Halloween

We had a great Halloween this year.  It has been especially fun to see how excited Kaitlyn gets over everything.  I think every holiday this year has been like that, actually.  What an easy to please age!  Impatient, but easy to please.

One of the things we did this year was go to a pumpkin farm.  Unfortunately, the night we got to go was rather cold - but there were too many fun things to do for the kids to be too upset about that.

There was a petting zoo . . .

Pony rides . . .

A big slide . . .

Some swings and little bikes. . .

And an animal train ride. 

After all of that, we took a hayride to the well picked-over pumpkin patch and got some little pumpkins for the kids.  They wanted to just grab the first ones they saw in pure excitement, but we managed to get a couple of good ones in the end.

The next night, Christopher and I headed to the annual Scallywag Swoiree that his boss hosts.  He really goes all out for these parties - and this year he had a professional photographer that took pictures and printed them out for you. 

Arrr!

On to Halloween itself.  We hadn't gotten a chance to carve the pumpkins yet, so I brought everything outside and showed the kids how to scoop their pumpkins out.  I decided that those little baby pumpkins were actually the way to go after all - very easy!

After that, they drew a picture of the face they wanted on their pumpkin and supervised while I carved it out.  I think they came out pretty cute.

Once Daddy got home and we had some dinner, it was time to head out Trick or Treating!  Kaitlyn was so excited that she actually came to us at 8:30 this morning in Princess attire and said "let's go get treats!"  I told her we had to wait until after dinner, and then she asked me if we could "have dinner now" about five times before we even had lunch. 

The third pumpkin, by the way, is the one thing I grew successfully in my garden.  The vine for that pumpkin took over like a weed. 

Oh, and Kaitlyn's bag was a fun story too.  There is a store near us that sells Pottery Barn seconds, which are usually things that have random names embroidered on them.  I love it because I can just take the name off and have great stuff.  But this little basket came with the name "Kaitlyn" on it!  Her spelling even!  Can't beat a personalized bag that matched her outfit for $3.

When I quizzed them before we knocked, they both knew they would say "Trick or Treat" and "Thank you" - but without fail, every time the door opened they would freeze like deer in the headlights.  They sure loved it though. 

Misplaced crafting

So, usually October means one thing around my house: costume month.  I have a habit of going a little bit overboard making costumes.  As Daddy usually points out, it is all for Mom.  The kids enjoy it, but not nearly as much as I enjoy making them.

Well, this month was a bit different.  The funeral in the middle threw a few things off.  One of them was that I had to finish a project I had been procrastinating for a long time.  For Mother's Day, I offered to make my mom a custom church bag that would be the exact right size for her binder and scriptures and what-not.  We picked out fabric when she was here, talked about the design . . . and then it sat in my living room.  This project scared me a bit, mainly because it wasn't for me.  When you are making something for yourself, it is easier to make all the little judgement calls.  Things like how "many pockets do I want", "what do I want it to look like" - and especially "is this mistake worth fixing, or would I rather just leave it how it is."

Well, with her in town, I figured I needed to get it done so she could carry it home with her instead of ship it home.  Ta-da!

It was especially interesting making this for someone with different tastes than my own.  For example, I would have wanted the straps to be the dots instead of the floral.  And I would have wanted as many pockets as possible on the inside.  In fact, to be honest, I'm sure my bag would involve more feminine bows or flowers or something.  But this was exactly how my mom wanted it, down to the two pockets inside.  I had a lot of fun engineering this from scratch to her dimensions, and especially figured out how to make the sides stiff, the bottom have a plastic stiff sheet in it, and also give it feet and the brass loops on the handles.  I'm fairly proud of it, overall.  But that took up most of my crafting energy this month.

As for the Halloween costumes, this was my first year meeting up with a child with an OPINION.  I have always just picked out something I thought they would enjoy and made it.  But Kaitlyn is now old enough that I knew that would not fly.  She told me she wanted to be Princess Aurora.  So I showed her the Disney costume online - and she said yes, I needed to make her one of those dresses.  Not buy - make.  As Daddy said, "she knows how this works."

So I started looking into it.  First of all, Princess fabric material is not all that cheap.  And at the end of the day, the dress is actually sorta plain.  It looks good on Aurora because her waist is the size of her neck.  But it really is just a plain pink ball gown -with a neckline that looked like a headache in the making.

Just when I was about to buy the fabic, Kaitlyn said that she would also like to be Rapunzel for Halloween.

