Busy fingers

Grandma has been busy busy with her crochet needles making all kinds of goodies for the kids. Elise is modeling a sampling.

I think she likes it!

The pink and white flowers were made to be a barrett, but I pinned them on her shirt instead.

These were not made by Grandma's crochet needles, but they are in the creative vein and I thought they were so neat. These are balloon sculptures that I came across at the convention center last week. So cool!

Lastly, this is my 100th post! So that's at least 100 memories preserved from the last 2 (I think) years. I thought about doing something fun and 100ish, but couldn't think of anything. If you have any ideas, send them my way and I'll celebrate my 101st post! (Now that Halloween is over, I need another creative project anyway.) :)

Meet Jack.

Jack O. Lantern. Yep, it's pumpkin carvin' time!

The night before Halloween, we went over to our friends Will and Danille's house to carve pumpkins. I love carving pumpkins. We carve them every year (except last year--I waited too long and then couldn't find one. I felt like such a scrooge!). But I remember carving them with my dad when I was little. We tried to make different faces every year. Turns out there are only so many geometric shapes you can use on a jack o'lantern's face. So needless to say, some years were cuter than others. Much cuter. I remember a few times, my parents would buy the REALLY big pumpkins. I checked them out this year, and they were $40! Did you really pay $40 for a giant pumpkin all those years, dad!?! Anyway, back to nostalgia...the second you cut open the pumpkin, that pumpkin smell just comes right back to you. As Will put it, "Ah, the smell of memories." Oh, and we roasted pumpkin seeds this year! That was my first time to try them--they were pretty good.

This year, everyone got to carve their own pumpkin. Only Reid, Blair and Jeremy actually carved theirs though. Elise's was just one of those teeny tiny ones that has no purpose other than to sit there and look cute. And Sloane's was oozing some sort of something--rotting pumpkin juice? I don't know, but it was obviously in bad shape when the lady told us we could have it for free--so we just left that one alone. And I must say, I was very impressed with the kids' work.

Reid, who had been fumbling around with a majorly loose tooth for over a week, ended up with a self portrait pumpkin.
 

By the way, that's a pumpkin up there, not his head. Hard to tell the difference with his giant noggin.

Jeremy made a skeleton which, judging by his expression, he is awfully proud of.

Blair drew the face exactly as she wanted it, complete with hair, and then I carved it for her. I think it's supposed to be a girl, but I think it looks like a scarecrow. She got a little excited with the pen though, and after drawing the facial details, scribbled all over it. It looks much better in the dark.

Yep, even the baby gets involved.

The final products. Oooo, spooky.

Busy bee

I walked into the girls' room to check on them before I went to bed one night. This is what I found:

"So what? What's that supposed to mean?" you ask....

It means, this:

Someone was busy before she finally nodded off. Can you spy the sleeping child?

May the force be with you as you follow the yellow brick road under the sea.

Halloween! Yea!


Obi Wan Kenobi
This was a store bought costume--or actually it was a garage sale costume that I bought for 50 cents last year just for Reid to play in. It just so happened that he wanted to be Obi Wan this year so it worked out perfectly! I made the cape though. And by "made", I mean "cut a piece of brown fabric and attached with a safety pin." He even had the braid that Obi Wan has! (You have to be a Star Wars geek to know what I'm talking about.)

Ariel, the Little Mermaid
We had the pink leotard, and the tail fins are a tutu that we already had. We made everything else and then sewed the tutu to the bottom of her mermaid legs. Blair had a lot of fun getting to help pick out her fabric and help sew it. Her job was to take the pins out of the fabric after the edges were sewn and put the pins in the pin cushion. I think she was most excited about getting to spray her hair red. Maybe about $10 in cost.

Darth Vader
Total store bought costume, and at the very last minute too! Lazy boy! :) We did already have the helmet/mask though. It changes your voice to sound like Darth and it makes a heavy breathing sound, so that was cool. Here's Darth Vader and his master Obi Wan.

Glinda the Good Witch of the North along with the Wicked Witch of the East (the one who had the house land on her)
I totally lucked out and found this dress at Goodwill for $5, and pink shoes that Blair picked out for $3. I used my petticoat from my wedding and bought silver sparkles and accessories from the dollar store to go with it and it came together perfectly! Blair made sure everyone knew that she helped me find that dress, so I need to give her the credit as well. All together, I think it ended up costing about $13!

As for the witch under the house, that's Elise!

