Holy craft projects, Batman!

I haven't posted in a while because I have been really busy with a bunch of projects. It has begun to spiral out of control, actually. But it is so much FUN! I can't let myself get hooked too often, because the housework (which I don't enjoy) suffers when I get going on a fun craft (which I do enjoy). The wake up call came on that last weekend, actually. I had spent three days straight on costumes, so the dining table was covered in the projects, and the house was a mess. We went to a kid's B-day party at a park, but it was flippin' freezing outside! The fierce cold in the wind had people retreating to cars to warm up while we waited for others to arrive. So since the host lived 15 min away, and our house was less than 3 min away, we had everyone come to our place. I don't regret that, since I didn't want to be in the cold one more minute with my babe, but I also never want to have company over with 3 days of dishes on the counter again. (We managed to stash all the craft junk upstairs in the 5 min before 30-40 people migrated from the park to our house.) Lesson learned.

So here, in order, are my projects.

**I felt rather left out that I didn't get to make Tyler's costume this year, so when I saw some fairy wings cheap in Wal-mart, I decided to make myself a tutu to match the wings. How hard could that be, right? My mistake was that first I tried to make the tutu with the tied method, and then didn't like it and made another one the same way I made Kaitlyn's. If any of you need help making a tutu, I think I have this down pat, but I will spare you the details for now. Then I made the shawl thingy, because I didn't like all the black on top. But the tutu stuck to the cotton skirt I was going to wear underneath, so I had to take another silky skirt I didn't like anymore and cut it to be a short skirt and keep me modest under the tutu. Whew.

**And then there is Tyler's costume. I found that fire truck online, but decided to check local stores and see if I could save the shipping cost. That's when I found my wings. No luck on the fire truck, so I went back to get it onine. Every single store was sold out of it, and the ebay auctions jumped from $20 shipped to $40 plus shipping. ACK! So, back to square one, I decided that he will be a dump truck. I made this out of diaper boxes, black felt to line the inside, wheels taken from a crappy looking truck at the thrift store, and a fabric belt of Christopher's that he was going to throw away. Tyler adored it, and wanted to wear it every time he saw it. I thought the boxes would be awkward for him, but he doesn't care about that.

I also got him some construction shoes, a hard hat, and a flannel shirt to wear.


And then I decided that it looked too much like a yellow box with wheels, and started to make modifications. I ended up taking the entire thing apart. I was stumped on how to make it a more dump truck like shape- I wanted those indentations on the side, but clay was too heavy. And then on "My Name is Earl" they were making fun of a girl he dated who did paper mache. Jackpot! I have now put on one layer, with a couple yet to go, and then I can paint it and reattach the wheels and strap. My husband thinks I am crazy for putting in so much effort. But seriously, when was the last time you got to paper mache something? Hee! Watch for headlights and tail lights in the final pics.

**But I'm not done with this list yet! Hooo, no. Christopher works at a company called DigiCert. They have official shirts for everyone with their logo on them, and have been giving them to family and friends because they are great advertising. But hubby decided one of his had a strangly large neck opening, and he didn't want to wear it anymore, so he donated it to me to make a shirt for Tyler (since they don't have toddler shirts yet.) I used an unattractive shirt to take apart and use as a pattern, and the pieces are cut out, but I haven't gotten further than that yet. But there was a logo on the sleeve, and I thought, "it's a shame that I won't be using that!"

And then I noticed that my daughter is the same size as the sleeve.

Yes, that's right, my daughter is wearing a men's shirt sleeve as a tube top. I used ribbon for the straps and the trim at the bottom, and then buttons for decoration. I wanted them to be functional on the back, but my machine gave me hissy fits for a couple of hours trying to make button holes. (It literally ate the fabric! Chewed up little bits of it! Grrr.) Velcro time.

**Next: Tyler's DigiCert shirt will hopefully come together soon . . . assuming I ever finish his dump truck.

Vegas trip

This last weekend we took a quick trip down to visit my brothers in Henderson, NV. When I saw them all in August they mentioned that we should come down in the fall instead of the summer, like we usually do, since that is when the weather is great down there. And then my dad was there for a conference and a class and had a weekend off between the two. Still, Christopher wasn't thrilled about the idea of driving the kids down for 6 hours until he found the bike.

He has been eyeing this bike for a while now. He almost bought a brand new one, but they are between models and he was going to wait until the next model was in stock. And then he saw this one on ebay for half the price of a new one, and not even 2 years old. But where was it located? Henderson, Nevada. Suddenly my trip to Vegas was a brilliant plan!

We always eat at the same Timberline Restaurant in Beaver on every trip. It is the only place I know of in Utah that sells a true Monte Cristo sandwich, and I love it so much! My boys are so handsome.