That killed it.  I was not going to spend hours making this for her to change her mind.  Time for the $8 version at Big Lots!  This is her at Ballet class last week.  They got to wear their costumes, and Daddy even came to watch.  They each had a turn where the teacher would play music to go with their costumes, and they would make up a dance to go with how that character would dance.  When it was Kaitlyn's turn, she told the teacher that "Princess Aurora dances with somebody", so they each grabbed a partner to dance with.

Next, she told the teacher that Princess Aurora flies.  I guess she is combining the fairies together with the Princess, which would explain why I had to make her a wand to go with her costume.  (I did make the crown and the wand, as well as some fake ballet slippers to go Trick or Treating with.)

I decided I really liked how her costume is the length of a ballet tutu, since Sleeping Beauty was a Ballet long before it was a Disney movie.  So since she actually stuck with that in the end, she was settled.

But then there was Tyler.  I tried to think of things that he is "into" right now, and really drew a blank.  He loved construction trucks one year, so I made him into a dump truck.  Another year he loved Toy Story, so he was Woody.  But now . . . he isn't really big on anything this year. All he does is walk around all day singing songs to himself.  He sings over his cereal in the morning, he puts words of what he is doing to random tunes he knows, and has even been singing church songs all day at school sometimes. 

So this is what I came up with.

You can't quite read the sign through his drumming, but it says "Tyler's One Man Band".  I was worried that it would be too cumbersome when I was done, and it is a bit much for him to cart around.  But he loved it!  I got it done just in time for our neighborhood party, and he had a grand time making as much noise as possible all night.  He can play recorder and use the sticks to beat on his drum and the cowbell all at the same time.  He had jingle bells on elastic bands around his knees, but they started to all fall off.  Maybe I will repair that for tomorrow.

I think it worked.  (Needs more cowbell!)

In the meantime, my crafting has finally moved to a new home.  I have always just worked on my dining room table, since that is the big long table in the house.  But it is also in the front room - visible from the front door, and the front windows of the house.  At first I was good about putting it all away every time I was done, but for the last year or two I really have been making something just about every week or so.  With countless trips to the basement to put away the parts I was done with and get the stuff I needed, it still looked like a constant mess.  But there was only one unoccupied spot I could take, and I wasn't eager to make that move. 

I finally did it though.  My crafting has a new home.  See that sewing machine, way back in the far corner of the basement?  That's me. 

I liked being upstairs so I could keep a better eye on the kids, but they do have some toys in the basement, so I'm hoping this won't be too bad.  I still need to get things set up, but it is nice that I can make a mess back there and no one will see it.  And I really like having my little plastic drawers to hold sorted tools right where I can reach them.

You might also notice the little cabinet in the shadow there.  That is my recent treasure.  It was my Grandmother's, and my Grandpa kept it around all these years because it was where his phone sat.  At one point I mentioned to the family that was in love with that cabinet and the contents in it , and they said that I could probably have it someday - but not then.  That was where the phone sat.  And Grandpa was not fond of change.  He was such a funny man.  I was happy to chuckle and wait patiently.

But now it is mine!  And oh, the treasures my Grandma left in there.  Lots of sewing tools, books, and thread.  I have always wanted a pair of pinking shears, and I have put them to good use already.  But this is the box that always had me drooling.  Check out the trims!

Those are all ribbons and lace edges for decoration.  How fun is that?  I can't wait to put some of those to use.

Another of the treasures that I inherited was something it looks like Grandma made to put her jewelry into while she traveled.  It is actually just two ziplocks sewed into a fabic envelope.  I love it, especially because it looks like just the sort of crafty thing I would make.  I didn't know my Grandma very well, but apparently we had a few things in common.

Crafty things may have been shifting around a bit over here, but I think it has all found a good home now.

Girls weekend - and a change of heart

A while back, Christopher went on a motorcycle trip with some friends down to the Grand Canyon.  Not to be outdone, the wife whose family condo they stayed at in St. George talked to her parents and arranged a corresponding girls trip for the wives.  Which of course meant they had absolutely no grounds to turn us down when we told our husbands about it.  So awesome!

This was certainly a first for me.  Growing up around five brothers and a rather tom-boyish mother, I wasn't exactly a girly girl.  I got makeup for the first time my senior year of high school, for heaven's sake.  I never had sisters to do "girly" things with.  And of course, the other first was leaving my husband in charge of the kids for three days to take a vacation on my own.  It meant my kids probably dressed like homeless kids for a few days and ate nothing but pizza, but there are worse fates.  (In fact, Daddy made some good potty training progress on Tyler while I was gone.  Go Daddy!)

I have to say though, this weekend was EXACTLY what I needed.  Okay, so probably everyone would benefit from a weekend off with girlfriends.  But wow, we all kept talking about how we were coming home feeling envigorated.

