Halloween Costumes 2013

I've known how to sew longer than I've known how to read.  My mom taught me the basics of sewing when I was about 4 years old. I vaguely remember sitting on her lap while she taught me how to sew a straight line, how to raise and lower the presser foot, and how to use the back stitch switch.  I was too short to reach the pedal so she would do that for me.   

She taught me how to sew my first skirt when I was 5 or 6 years old.  I always enjoyed going with her to the fabric store to pick out a pattern and fabric to go with it.  Then we would come home and she would help me cut out the fabric.  At first she would help me every step of the way.  But as I got older I would usually do a lot of it on my own.  But my mom was always there when I came across something new.  She taught me how to set in sleeves, how to place a zipper, how to do darts, how to create pleats and so on.   

Over the years I've sewn many things, including three prom dresses.  But, even though I have my own sewing machine, I haven't really sewn a lot since moving out on my own.  

The exception is that I always sew Halloween costumes.  So even though I knew things would be nutty around here with a new baby I still wanted to sew costumes for the girls.      

And I did!

They were quite a project.  In retrospect I probably over-committed myself.  I wasn't sure if I would get them done in time for the Ward Halloween Party last night.  But thanks to 10 hours of almost continuous sewing yesterday I got them "done" in time.  (They were missing zippers, but that's what safety pins are for.)

The dresses count as a birthday present for the girls - which is one reason I was willing to put some much effort into them.  I used McCall's pattern # 6141 as a starting point.  But I made some modifications.  I also made the dresses slightly big so the girls can wear them as dress-ups all year long.

Originally I wanted to do the dresses in the girls' favorite colors.  At the time their favorite colors were pink (Lydia) and blue (Charlotte).  I didn't have any fabric in those colors so I was going to buy some.  But then the girls' kept changing what their favorite colors were.  So I decided to use fabric that we already had.  My friend Danielle gave purple and green fabric last year.  The sheer fabric and the lace came from my friend Nanette.  I figure that part of the point of Halloween is to give me an excuse to use up fabric.

I bought the crowns at K-Mart.  I was so excited that they were the exact same colors as the dresses.  I also bought new tights for the girls to wear because they needed bigger ones anyway.  The girls wore their puffy tutus from last year's costumes under their dresses.    

Here is a video of the girls twirling around in their dresses.













They were so excited for their dresses.  Charlotte later gave me a big hug and said, "I LOVE my dress!"  That's what I was hoping for.

Way back when I first came up with the Princess idea I thought I'd dress all my girls as princess.  (I also toyed with the idea of them being the three fairies from Sleeping Beauty.  Because one loves pink, one loves blue.)  But I decided that Veronica could just go in Charlotte's parrot costume from 2011.  It was a little big for her, but not that big.  (Veronica right now fits clothes that Char and Lyds wore at 6 months)

Brandon spent the day watching the kids and cooking a treat for the ward party.  He made a graveyard out of homemade brownies and shortbread.

The ward party was a trunk-or-treat and chili cookoff.  I wasn't thrilled about the idea of getting brand new homemade dresses anywhere near chili, so we brought along some of Brandon's old t-shirts for the girls to wear as bibs.

Brandon went as a Mountain Man.  But everyone thought he was Indiana Jones.  We dressed Derrick as Dash from the Incredibles because he loves to run fast (and we already had the costume.)  We tried to slick back his hair with gel, and it worked pretty well considering all his hair grows forward.

After dinner they put away all the tables.  Derrick had lots of fun showing off how fast he can run.  He ran back and forth all over the gym.

Then they did a costume parade.  I'd dressed up as a pirate to go with Veronica's parrot costume.  I'd assumed that she would be attached to me all night.  But actually the Military Relations missionary couple took care of her all during the party.

Then we went outside for the trunk or treat.  I don't really see how walking around a dark parking lot and getting candy from people you can't see is safer than walking around a well-lit neighborhood, but we got a lot of candy so whatever.

