The Results Post...

My methods might be unorthodox but the results are brag-worthy. Here are the kids costumes. Wyatt (on the far right) is a cowboy. Andrew and Evan are next (the football player and Spongebob Squarepants) their costumes are wicked awesome! Angela MADE the Spongebob box...do you see what kind of talent I have to keep up with! I wish I had pictures of my other sisters finished costumes--super cool stuff. Lorien is a "Cute Witch". We could not find her hat when it was time to go Trick-or-Treating. Uncle David tried to convince her that "Witches are trending the other way these days. No hats." Lorien, however, was convinced that her hat "was the most important part of her costume." So Daddy had to make a last minute trip to the store for another one. And last stands my little Clare. She knew she wanted to be Tinkerbell for months. Despite all of my efforts to mess things up, Clare recognized the costume. She was (and is) a very happy fairy.

I am also very proud of my husband's costume (made by me!) after being Mr. Mom and Mr. Work Guy for almost ten straight days he deserves to be called "First Class". And my costume is proof that no one looks good in a Muumuu.

So...a needle pulling thread...

I know some amazing seamstresses. I am not one of those amazing seamstresses...I can't be called a mediocre seamstress--or even a seamstress at all. I have two skills in the sewing department: 1) I know how to push the pedal on my sewing machine like I am driving a Lamborghini down the autobahn. And 2) I can read a pattern like a first grader can read the encyclopedia. My Mom knew how to sew. She bought fabric all the time but most of those lovely rectangles of cloth stayed rectangles of cloth--forever. My oldest sister, Jennifer, is the Mistress Of All Seamstresses. She knows how to re-uphostler furniture making her OWN patterns. She can whip up a formal gown in an afternoon. She knows what crinoline is... I watched my sister sew, I thought I learned a handy skill. When I would go to her house (so she could sew me a semi-formal dress for the Winter Carnival in High School) I would "help" her sew. We would always start by meticulously cleaning her huge table. We even pulled up the ginormous pane of glass covering her table to windex the back side. Nothing is more discouraging than getting kid-crud on the lovely "dry clean only" material I always chose for dresses. Spreading the fabric on a now sparkling table, she taught me how to lay butter knives over the pattern to hold them in place making sure you had enough fabric for all of your pieces. She explained what "on the bias" meant and what the triangles on patterns were for. Carefully she would pin the pattern to the fabric placing a pins about an inch apart. With even more care she would cut the cloth and slowly but surely piece each part together creating a gorgeous gown--custom sized to fit my body.

With a teacher like that you'd expect some wonderful things to come flying off my sewing machine. Sadly, I am an extremely impatient person. I clean off my table before every sewing project--but my table is only a few feet wide so I cannot fit fabric on it for cutting. So, where do I cut the fabric? On my grubby kitchen floor--of course! Shooing Cheerios's and goldfish out of my way I flop the fabric down and pull a few butter knives out of my kitchen drawer. The knives sit beside me while I randomly place pattern piece after piece onto the fabric. With the minimal amount of pins I attempt to secure the fabric to the pattern and cut the pieces out. By this point in my narrative most seasoned sewers are screaming at me through the computer screen. But it gets worse...if the project I have selected requires lining I just fold the lining fabric up with the outer fabric and cut once. When I flip my machine on to sew I'll pin the parts together for the first three steps--then my patience wears out and I hold the rest of the fabric together with my fingers while I sew each swath in place. Sad, but true. By the time I reach direction number 10 I am not even following the pattern any more. I just put stuff together where I think it should go. The results are not pretty.

If this is the pathetic tale of my sewing skills why am I up at 11:00 at night sewing Halloween costumes for my daughters? Why didn't I just go to the store and buy something ready made off a rack? Despite what you might first think, it is cheaper to buy a costume at Target, Toy's R Us or Mervin's than to sew one from fabric bought at Joannes. WHY, OH WHY, am I up way past my bedtime, suggesting my sewing machine's parents were not married and mumbling other curses under my breath as I go? Why??? Because I took Lorien to the fabric store for a Mommy-daughter date after school. Because before I left for Maine, I promised to make her an AWESOME Halloween costume. Because I haven't seen my kids in a week and I want to make something they will love. And because while in Maine, my talented sisters made their kids costumes...I couldn't be out done for crying out loud! Wish me luck and next October, email me a link to this post with a little reminder: "Buying costumes is cheaper than sewing them."

