A slice of humble pie

I haven't blogged in a month, because October is my costume month.  Every year I think I won't do anything that year.  Maybe I'll just buy costumes.  But every year I end up going a bit over the top creating costumes.  This year, I learned a bit about myself.

I don't know why, and I don't think this is wise, but is appears that in the last couple of years I have decided that I am above using store-bought patterns for making clothes.  Granted, I feel like I know what I am doing, in general.  I have made a lot of things over the years, and feel rather competant.  But just because I watch Project Runway doesn't mean I can create things they way they do.  And just because the patterns are expensive doesn't mean they aren't important.

And this is what I learned the hard way a week ago.

See, I decided that I would make my kids into Woody and Jesse, the cowfolk from the Toy Story movies.  I mean, they are wearing jeans and cowboy boots, so how hard can this be?  Woody needs a vest and a yellow shirt. 

So I took a vest that fit Tyler, and used it to create the pattern for my vest.  I started sewing the usual way - sew the outside together, sew the lining together, then sew the outside to the lining and turn inside out.   But then I got to this spot and stopped in my tracks.

To understand the problem, let me use an example.  Everyone has sewn a pillowcase and turned it right side out afterward, yeah?  Okay, picture that now.  You've got the edges sewn, and you're about to turn it out through the opening you left.  And then you put a staple in the middle.  Can you turn it back out?  No?  Yeah, neither could I.  Eventually I had to go to WalMart and open up a vest pattern, take a picture of the instructions on how to turn it out, and go home and finish it.  But that was another day.

Also, notice the shirt?  Yeah, this is what I have entitled the "DARN shirt".  You would think this costume is easy, but nobody makes shirts that are bright yellow with those thin red stripes, oddly enough.  I showed what I had to Christopher, and he said that while Tyler made a good cowboy, he didn't look like Woody.  I have spent a lot of time looking at a lot of options, but still haven't even found fabric that looks right.  I think I'm just going to dye a white shirt yellow and draw red lines on it.  Sigh.

Anyway, that was my first mistake on that Saturday.  When the vest frustrated me, I turned my attention to a side project.  See, Kaitlyn outgrew her Tinkerbell costume, and was quite sad about it.  She LOVES dress up.  So I figured that since I already had the fabric for it, I would just make her a new one.  You know, since I had the sewing machine out and all. 

I went to the store and looked at a pattern I liked, but decided not to buy it.  I can just do it myself!  I really liked the assymetrical look of the yellow fairy.  So off I went.

 I made the leaf skirt, and loved it!  I already had the yellow tutu.  So far, so good.  Now I just needed a top and a belt.

 

 I need the top to be a onesie, and I wanted it to be baggy so she could grow into it. Actually, I wanted it to gather to one side, but that attempt failed miserably. So I just settled for one shoulder. And I made a belt.

Let's list the problems, shall we?  First of all, what I thought was plenty of extra room evaporated.  She will grow out of this top by Christmas.  Which I guess makes it a good skin-tight leotard, but still.  Then the belt, which was a glue gun mess I actually threw away.  See, the leotard thing is flat, and then the tutu flares out, so the belt wouldn't lay flat at all!  She looks better without it. 

So after all that frustration, I decided I needed to do something fun.  I remembered that we had a bike in the basement we bought years ago for Tyler to grow into.  It was going to be a Christmas present someday.  And I thought - why do we give bikes at Christmas, anyway?  My kids don't understand Christmas.  And they can't ride bikes at Christmas.  So I dug it out, pumped up the tires, and attached the training wheels.



Tyler prefers his big wheel, but Kaitlyn is in LOVE with this bike.  She has asked to ride it multiple times every single day since.

But just when I was smiling at the fact that I did something right that day, Kaitlyn stops riding for a moment.

"Mom?" she says. "Can I have a helmet?"  She launched into a story that I think involved some Dragon Tales character having a helmet to ride a bike, so she wanted one too.

Yup.  I'm the brilliant mom who didn't think of the helmet sitting in the garage on her own.

Sigh.

The good news is that Kaitlyn adores the Tinkerbell costume.  She wiggles into it and dances around like a crazy girl.  Without the tutu she's about as naked as the orginal Tink was, but that really doesn't matter to her.  So I guess the imperfections shouldn't matter to me either.

Masquerade Ball

This was our second year attending a "Lords and Ladies Masquerade Ball" nearby with friends from Digicert.  It is so much fun!  It is a fundraiser for a charity that is held on this amazing property with a castle and lots of cool things, and we get to dress up.  Which is really all the girls care about anyway.