We stayed at my 2nd brother's house, who has 5 kids and luckily still has a guest room. Most of the weekend was spent just hanging out and going to soccer games for all of the cousins, though we did get everyone together for a big dinner on Sunday night.

My niece is in the purple jersey. I can't believe how big they are all getting! There are three girl cousins her age, and I remember going to see her cousin Lauren in the hospital when she was born. I had already moved to Utah to go to school at that point, and now she is getting baptized soon! That's crazy.

Tyler liked their bunny, CJ. I think he also liked staying with so many cousins, because he is used to a very quiet house at home. Megan is the youngest out of the 5 by almost four years, so she was quite excited to have little cousin friends her age to play with. She is about 5 months older than Kaitlyn.

Tyler spent most of the weekend in their dirt spot in the backyard, digging around with his trucks. Sometimes I wonder if we are pushing the trucks thing too much- he now has trucks on plates, bibs, toys, books, stickers, and even a step-stool. But the kid is seriously drawn to them!

He laughed hysterically every time that thing dumped out! Too cute.

The stinky part about picking up a motorcycle down there was that we had to drive home separately. And since Christopher had to be at work on Monday, he left only 36 hours after he came. I was a bit worried about how the kids would do the next day when I drove them home by myself, but all things considered it went ok. Kaitlyn screamed lots, but what can you do?

Ooh, and before I leave I just have to brag. Kohl's sent out $10 gift cards in honor of their Grand Opening of a new store in the area- minimum purchase was $10. So I went tonight and got a shirt for me and a sleeper for Kaitlyn for $1.06. And then I went and used some frequent pizza cards to get a free large pizza from Pier 49. That meant that I got all three items tonight for $1.06 total! Happy dance!

I have too much fun taking pictures sometimes :)

In fact, I think I am ready to break down and upgrade to a DSLR camera, because I have been dreaming of one for a while now. If any of you have experience with certain cameras or advice, I would love to hear it in some comments! I am just looking to keep my "point and shoot" for portability, but sometimes I would like something a little better, ya know?

Word problem for the day!

I was making a tutu today, and wanted to share the math end of it. I made two mistakes in the first attempt. First, I measured Kaitlyn's waist at 19" when it is actually 16.5". Squirmy girl. And then, when I cut the tulle, I figured that I should add "a bunch" for gathering, and rather than do the math, just went with 36" since the fabric was already a yard long. Me? Skip the math? What was I thinking?!? It turns out that 36" isn't nearly enough, and only made a skirt, hanging down.

So here is the word problem for you. Kaitlyn is 16.5" around, but I went with 16" so the elastic would stretch and hold on. The tutu is 8" long, and unlike the "skirt" I made the first time, should stick straight out when I am done. (Or at least be able to.) How long should it be to make it around the new circumference? The answer will be right after all the back-story for the day.

You know you are a math nerd like me if you actually get excited by figuring it out!

***

I love making Halloween costumes for my kids. For the last two years, Tyler has gotten a "semi-homemade" costume, with bought parts put together with bits I made myself. For his first costume, he was Rocky the boxer. It was an inside joke, since Christopher desparately wanted to name him Rocky in the first place. I got the robe on ebay and ironed on the letters on the back, bought the boxing gloves (which were meant to dangle from a rear-view mirror), and then made him the awesome shorts. I was way proud of those shorts, since the stripes were fun to make.

Then, the next year, I figured that since we already had the BYU jersey, I would just make him some football pants and a helmet. The only sad part was that I couldn't do a facemask or he would just rip it off, so it ended up looking like a bonnet. In fact, when I asked Christopher what Tyler should be this year, his only requirement was that this year, he didn't wear a bonnet. Oh well.

I am just buying Tyler's this year, because how could I possibly make one as cool as this for a kid who loves trucks? I mean, most people make them out of boxes, but I think Tyler is too young to enjoy manuvering around in a cardboard box all night.

But I saw someone online who got the orange, jack-o-lantern onesie from Wal-mart and added an orange tutu and a green hairbow to make a pumpkin, and knew I had to do it for Kaitlyn. I looked up online how to make a tutu, but I didn't want to use the method here. I loved the look when tutus had a ribbon border, and that meant a solid top peice. So I needed a long, skinny section of tulle to wrap around her waist. It should look like this one when it is done, except that it won't cost $40. (By the way, this pic comes from poshtots.com, which has ome of the cutest and most expensive stuff I have ever seen.)

Which brings us back to the tutu in progress.

***

You figure it out yet? Okay, so if she is 16" in circumference, and circumference is 2(pi)r, so that means that she is 5.1" in diameter or 2.55 in radius. We are adding 8" on each side, so the new total diameter will be 21.1", which makes the new circumference 66". Since I don't want it to be pulled taught to make that, I will make it 2 yards (72") long. Which means I only had half the fabric I needed.

