I can make a Disco Ball...

I made this Cinderella dress for Lorien when she was three years old. We all know that when I sit down to sew I really know how to put the "stress" in seamstress. You can just imagine how well things went when I was trying to sew with crazy sequined fabric and yards of tulle... Suffice it to say, this project ended with me dumping a cup of chocolate milk onto Lorien's head. Still, the dress is adorable.
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I did not know how to sew sleeves so for a year Lorien wore a Cinderella dress with weird-fan-like protrusions at the shoulder. The next year for Halloween I added sleeves and puffy side thing-a-migs--very Cinderella.

Lorien wore that Cinderella dress almost every day for about a year. The wearings be came a little less frequent as time passed but this home made Cinderella dress was a favorite long after the front of the tulle ripped out and even after I bought the actual Disney dress on sale.

Lorien started to out grow the Disney princesses but luckily for me (and all the princess crud our family has obtained over the years) Clare has just started to fall in love with the Disney princesses. A few days ago I made a little trip out to our back shed where I keep several boxes of toys. I hauled out our two Cinderella dresses. To my distinct surprise and joy Clare picked my home made dress to wear. The velcro closures gave out ages ago and the front panel of blue tulle is still ripped off--none the less--those sparkles scream out over the imperfections making it the dress de jour.

During lunch today, dressed in her Cinderella finery, Clare caught the sunlight bouncing off all of her sparkles. She also noticed that if she stood on her chair and turned in a careful circle--those sparkles moved around the room. For a little while, if you tilted your head just right and squinted your eyes, our breakfast nook was transformed into Studio 54 complete with spinning disco ball and moving lights.

Because it's there...

NASA has a research facility here. Did you know that? And they have a couple of museums on the NASA campus--one of them is free. Did you know that?!? Well, now you do. Saturday we took the kids over to the Ames Research Center to take a walk through the (free) NASA Exploration Center. It isn't very big but it has a bunch of pretty cool stuff--and it is free. We spent about 90 minutes walking around a big room with models of different space crafts, 3-D pictures from the Mars Rover, a slide show of the Hubble Telescope's greatest pictures/discoveries, a moon rock, space suits and the first craft sent up into space. (I know I say this about a lot of stuff but I cannot help it) The Exploration Center is WICKED COOL! Wyatt had the most fun because in between wanting to be a Mailman and a Cake Decorator he also wants to be an Astronaut.

Check out the pictures:

The kids loved seeing the life size pictures through their 3-D glasses. Wyatt knew how the Mars Rover was powered--solar panels.

There was this totally hot guy there showing my kids all around the museum and talking like he graduated from MIT or something...smart and hot! I managed to sneak a picture of him with his 3-D glasses on. Pretty hunky, huh?


Did I mention the Astronaut cut outs you could stand behind to pretend you were walking on the moon? Say it with me folks: "Wicked cool, wicked cool."

Sleep where she will...

Will has been coaching the High School wrestling team this season. Clare loves to go to wrestling with Daddy. She has too much fun climbing on the mats, running around the room and wrestling whoever dares to take her on. Sometimes practice goes too long and Clare is understandably tired. This is how she ended practice today...

Classic...

I missed my work out this morning--bummer. My van is in Oakland, with my husband and the wrestling team he coaches. We are out of a number of food staples (including milk) and we are expecting company for dinner tomorrow evening. For a laugh, I decided to walk to the grocery store with Clare in the wagon and Lorien and Wyatt on their bikes. I made my shopping list and headed over to the grocery store. (Here is where the tale takes an interesting turn.) This was not just a quick pop into the grocery for a loaf of bread this was a trip to feed my family for a week. It was four gallons of milk, it was fresh chicken breast for Sunday dinner, it was cereal, apples, bananas, broccoli , carrots and bagged salad. It was canned goods on sale and dairy products we were out of. It was eggs, people, EGGS! I ignorantly tossed whipped cream and olive oil into my grocery cart--completely forgetting the fact that I had not come to the grocery store in my van but in a red. plastic. wagon... The sobering fact of the wagon came all to soon when I wheeled my overflowing cart of paid groceries out the door and was halted by said wagon. My optimism prevailed, "No problem!" I thought. I loaded the milk into the wagon and using long forgotten Tetris skills I managed to fit most of the other groceries into the wagon (giving all of the produce a solid bruising in the process.). With most of the groceries balancing precariously atop the milk I turned my attention to the four cereal boxes that would not be squeezed into the wagon. Naturally, if my sweet children wanted to eat the cereal they were going to have to carry it home. I looked at their small bikes, their knobby knees, spindly legs and thin arms...perfect pack mules...of course. Attaching a plastic bag containing one box of cereal to each of their handle bars we headed home.

One block into the walk home, the youngest child who was forced out of the wagon by all the groceries ran a few paces ahead of me, tripped over her own feet and skinned her knee. With mule # 1 too far ahead to hear my screams of "Wait! Lorien, wait!" and mule #2 in hot pursuit I had no choice but to scoop up the crying baby and run to catch up. I am not a graceful runner and hauling 50 pounds of groceries one handed in a red wagon while balancing a crying toddler on my other arm does nothing to add to my running style. Mercifully, mule # 1 has about as much biking grace as I have running grace and several yards before I was about to sit down and cry, she lost her balance and fell over...onto a pile of rocks...effectively stopping her parade. With the unstoppable force of a speeding wagon behind me I had to keep running until I nearly collided with the sobbing Lorien. In the middle of my attempt to comfort both Lorien and Clare an elderly woman passed us on the sidewalk. She gave me a weak smile and kept on her way. At the time I thought she must not have spoken any English. However, as I reflect now, I think it is far more likely that upon seeing the scene before her (two screaming girls, a dirty faced boy and a crazy woman pulling a red wagon full of groceries) words simply failed her. She couldn't even muster the vocabulary to sympathise or scold and she was way too polite to give me the dirty look I deserved. After all, what kind of person makes a gigantic grocery run with a red wagon and two kiddy bikes? Well, a person who is in the odd habit of grossly overestimating her abilities, that's who.

I have come to the conclusion that I do not need to work out. Hauling 50 pounds of groceries up a steady incline to home will keep me in tip-top shape. More over, using all of my mental powers to will a wobbly 5 year old on a bike to stay on the side walk and out of the road will keep my brain out of Alzheimer's territory for a long time. I have everything under control...really.