Our theme for the weekend was doing whatever we wanted.  Even when that meant we had Cold Stone for dinner one night!  We spent hours shopping the outlet mall, we ate out wherever we wanted to, we watched chick flicks back to back, and honestly I don't think there was a break in the conversation the entire weekend unless we were asleep.  We were so girly that we even all went into the same dressing room so we could critique each other's picks!

One of the main reasons I was looking forward to the weekend was knowing that I needed to change my outlook on my little girl.  And my change came on the second day at one of my favorite places - a fabric store.  One of the ladies with us is signed up for a quilting retreat this next weekend, and needed to buy all the fabric for her quilt.  We found the fabric for the little quilts in an Ace Hardware of all places, but then we ended up in a large quilt shop a block away.  We were looking for quilt fabric, but suddenly I fell in love with the most soft and adorable pink minky fabric.  It reminds me of those beautiful wallpaper backgrounds you see in studio photography.  I don't think this picture does it justice though.

It might be odd, but it was amazing to me how much the idea of making something special for this little girl has converted me to her.  Thankfully, the two sweet ladies in the store were fantastic, and when I told them what I envisioned they took over, figured out measurements, and gave me all sorts of tips for making it.  I can't wait to put it together and then take her newborn pictures wrapped up in it!  I have to admit that I started out the trip talking about the "stinkin' GIRL", such as when she was kicking around in my tummy.  But now, when I picture a tiny little lady in that blanket, I can just melt a little bit.

Well, while I was sorting out my blanket, my friend found the perfect fabric for her larger quilt.  The ladies were fantastic, and were rounding up fabric from all over the shop, even calling the teacher of the class when we had questions about what we needed.  (At the risk of sounding like an advertisement, the store is named "Quilted Works" and they were honestly fabulous.)  But in the midst of all the fun chatter about which fabrics went well together and which didn't, I got a mysterious text from my mother-in-law that didn't make any sense to me.  I found some wi-fi access and got on the family website to see what was going on.

One of my sister-in-laws has a due date a week or two after mine.  So her ultrasound was three days after mine - they day I left town.  And when they had gone in, all excited to find out if it was a boy or a girl, they found a baby with no heartbeat.  There was a lot of fluid around his heart, so it may have been a heart condition, but he measured a week or so too small.  The day I was in a quilt shop, falling in love with my little girl by buying her a baby blanket, she was in the hospital being induced.  The text now made sense.

"8.5 oz 8 inches long.  They named him Aaron Skarda."

And that is how I ended up standing in the middle of a quilt shop crying.  One of the girls had found out that morning that she wasn't pregnant as she had hoped she would be.  One of my sister-in-laws just lost her tiny little one halfway through her pregnancy.  And I had walked in, not even happy to have my little girl.  If that doesn't knock selfishness out of you, I really don't know what will.

When I came out of the ultrasound, I was really grateful that I had 20 weeks to convert myself to the idea of having a girl before she arrived, so that I didn't waste a minute once she was in my arms.  I figured I could take a few weeks to pout before getting over it, if I needed to.  But this reality check has really made the change come in a hurry.  What a blessing to have a perfectly healthy baby on the ultrasound!  And maybe now my little girl can grow up having fun, girly adventures with her big sister.  I never had a sister, but at least now I can look forward to raising some.

A good day and a not-so-good day

Monday was Christopher's birthday.  I was afraid that it would get lost in all the chaos of last week, but I think we managed to make a pretty good day for him.  He requested just light healthy food for dinner, after the eating out and treats of having company in town, so we made some artichokes to go with dinner.  After that, we headed out to go roller skating. 

It was packed in there!  But you know what, I think we all still had a blast.  And with the coupons, it cost us $6.

That picture just melts my heart when I look at it.

When the kids got weary of trying the roller skates, we would break out the scooter and let them zoom around for a few laps.

And sometimes, Daddy would just pick them up and zoom around.  They both thought that was really fun.

He asked for a banana cream pie instead of a cake, and while my mom and I picked the most elaborate recipe out there and ended up making it twice when my mom mistook my baking soda box for the cornstarch she needed (you should have seen the pudding bubble . . .) we had a lot of fun making it.  So yummy.

The next morning was something we have been anxiously awaiting for some time now - the ultrasound.  I can honestly say that I have been nervous about it since before we got pregnant.  One of my counter-arguments for having another child was "but what if we end up with another girl instead of a boy?"  I know I should say "we would be happy either way", but . . . we really, really wanted a boy.  It has always made us laugh how 100% GIRL our Kaitlyn is.  From the hairbows on her head to her painted toenails, with a new dress-up every hour and a love for cleaning and taking care of babies, Kaitlyn made us feel quite fulfilled in the girl department.  Tyler, on the other hand, is quite boy - but we really wanted him to have a boy peer model to show him how to do boy things.  And Daddy still had a bit of an ache for a boy to play sports competitively.