Here she is IN the house. She was mostly pretty happy in there. When she wasn't in there, I hung a pair of fake legs and ruby slippers out from under the house.

I've always wanted to incorporate the stroller into one of the costumes, so I was excited about this idea. (The inspiration, by the way, came when I saw Blair, who happened to be wearing striped tights and her ruby slippers, laying under Jeremy's desk with just her legs hanging out.) The box was courtesy of Jeremy's office. A coat of white paint, black construction paper for the shingles and yellow tissue paper for the yellow brick road completed it. And yes, it had to have curtains. I'm obsessive, I know. $5 total.

And here's the little witch herself. I made her black dress out of some black fabric I had laying around. Not that a black dress was required for this costume, but I apparently have too much time on my hands. I also made her striped leggings, but that was because I couldn't find black and white striped tights, or even pants, in her size. I made them out of a shirt I found at Goodwill for 99 cents. And her ruby slippers were shoes I already had that I spraypainted red and added red glitter to. All for a grand total of 2 bucks! Yea!

And here's our Dorothy. She had already abandoned her ruby slippers by this time of the night. And forget about pigtails with blue ribbons. All she's interested in is candy. This was a dress that was handed down from my nieces, so it was free!

Check out this evil duo!

Ah, the ultimate battle between good and evil.

Our friend Will used his Goodwill-bought jumpsuit to be a Chilean miner. Here, he and Jeremy are reenacting a scene from Star Wars, minus the Chilean miner in the actual movie scene, of course.

Our friends Danielle and Isabella are fancy felines. As for everyone else that we trick or treated with, I either didn't end up with a picture--I don't know how that happens as I'm usually as bad as the papparazzi--or there are other kids in the shot that I don't feel comfortable posting without their parents' permission. So this is all you get to see! Happy Halloween!!

Elise's Big Day

This past weekend, Elise had a big day--she was baptized! The baptism went very well and Elise did great. She fell asleep at the beginning of Mass and slept soundly through most of it. She even slept when the holy water was poured on her head. Guess she thought it was a soothing bath! She did wake up at one point, but then it was back to dream land. It wasn't until church was over and well wishers came to congratulate us that she decided to fully wake up and squawk a little. After church, we enjoyed a delicious lunch at our favorite restaurant with our family and friends in attendance. In all, it was a wonderful day.


The big moment

Happy girl!

Elise's extended family (minus Grandpa, who was playing photographer)

With Grandpa and Grandma (or as Sloane called them all weekend, "Gampa" which is Grandpa and "Gampa Gampa" which is Grandma)

Her Godparents, Will and Danielle

Blair was crying about some injury she just received. Why am I not surprised?? She averages an injury every 10 minutes. She's definitely our "fragile" girl.

I just liked this picture. (That's the slip that goes under the gown. I decided to use it because you never know when a diaper blowout will occur. And it seems like every poopy diaper lately is a blowout.)

Did somebody say lunch!?!

Her gown was beautiful, but you wouldn't have known that to look at it at the beginning. For the other kids' baptisms, I've never had a problem finding a gown. I always go a couple days before the big event and am able to find a nice dress that's not too outrageous in price. So I went to 2 different department stores to look for a gown and I found a total of 7 dresses. Six of them were one ugly style and the other one was another ugly style. I disliked both of them equally, so we just picked one and brought it home. The good thing about it was that it was on clearance, so the $80 dress ended up only costing $15, including tax. I was at least comforted by the fact that I didn't have to pay a lot for a hideous dress. So I brought it home and said, "Mom, you have some work to do." She agreed and went right to work on it, and the resulting gown was astounding! I even had someone ask if it was a family heirloom! Ha! So here are the before and after...(and I mean no offense to anyone who may have this dress or one like it...I just prefer things really really simple)

Before - flapping fabric with scallop edge on top, way-too-puffy sleeves, top portion and sleeves adorned with ribbon flowers with irridescent sequins, extra layer of fabric around the skirt, open in back like a hospital gown...seriously, way too much going on.



















After - sewed in the scallop edge, tucked in the sleeves, removed the ribbon flowers and sequins, removed the extra layer of fabric around skirt, and closed up the back. Ahh, much simpler...

Now isn't that better! Yea grandma! (And I must give credit where credit is due...Jeremy actually picked this dress. The other dress option would not have been able to be altered so nicely, so yea for Jeremy for picking this dress!)

So proud of Reid!

I am so proud of Reid and I wanted everyone to know why...