Last year I wore my prom dress, and this year I wanted to wear an Indian Sari, having fallen in love with them at Kavitha's wedding.  Luckily I found one to rent!

So after a couple pictures at home, we met up with our friends there.  The guys did find ways to enjoy their costumes . . .

While the girls enjoy just posing together.

They had actors all over the place, staging sword fights and performing ballroom dancing, as well as some belly dancers.  These guys on stilts were fun!

And I love seeing the girls dangling from the fabric.  What a workout.

One of Christopher's co-workers even wore a sari like I did!

What a fun night!

Photos I never posted

This post has no relevance to anything, nor is it chronological.  I just noticed I had a bunch of pictures that I never got around to posting!

First of all, one of our favorite activities this summer was a splash pad nearby.  There was a splash pad as well as a "river" with fountain coming out of rocks, and the river was Tyler and Kaitlyn's favorite part.  My favorite part was that it was free!

Getting ready to jump . . .

Kaitlyn has been really odd about swimming lately.  She LOVES swimming, and can't stop talking about it on the way over, but only stays in the water for 5 minutes at time.  Then she tells me she needs to go to her towel to get "nice and warm".  She wraps herself up like this for 2 minutes, then ditches the towel and runs back in the water.

I had to throw this picture in.  These little carts crack me up.  My kids love them, but they aren't very good at steering yet.  Or going where you want them to go in general.  But I thought it was great when Tyler just climbed right up inside like it was a normal cart, and Kaitlyn proceded to push him around the store.

The next couple of pictures are from Daddy's softball games.  Digicert played one round in the spring and another in the fall. The kids liked this pile of gravel that was next to the fields.

And Christopher even pitched for a few games.  Not bad!

And, for the first time ever, I canned some pears this fall!  That probably makes me the last person in all of Utah.  But oh well, better late than never.  I figured that since we didn't have any apples this year, and only a few pears, it would be a good year to try and not get overwhelmed.  Ta-da!

And in other news, I have been complaining for a year about the posting system for blogger.  First I could only move pictures by scrolling in one precise spot.  Then they would go up, but not down.  Then the pictures would post in reverse order, and finally I could only see text and no actual picture, so I had to remember which one was which.  I was so tired of it getting more bugs instead of less.  And then, yesterday, I found a setting hidden in all the billions of options that gave me an editor that is glorious and fixed all of those bugs. 

Sigh.

Well, at least it looks good now . . .

Fall is pretty :)

I love taking pictures of fall leaves. So beautiful!







And I had to throw this picture in too. Evening fires in the fire pit is one of the best joys in life.



And, of course, more pictures of my kids playing. Because they are cute.



Even if their hair is messy.



Or gone. :) The leaves were falling so fast that you had to brush them off every few minutes while hanging out on the hammock.



Tyler loves sliding down into leaves. So when he runs out, he takes his little bucket to get more.



Watching her on her swing makes me laugh every time. She is a pro now- she just hooks her leg through, walks up to the top of the hill, and jumps.



Now, this triptych might be over exposed, but it still made my day.

What I wanted: I saw her throwing leaves into the air, so I wanted a shot of her with leaves falling around her.

What I asked: "Kaitlyn! Throw some leaves!"

What I got:





I got leaves all over- in my hair, down my shirt . . .
Stinker.

San Diego: the park I forgot . . .

So, as my mom and Erica made me realize, I forgot a park in my last post. We also went to the Zoo's Wild Animal Park, which they are renaming the Safari Park at the moment.



We were a bit "looking at animals"ed out by the time we got there, but it was a good park. Only deserted! I guess the off season is not kind to this place, because there was hardly anyone there on a Saturday. We walked past the "hour and a half wait from this point" sign and hopped right on the tour. Once again, moving tram rides are not a good place to take good pictures from, but this baby rhino was adorable. And we saw lot of other cool stuff too.



These birds were fun. If anyone bought the food and came into the aviary, half a dozen of them would land on the person to get the food.



But the highlight of the day (at least for Kaitlyn) was the carousel. We thought the kids would love the "talk to a zebra" show where a cartoon zebra comes and talks to the audience, but they were too shy (and there were only 2 other kids in the audience for this poor guy to talk to). But Kaitlyn had ridden on a carousel just like this at Hogle Zoo, and spotted it from a long ways off. We talked her out of it at first because it looked like it was $2 a ride, but it turns out it was included with our 3 for 1 ticket!



When we walked up, the carousel was stopped because there was no one to ride it. And the nice lady told us we could stay on and switch animals, just riding as long as we wanted to.



