweater, but Ellse insisted. And she wears it! Yes, one sleeve is longer than the other… and yes, I ran out of the one color of brown yarn… poor child…
And here is my pride and joy! This is a blanket I made for my dad. It’s very heavy and warm, and the colors turned out very nice. Only took me 6 months to make!
I’ve already started on my next set of projects…. unfortunately I have to wait for a replacement piece for my machine.
Ellse spent xmas afternoon watching her new Cinderella movie, holding her Cinderella doll, wearing her Cinderella dress and wrapped in her Cinderella blanket. She wore the Cinderella dress for a week straight, every day – and now has it down to just every other day….
She also enjoys her new doll house – she has already requested a baby for the family with a nursery. We found one on the internet and placed an order – she can hardly wait for it to show up. She asks several times a day if we checked the mail for her package!
For christimas, Ellse’s class did a cute little play. She did a ballet dance and sang. Here is the whole class. Only 1/2 of the kids go to school on the same days that Ellse does, but we know the kids from both classes.
Ellse is wearing the green fairy princess (from Halloween)
This is a post from December. We invited Karen, Dennis and Amelia over to do candy houses. The kids had a great time – and the sugar high lasted over an hour! Here are the houses Ellse and I did (with construction advice from Borgar )