When we were done walking around we sat down outside and enjoyed the wonderful weather.  The warm night was such a nice change from all the freezing I did as a kid on Halloween.  The kids enjoyed their candy.  (We'd forgot to bring their trick or treat buckets so the kids just used trash bags I found in the cleaning closet.)

The kids all fell asleep on the ride home.   We took their bags, but gave the candy back after church.  Then the girls enjoyed the time honored tradition of trading/discussing the Halloween Candy.  (They call Starbursts "squishies.")

The party last night was the first of the "Birth-o-ween" activities for this year.  We have something fun planned for every day leading up to Halloween/ the girls' birthday on Thursday.  I'm so excited. 

Announcing Thankful Thursdays

This will be a quick post because I've got a house full of sleeping babies and some  serious Halloween Costume sewing to bust out.  But I want to invite you to do a little project with me.

November starts in a week and with it a season of Thanksgiving.  I'm planning on writing a Thank You note every day in November.  And I would love it if you would join me. 

Why a Thank you note?  

Well, over a year ago I went to a Sacrament Meeting where the theme was all about service.  I was not very thrilled at the beginning of the meeting.  It started out with everyone singing my least favorite hymn, #223 Have I Done Any Good?  I used to really love this song, but now that I'm a mom I want to rip it out of the hymn book every time I see it.  I'm always like, "Do you even have to ask?  All I do is respond to the needs of tiny people all day.  If that's not doing good I don't know what is."

Anyway, I was in a pretty bad mood as the first speaker got up to give her talk.  Even the fact that she was the Stake Relief Society President and a very sweet woman couldn't cheer me up.  The last thing I wanted to hear about was all the service I should be doing for other people besides my family members.  

As part of her talk she read a long list of service that we could give.  With every item she read I thought, "nope, nope, can't do that, nope, nope, way too complicated, nope, nope . . . " but then she said, "Write a Thank You note."  And I was like, "Oh wait, I can do that!"

And so I did.  Every Sunday while Brandon was away at basic training I wrote a Thank you note to someone.  I thanked my Aunt Vera for letting me live with her when I went to the Community College.  I thanked my Aunt Lori for the clothes she gave my kids.  I thanked a college friend for being a good example of a loving mother.  I even thanked the Stake RS President for the talk she gave.  I liked feeling grateful and acknowledging service that had been given to me. 

I fell out of the habit of writing Thank You notes when we moved to Texas.  But I kept thinking of people I want to thank.  That's why I plan to write a Thank You note every day in November.

I'd like for you to participate too.  The rules are simple.  Think of someone to thank - and then write them (and don't forget to mail the note).  

I plan on sending a lot of my Thank You notes though Facebook messages because that will be easier than trying to track down addresses, but I might also mail a note or two.  

And every Thursday I'll post a list of who I thanked and why (unless it's too personal to share the details).  If you want to join in on the fun you can do your own post of who you thanked that week too.  

So start thinking of people you can thank.  

I had to know

Soooooooo, I've been keeping a little secret this past week.  Brandon had to go back out into the field last Tuesday.  And I decided I wanted to see if I could survive 8 days with 4 kids under the age of 3 without the help of a husband.  

I felt healthy enough to try it and, after all, I'd have to do it eventually.  

I didn't want anyone to worry about us so I didn't tell anyone how long Brandon would be gone.  If I had to mention it I'd just say, he's in the field right now.  I did have a list of people that I could call if I needed to, but I wanted to see if I could do it on my own first.  

I kind of wondered if I'd just hide out in the house with the kids all week.  But I ended up taking the kids out for several things.  Through the week we learned a lot along the way.   So here is a little recap of some of the things I tested out during my week on my own.  

Doctor's Appointment

Tuesday started out with probably the biggest challenge of the week - A trip to the doctor for Veronica's two week check up (She was 3 weeks old - we'd been in Houston when she was 2 weeks old.)

Normally I would have sent the older kids to the neighbor's house and taken Veronica by herself, but I wanted to know what taking all 4 of them would be like.  Also the appointment was scheduled with an Army clinic that I had no intention of ever going back to, so if things went bad it's not liked I'd ever have to see any of those people again.