First, he recently received his midterm grades and as you can see, he is doing amazingly well! He's always been a smart kid, but his tendency to be ornery sometimes overshadows (and I fear also gets in the way of) his academics. So you can imagine how excited we were to see his grades when he brought them home. (And we have received much fewer notes about his behavior this year so here's hoping it really IS a new year.)

And secondly, we had Elise's baptism this weekend, and surprise surprise, we were running late for church. Jeremy dropped the kids and me off at the front so we could run in while he parked the car. Well, church begins at 10:00am and we came running in at about 9:58. I was in such a hurry to get in that I jumped out of the car, made sure Sloane crossed the street safely, and then left her trailing behind me as I ran into the foyer to let them know we were here. (I even managed an Indiana Jones barely-slipping-through-the-closing-door-while-carrying-a-carseat-in-one-hand-and-diaper-bag-in-the-other maneuver to which some impressed random bystander commented, "Nice!" It must be that superhuman capability moms get when the need arises.) Anyway, when I looked back, I saw Sloane still outside, trying to make her way in, so I asked Reid to go get her and bring her in. Without messing around or getting distracted, he went right away and grabbed her hand and walked her over to me. He didn't run, he didn't knock her down, he didn't drag her by one arm across the floor (yes, we've had that one before); he just calmly took her hand and the next time I looked up, they were standing in front of me! Yea! Then, I realized I had my diaper bag, a blanket, and all this stuff (not to mention still had two kids with me) that I needed to get to our church seat, but I didn't have time to walk it all down to our seat and get back to my postition in the back of the church. So I put my super heavy diaper bag on Reid's shoulder, and quickly instructed him to take Sloane and the bag to our seat. Now you have to understand, asking my 7-year-old and 2-year-old (who is basically just a miniature version of her ornery big brother) to walk unsupervised down the center aisle of church is like asking someone to steal your clothes and make you walk through the mall naked. I'm talking embarrassement city here! Those two would undoubtedly result in an impromptu circus clown act, much to everyone else's amusement, but my horror. However to my relief and surprise, he didn't complain, look distracted, or anything. He just took the bag, grabbed Sloane's hand, and off they went, straight to their seats. I didn't have to run down the aisle to get them, I didn't have to pull him away from giggling with friends...they went right where they were supposed to go. Yea Reid! And then, as if it couldn't get any better, Reid sat in the row behind Jeremy and me in church, and shockingly, he actually SAT in church. Sat still and sat quietly. He didn't fidget. He didn't talk. He didn't fight with his sisters. He just SAT there! I couldn't believe it! He was so well behaved! (He told me later that he was tired so that's why he was acting like he was being good...he wasn't really being good, just acting like it because he was tired.) Oh well, whatever the cause, we'll take it. I was, and still am, so proud of his "responsible big boy" day yesterday. Yea for Reid!!



Happy Easter!... Huh?

Wow, can you believe it, I'm actually at a point where I'm caught up on my blog. How can that be?? The words "caught up" are not a normal part of my vocabulary, as I am usually always behind on everything. But today, I find myself in this unusual predicament, so I started looking for old stuff to blog about. Things that I missed back when they were current. The following is probably boring to everyone but me, but since I don't keep a photo album or a scrapbook (for the reason explained above!), this is where I come to look at old pictures. So it's important to me to include this, late as it may be.

So here's a post that I started a long time ago, but never finished. I had all the pictures, but no details were journaled, which is a bummer because it's the small details that I cherish most about our lives. In any regards, here's what I remember about Easter, 5 months later. 

Blair got this bunny costume as a late birthday gift. The white tulle skirt and wand are right up her alley.

Candy!!!

A picture so rare--they're all looking at the camera and they're acting like they like each other.

This Easter dress is SO Blair. Organza, satin, ribbon, bow, and flower. All pink. I tried talking her into a different one that was cuter (in my opinion, which should be the only opinion that matters, right?) but she would hear none of it. This is a girl that definitely knows what she likes.   

The fam...and an half-decent picture too!

I couldn't decide on a dress for Sloane. This one was chosen because when I showed it to her, she said, "Awww." I'm not sure she knew exactly what she was saying or what it meant; she had just heard me say it before. But it was enough to convince me to go with it. And it was on clearance for just $10! Bargain!

These 2 are 2 peas in a pod.

Yea! The Easter Bunny came! And for the first time in a long time, we had warm weather. Last year it rained, and the two years prior to that, we had to wear winter coats to hunt eggs!

What a loot!

Reid found one of the golden eggs!

Yea for pretty spring trees!