Maine, beautiful Maine...

I've been in Maine for the week. My Super-hero husband took our children for a whole week so I could come back to Maine (by myself!) and spend some time with my family. I missed the foliage peak by about a week but the colors are still impressive. Every day I ooohed and awwwed over every leaf and tree. I took walks around my old neighborhood, kicking the piles of leaves and stuffing my pockets with bits of orange, red and yellow. My Mother and sisters believe the foliage will be enough to draw me back to Maine eventually--don't tell them--but no amount of stunning color could warm me through another New England winter. I'll just have to make the flight back every fall...

It has been a week and I miss my husband and children terribly. I have had a great time here but I am ready to go home.

Hip-Hip-Horay for Football...

We met up with some friends who we knew as students at Stanford. (The men-folk were in the GSB together and both of our families have three children of similar ages.) Anyway, these dear friends moved east after graduation and we had not seen them in a few years. They moved back to the area this summer and we have been so happy to have them here! It was a fun game and even more fun to try and catch up over the yelling of the crowd. Happily, Stanford won!!! They have a perfect record--at home. Which is good for us because our kids get so heart broken when Stanford looses. Go Stanford!

Check out Lorien and her friends. They made up a cheer for Stanford and repeated it over and over and over again. (The rolled up pants are a nice touch too.) Funny girls.

Baby, Baby, Baby...

A few weeks ago I cracked open our attic and hauled down all of the packed away baby clothes. I am not pregnant--nor are we thinking about getting pregnant--I just thought it was a chore that needed to be done. (Fast forward two and a half weeks) All of those bags and boxes of clothes were still sitting in my garage taking up the very limited floor space. So, yesterday I brought all of the clothes into the living room and, while the kids watched Spongebob, sorted the clothes into appropriate piles by size, sex and stain level. Lorien and Clare had a blast looking at all of the clothes they wore as teeny tiny babies. They even opened their baby books to find pictures of them in the smallest outfits imaginable. Wyatt was more focused on the yellow sea sponge dancing on the TV screen.

Will and I feel very confident in saying we will add one more child to our family. We also feel it is mildly possible we could up our numbers by two and that it is a near universal impossibility that we will add three, four or more chicks to the brood. However, we stand at three kids and feel pretty darn comfortable. Clare is potty trained for goodness sake! I can take the kids out and about with out worrying about a baby's nap schedule. In many ways the challenges of children are getting easier. I know we haven't hit the miserable road of teenagers yet--surely the challenges of raising three teenagers will seem like a typhoon compared to the overcast sky of raising three young children...

So, all those baby clothes are going back up into the attic today. There they will sit folded, organized and labeled until we can (or ever will) rally the courage to try for another baby.

Dinner game...

Last night at dinner Will invented a new question game to play with the kids. He is really good at entertaining the kids while encouraging them to eat the meal they find repulsive--which is great for me because by dinner time I am ready to give all three to the circus. Anyway, Will started asking the question: "Which is smarter?" and then listed two objects. Just check out some of their responses and reasoning--you'll be playing the game at the dinner table in no time.

Which is smarter, a mushroom or a piece of fruit? Lorien: "I think a mushroom is smarter. Because a mushroom can make itself poisonous so no one will eat it--but a fruit is just delicious to everyone so everyone will eat it."

Which is smarter, a piece of bread or a piece of pie? Wyatt: "A piece of pie is more smart because there are lots of parts to a pie and they can all think together."

Which is smarter, a piece of bread or Clare? All of us: "Clare!" Clare: "A piece of bread!"

Will wanted me to point out, that he got the idea for the game because (naturally) the big kids were teasing each other saying: "You are dumber than a house." "Well, you are dumber than a worm." on and on...

Thank heaven, for little girls...

I've been in girley heaven for the last week. Clare started a ballet class through the rec. center. Every day she puts on her leotard and ballet slippers and asks me to put her hair in a bun. Then I get to sit on the couch while she dances all around the living room. She is sweet stuff!

In addition, I introduced Lorien and Clare to the glory of clip on earrings. They both love to add dangely glitter to their dress-up's.