It was an adventure to say the least.  We had to trek in from the parking lot (good thing I thought to bring the double stroller), the kids all got in trouble for acting like kids in a waiting room with no toys, we had to wait forever in the waiting room because they didn't have enough examining rooms with scales in them, I threw a tiny fit and was willing to walk out of the clinic if we didn't treated with more consideration, a nice MA magically found us a tiny room that we could get started in, Derrick was teething, Charlotte comforted Veronica while she had her blood drawn for the PKU screening, and Veronica had her first diaper blow out.  

But despite the craziness of everything that was going on, I actually felt fairly in control of everything.  I didn't feel over whelmed, just busy.  

At the end of the appointment I knew three things for sure.  1. I hate Army clinics, 2. I can take all four kids to the doctor, and 3. I don't want to take all 4 kids to the doctor if I don't have to. 

Crafts 

Anyway, we celebrated our victory or whatever it was by coming home and decorating the living room for Fall.  We really haven't decorated for anything since Easter.  It was nice to feel like doing it again.

Here is what the top of our piano looks like.

We also put leafs on the ceiling like we did last year.  The girls thought it was so cool.  The real leafs on the trees here haven't changed colors yet.  So I talked to the girls about how that will happen.  I told them that the leafs will fall off of the trees.

Here's Lydia playing with some of the other decorations that were in the box.

We continued our fall crafts on Wednesday's when we painted pumpkins.  Derrick participated for about 2 minutes before he started crying and I put him down for his nap.

The girls had lots of fun with the paint. Charlotte liked to dip her brush in each color.  Lydia had fun swirling them all together.

Meals
One of my big concerns for this week was if I'd have time to cook food.  I'd made a list of easy things to make like canned soup, tuna helper, frozen burritos, etc.  And that's what we ate most of the time.  But cooking was actually easier than I thought it would be.  Since I didn't have to worry about having meals ready around Brandon's schedule we just ate around our own schedule.  Usually I'd cook when Veronica was asleep.

This is what dinner looked like a lot of nights.  All of us at the table and Veronica on the counter.  Veronica's chair plays what we call "smooth jazz lullabies" at first the songs kind of bugged me, but now I really like them.  The music is really calming.  So we like to have the chair music turned on a lot.

And check this out.  I made taco salad one day.  It's been a long time since I had the desire to put this much effort into meals that just me and the kids will eat.

Story Time
On Thursday I took all 4 kids to story time at the library.  My kids don't actually participate in the story time part.  They usually hang out and play with the puzzles in the back of the room.  I joke that they take after their Daddy in that they would rather do something hands on instead of read books.  (They like reading books too, but they really like the puzzles.)  Veronica slept in her car seat the whole time.

Discipline
Lately Brandon and I have been spanking the kids when they do something wrong.  It's worked, but on Thursday night I decided it's not something I want to do anymore.  I was having a stressful moment where I was trying to help Lydia pull up her pants, while feeding Veronica, while trying to get Derrick to give me something.  Charlotte tried to help me out by forcefully taking the thing from Derrick.  Derrick started crying and I overreacted and spanked Charlotte for being mean to Derrick.

Charlotte started crying and I did too.  I realized that I'd just spanked my biggest helper for trying to help me.  (Sure she could have been nicer about it, but she was just trying to help.)  After apologizing to Charlotte I decided that I'd stop spanking.
I'd noticed that the kids have all seemed to hit each other more ever since Brandon and I started spanking them.  So that night at scriptures and prayers I told the kids that we were ALL going to stop hitting.  I told them I would stop and I asked them all to stop too.  I told them we would have a time out corner that I'd take them to if they were bad.

The next day everyone was a lot nicer to each other.  And believe it or not everyone stopped hitting.

Going to the Store
I didn't plan on going to the store with the kids.  Before Brandon left I'd made sure we had enough food to get us through the week.  I did want to pick up Veronica's birth certificate as soon as possible.  I found out that to pay for Veronica's Birth Certificate I'd need either cash or a money order.  I didn't have either so I knew we'd have to go to the store.  