And so we went to the ultrasound quite nervous.  This is a game of Russian Roulette, in some sense, and we only had a 50/50 shot.

And we lost.

It is a girl.

Part of me is glad I know this now, so I have 20 more weeks to cope before she comes.  And part of me wishes that I found out when I was holding her so I would be converted by how cute she is.  In the meantime, I am  trying to come to terms with it.  I know this sounds terrible to say, and I know that soon I will be very grateful that she is checking out very healthy so far.  But right now, I don't even want to look at the ultrasound pictures long enough to scan them in for this blog.  I don't want to talk too much about it, because I need to change my thinking and move on.  But suffice it to say that I'm not really ready for comments like "congratulations!" and so forth just yet.  I just have to come to terms with the fact that I got pregnant in part because I felt like one more boy would complete our family, and now I don't have him.  And probably never will, because two girls is already more of a lopside than Christopher or I wanted and if we tried again and got another girl I think I would emotionally not get over it.  I know lots of families with all girls, and some people love that - but Christopher and I grew up in boy-heavy families and just never saw our family in this way.

But I remember seeing kids with disabilities before I had Tyler and thinking that I would be the worst possible mom for that sort of kid, and I have adapted the best I can there too.

Grandpa's funeral

As much as I am going to miss my Grandfather, there was a positive element to it all.  All of my immediate family lives out of town, but almost all of them flew or drove in for the funeral.  Instant family reunion!

The first people to arrive were my parents. But since my mom needed to help with all the funeral arrangements in Salt Lake and my dad didn't, we ended up just hanging out with Grandpa for a week. We had fun, but didn't take many pictures. We went bowling one night, Grandpa got to come see Ballet class, and Tyler showed off his drawing and computer skills.

The night before the funeral, my dad moved up to a hotel with my mom so they could rescue people from the airport a bit easier, and my brother Gary drove in to our house to crash with his family. The funeral was on a Friday, and they had a vacation flight leaving Vegas at 8am on Saturday, but they drove all the way up and back in 24 hours. I'm so glad they did - we always love seeing them, even if it is just one late night chat and a Chick-Fil-A breakfast!

The next morning (after breakfast, of course), we all headed up to the viewing. We set up snacks in a spare room for the kids to wander around, and that worked out really well. My kids are younger than all of their cousins, but they have a lot of fun with them. The older kids think they are cute and a lot of fun to play with, and I think Kaitlyn fancies herself one of the big girls.

We were so glad that Uncle Harold was able to make it down from Logan to come. He has not been doing well lately, but he and his family have always been really close to Grandpa's family. It was a bit sad to see such a frail man say goodbye to his last brother.

On to the funeral, and then the burial. My grandfather already had his name on a headstone with his wife, so at least that decision was made. It is a lovely spot.

After the burial, we found a shady spot for a family picture. We are missing one brother with his wife and three children, but otherwise this is the whole crew. Of course, my two kids are the only ones that looked awful in each and every shot. Sigh.

They do like getting attention, though.

We had another few minutes to chit-chat at the luncheon, and then Gary and his family had to take off back to Vegas and pack for their next trip.

As usual, kids find their own entertainment.

That night, we moved the roaming hotel to our cabin, and my parents and little brother came down. It was a beautiful fall day the next morning, and we all had a lot of fun - especially once my oldest brother Scot got their with his family. Dan took the four-wheeler out on half a dozen rides around the area.

We played on the rope swing.

Tyler spent nearly the entire day painting the rocks with water. I swear, when that kid gets hooked on a task, he never lets go.

Kaitlyn convinced everyone to swing her.

And most of all, we played Ladderball. I had only played with the kids, which was all about teaching them to throw without any real rules. It turns out the rules to Ladderball are rather involved and fascinating! We had a near tournament going.

And Kaitlyn even played her own game as well. She quickly decided that it was much easier if you moved closer, and so she would try throwing the bean bag from about 2 feet away when possible.

Here you can see it all at once - the bean bag game, the Ladderball game, and the dirt bike coming back from a trip.

After lunch, my mom, sister-in-law, and I went out on a walk. The colors are a touch past their prime, but still absolutely gorgeous.

So while I was sad to lose my Grandpa, we sure had a lot of fun with my family while they were in town! Now only my mom remains behind to finish up things with her family and spend some time with us before heading back home.