And here it is! Now I am just going to work on the "stem" for her head, and we will be all set.

Run, Chris, run!

We had a great weekend trip to Logan for the marathon on Saturday morning. I enjoyed the drive up with my Grandpa, and it sounded like he was just excited to be out of the apartment and around new people for a change. And it turns out that Uncle Harold loves little babies. As soon as we got there to drop off my Grandpa, he took Kaitlyn in his lap and handed her a toy. And bless her heart, she just stayed there and played with the little toy and gave him her very best little smiles. They were cute together.

Then I headed out to have dinner with Holly and Manuel. I hadn't met him before, but he was really nice and I was impressed by how much English she has taught him already! They seem to be just exhausted. I had to re-assure them the parenting does get easier than taking shifts so that someone is physically watching the baby at all times, since the 4 lbs 8 oz tyke (which Holly kept remarking was HUGE and "I can't believe how big she is getting!") has acid-reflux and can't be flat on her back or she will choke. I hope things work out for them!

The next morning, I remembered how much we love this marathon. It is the most organized marathon that Christopher has ever done, which is why we keep going back. A lot of marathons try to save money by not getting enough busses to take runners up to the starting line (a problem compounded by everyone trying to catch the last bus up instead of the first), but this marathon has plenty and starts the busses running hours ahead of time picking the runners up from the Logan hotels. That meant that I didn't have to wake all the kids up and drive Christopher down to the pick up point! He just went out front and got picked up. Chris loves how scenic and gently sloped the course is, and I was even amazed at the aid stations which had not just the usual port-o-potties, water and gatorade, but gu and people to run along and rub muscle relaxant on your calves and vasaline and band-aids. But my all-time favorite is that they text spectators when your runner crosses the 13, 20 and finish lines. That's right, no more wondering where the heck your runner is and waiting for hours in one spot worrying that you missed them or they collapsed somewhere or something. In fact, this time I was waiting at the 17 when it texted me and said he crossed the 20. Imagine how long I would have been standing there!!

And I love Logan- such a cute little town! I remember the last time he ran this race, I hung out with an older couple that looked forward to the marathon every year becuase they loved to just do yard work and cheer everybody on. So I helped them pull weeds inbetween runners. This time I was able to just have a nice hot breakfast at the hotel with the kidlets and then head over. The runners zig-zag at the end, so I could just go straight and catch him a few times.

The best part was that Christopher was really pumped by his time! It wasn't his best marathon ever, but for how much he trained for this marathon he was very happy to get a 3:53. Now he wants to keep running through the winter and qualify for Boston next year, if all goes well. That takes a 3:12. We'll see- I think he can do it! Way to go, hubby!

And in kidlet news, Kaitlyn is not just pulling herself up on all the furniture she can find now, but also scooting along coffee tables and fireplace mantles with ease. Look out! And tonight I noticed that she has a bit of a tooth poking out on the bottom. Tyler has been in love with a "yel-go bus" toy recently that has cemented his 123 and ABC recognition, along with the shapes and colors he has been great at the last couple of weeks.

Tyler also figured out how to put on Daddy's sunglasses.

Tyler usually just scribbles around, but this time he drew for a while and told me this was "up-a-stair", which is what he says when going up or down stairs. And I was shocked to look and see that it actually was stairs! We had never drawn stairs for him before, so that was very random.

Having fun with Daddy!

A few notes

Sorry, it has been a while. And I still don't have big things to write about, just a lot of little things. So here goes.

*I was reminded that being sick sucks, but being sick and having two sick kids sucks a lot more. Mostly the baby waking up 6 times a night for extra feedings and sympathy tipped the scales. Ugg.

*Speaking of sickness, I have taken Kaitlyn to the Gold's Gym playroom twice since she was born. At 4 months, she came home with the stomach flu. And now at 7 months, she brought us all a cold/pink eye bug to share around the family. Grrr. My membership is up this month, and I think we are buying a nicer treadmill with the money.

*Itty-bitty book review: I have recently started trying the "Deceptively Delicious" gig. So far, I like it! Minus the lying part, cause there is no point in that. My husband is happy to have the veggies already in his food so he doens't have to have them separately, and I could tell Tyler about it all I want and he wouldn't have a clue. In fact, in some cases I think I should up the amount, because she makes the recipes so that you can't tell there are veggies in them, and there really isn't that much in there sometimes. The lasagna was just . . . lasagna. It was good, but not unique. The sweet potato in the pancakes made them nice and moist though. And Tyler liked the green eggs, which suprised me. I figured this is a good time to try it, since I can make all the purees I want (thank heaven she leads you through that step by step), and then use them for baby food and now in our food. Two birds with one stone!