Kaitlyn was in heaven. She picked out one animal, and then another. She studied mechanism that moved it up and down. She was soooo happy.



But after four rides (all of which were past her nap time) mommy and daddy were quite dizzy. That poor girl sobbed and sobbed when we pried her off. I still feel bad. But Christopher pointed out that she would probably scream after the 8th ride as well, so off we went.



They really were tired. They did this almost every day, actually. And Tyler doesn't normally take naps. But worn out by too many fun things in one day is a good day for toddlers.

San Diego: Parks

Our first stop on the "places to tour" list was the Zoo.



Neither Christopher nor I had been there since we were 12 or so, and so all we can remember is that it is A: huge/amazing and B: full of hills. Oh, and I remember getting my food in a cool little bucket. All of those things are quite true, in fact. It was a great zoo. We especially loved that they have a tour on a bus, so even if you spend the rest of the day trudging around and barely see anything else, you can leave feeling like to got to see the whole zoo.



Of course, moving buses are not good places to take pictures from. That one above is the best I could do. I have to say that nature and wildlife photography is the type that draws me the most . . . but I just don't have time for it. If I wanted to take awesome pictures of animals, I would need to set up a tripod and spend an hour or two waiting for each animal to do just what I wanted to see them do. Not happening with toddlers. Oh well, I can enjoy it for a few minutes at a time. I spend the rest of my time trying to make my monkey stop climbing on all of the fences to see things better.



Sorta like this monkey. (Don't let the mean face scare you, he was acutally laughing at me.)



Good thing there were productive things for my monkey to do. Like pretending to be a sea lion.



Or a polar bear.



Tyler is a tough sell on zoos, mainly because he doesn't really like to look at what people tell him to look at. So finding the animals off in the distance isn't really his thing. Kaitlyn was happy enough for both of them, though.



And he did like petting the goats. That was nice and up close for him.



And lunch. We packed our own sandwiches, but the tables were sure cute.



We also went and saw a sea lion show. This little girl was picked out of the audience to play with them, and when she headed back up to her seat, Kaitlyn turned to me and said "my turn?!" Sorry, nope.




Our next stop was Sea World. This was my husband's favorite park, since there was a lot of fun stuff to see and it was all close together (with no hills).



Tyler thought the dolphin show was hilarious- he laughed whenever they jumped out of the water.



And I loved the acrobats they had performing with the dolphins - it was very impressive!



The Shamu show was a fun challenge for me. It was a really fun game to try and watch the trainers and the dark blobs under the water to try and guess where the killer whales were going to jump up next. And I am really proud of this shot! You know, minus the stairs in the background.




There were a lot of fun things to see and do too - the kids loved touching the starfish with daddy, and I think the penguins were pretty cool too.



Also on our list was a trip to Old Town. We didn't head there early enough in the day to see everything we wanted to, but we did get to the Mormon Batallion museum. They have some fun toddler things at the end, like making bricks and panning for gold.




And last, but not least, we headed to the USS Midway. This is a view from our sailing trip a few days before. It is a large aircraft carrier that you can tour, complete with over a dozen aircraft sitting on it.



I was really looking forward to this one because my dad was actually stationed on a carrier just like this in Vietnam. His was called the USS Oriskany. We can't tour that one, though- they sunk it intentionally off the coast of Florida to make an artificial reef. Well, you can tour it, if you know how to scuba dive.

But I digress.

The kids were a bit bored with the rest of the tour (which fascinated us), but they did like sitting in the cockpits whenever they got the chance.



The rest of the tour was interesting though. We were especially suprised by the enlisted men's barracks - where my dad would have slept. They were stacked three high in tiny little mattresses. It was bad enough when we saw the first stack, done up in the hallway so you could see what they looked like. Then we passed an entire room full of them. They must have packed thirty people in a room 12x20, it felt like. And you didn't even get a bed to yourself - they rotated shifts on them!



I talked to my dad before we left about what his job was on the ship. He said he was a "communications yeoman", and it was his job to sit in the squadron ready room (VA Squadron 153) and sort through messeges, relaying them back and forth, as well as writing in the pilot's log books for them. Twelve hours on, then twelve hours off, seven days a week.

Best I could figure, this guy right here was my dad, sitting at a desk in the ready room.



I don't know that it meant much to anyone else, but I thought it was really cool to see a bit of . . . family history like that. It was fun to talk to my parents about the years that they lived in San Diego, the things my dad did in the Navy while he was stationed there, and all of their memories.

It was a great trip!