*Tyler is learning new things so fast that when we started a new playgroup this week, I didn't know what to tell the lady when she asked what we were working on. He now labels everything in sight, understands choices for the most part, asks me for help and water and whatever he needs, and loves to involve us in his play more than he used to. I just listed all the goals that I had for him when we started KOTM 5 months ago! Eating is a work in progress still, but we are working on that. I feel like for a long time now we have been sitting at the depot watching all the other kids firgure things out and move along down the track. And now Tyler has hopped on, full speed ahead. We are a year behind when everyone else figured these things out, but we are on the train now, and that is all that matters.

*And speaking of day care, they have a "sibling care" place for me to take Kaitlyn while Tyler is in his playgroups, and I adore them! They just fawn over Kaitlyn when I take her in, and by the time I come back one of them is holding her all snuggly in a blanket, fast asleep. How many day cares do you know of that have a good enough kid to adult ratio to have one hold a sleeping baby for a half an hour, no problem? They even work with trying to teach these little 0-2 year old tots. Love them!

*We are leaving tomorrow for Logan to watch Christopher run the Top of Utah Marathon. I am always amazed at how my hubby can pull these off! This one is his favorite one to run, because it is really well organized and a beautiful course. Unfortunatly, Chris couldn't get off work early to drive up on Friday, and rather than pull in with the kids at 9pm, we are driving separately. Originally he wanted to also head home earlier than me to use his tickets for the BYU game, but he finally realized that he wouldn't want to stand in the student section after running a marathon and sold the tickets. Not to mention the game starts 6 hours after the marathon and 2.5 hours away from the marathon. Boys are crazy sometimes!

The good news about separate cars is that I am taking my Grandpa up with me. My Grandfather's brother lives up in Logan, and neither of the brothers are in good health anymore, so they don't get to visit very often. But since I am driving right by, I might as well pick him up! It is hardly out of the way. I think they are both really looking forward to it.

*Also on the Logan agenda is my old college friend Holly. She married a guy in the Dominican Republic and just recently came back to the states with him because they were expecting. But then the poor thing gave birth at 30 weeks by emergency C-Section because of preclampsia! My heart just breaks thinking of them, with no job, and a baby that just barely got out of the NICU. I am looking forward to meething her little family though.

*Kaitlyn is crawling the real way now, and also pulling herself up to stand every chance she gets. And she is still a bitty stick thing!

*And because I hate posts without pictures, here is Tyler helping himself to "cere-ere-alll" from the cupboard. Kaitlyn noticed that he was dropping a few, and crawled over to snag those for herself. Teamwork!

*Finally, a Tyler story for you: One of his new words is "chocolate." He discovered he likes chocolate quite a bit when he found Daddy's candy the other day. And then yesterday, I had the box out to make chocolate cupcakes for Mutual that night. Tyler found the box, and lovingly took it down, staring at the picture on the front. "Chocck-ckk!", he told me. Yes, that is chocolate honey. He repeated it a few more times, and then paused. "HUP!", as he held up the box for me to open it. I tried to explain to him that opening it wouldn't help, since there wasn't cake inside like the picture showed. "Hup!" No, sorry honey. Then he paused, thinking. One of these words I know must work here . . . "keeen up!" No, clean up is the opposite hun- putting it back in won't work! Don 't worry though, he got a "chocckkk-ckk" cupcake in the end.

The second week of my vacation

So, it has been a week, and I have blogged about other things, but haven't actually written about the second half of our trip. The first half was sheer chaos, as you saw below. It was awesome to see everyone, but it was rough for my kids to keep up without their usual naps. Then everyone flew home - but us. We had Jackie and Maya for a couple more days, but that was it. And that week, to me, was the actual vacation part. The part where we hung out all day, and where Grandma continually told me "no! I'll feed her!" (or change her diaper, or put Tyler to sleep) "You go sit on the couch and rest!" No problemo there.

So what did we do? We had dinners out on the deck.

We went to the county fair.

We took walks around the block every night before the kids went to sleep.

My friend Sara came over with her little guy. (And I use that term loosly! What a hilarious little chunker man!)

We went to go see a local restaurant that hosts a motorcycle drive in every single week- they usually get 1000-3000 each week. Wow! We considered it a good field trip for Tyler, since he now can label motorcycles by sight and engine sound.

Dan brought us to a local place called Kleats for a wing night (which my hubby is always game for).

My mom and I made bows.

The cat tried to eat the goldfish.

And Tyler hung out with the cat. My kids seriously adored this cat, so thank heavens it was a very patient kitty who never got mad at them once.

Somewhere in there, my friend Kavitha from high school came over to visit (how did we not get pictures of us together?), the guys wired the house, and the girls had Kaitlyn's picture taken, as previously mentioned. I miss it already!