I pretty much hate Walmart, but the store has one thing that I like - a cart that has enough seats and room for all my kids.  So on Friday we went to Walmart and got a Money Order.  Then we looked at the fishies (the other redeeming feature of Walmart.)  We also bought some thread for the girls' Halloween costumes and some candy to be a "pooping treat" for the girls when they poop in the potty.  And that was about as much of Walmart as I could handle  It was also as much that Veronica could handle because she woke up and started crying as we checked out.

Making Cookies
There are a few stressful moments with so many little kids and a newborn, but for the most part I feel like things are better than they were when the girls were born.  One newborn is much easier to handle than two.  And it's so nice to not be pregnant!  When Veronica is asleep I have energy to actually do fun things with the kids.  So one day we made cookies together.    

And when Veronica is awake she usually is pretty content to hang out in her chair (once she's been fed, of course.)

Netflix
This is how Lydia and Charlotte like to "sit" while watching TV.

I'm so glad we waiting to test out Netflix until this month.  It's been so nice to have lots of options for shows to entertain the kids with while I'm nursing.  And guess what?  Dumbo is on Netflix!  The kids watch it EVERYDAY.  And I'm not sick of it yet.

We're probably going to hang on to the Netflix subscription for the time being.  I like watching Frasier while I nurse Veronica after the kids are in bed.  At the time I picked it I didn't think about the fact that it is one of the longest running TV shows.  But now I'm committed and I don't want to cancel Netflix until I'm done with the show.  It will be a while before I've finished all the seasons.   

Bedtime
Bedtime goes pretty much the same as it always has, except for now I sometimes am nursing while I read scriptures to the kids. The girls love to kiss Veronica goodnight.   Last night we finished the Book of Mormon for the 3rd or 4th time since I started reading it to the girls each night.

I still find the girls in funny positions each night.  I really wonder what they do after I put them to bed.

Derrick usually falls asleep right after I put him to bed so he doesn't participate in the nighttime shenanigans.  I can't believe how big he is getting.  

Veronica starts out in her bed every night, but she doesn't stay there.  I bring her into bed with me and just nurse her in bed whenever she wakes up.  I don't like nursing in bed when Brandon is home.  But when he is gone nursing in bed is my secret for being well rested enough to keep up with the older kids all day long.

This picture was taken after Charlotte decided that Veronica needed every one of her blankets in her bed.    

Cleaning
I'm so glad I'm not pregnant anymore.  I love that I can bend over again.  Which means I'm able to easily clean my house (keeping it clean is another matter).  On Saturday I was able to clean up the whole kitchen and even mop the floor.

The kids played around on their own while I worked.  Here is Charlotte with the "baby vacuum."

Lydia played for a long time by herself in the toy room.  She had the door shut so I don't know exactly what was going on, but there was a lot of excited yelling involved.  Later I found this.  When I asked her about it she said he was, "bad guy."

Going to the park
We did fail at one thing this week.  I told the kids we'd go to the "tire swing park" for a picnic after the kitchen and living room were clean.  But the morning got away from me and before I knew it we were in the middle of nap time for Derrick.  Veronica woke up just as Lydia started falling asleep so I hurried and woke up Derrick so we could go to the park.  Big mistake. He completely flipped out.  I thought he would calm down once he was in the wagon and on his way to the park, but he kept screaming his head off.  Moral of the story: If we don't get out of the house in the morning we probably wont get out of the house all day.

So we gave up and just had a picnic in the back yard.  Then the kids played in the sand table.  

Bathtime

After they were done with the sand table I put the kids in the tub.  This was another case of bad timing. Poor Veronica needed something, but I couldn't take care of her and give the kids a proper bath.  So she cried herself to sleep in the hall.  (Fun fact about this pic - Veronica was born in this very spot)

We had movie night after bath time.  Movie night could also be called, "Mommy's effort to win the kids' love back after making them wash their hair." Or "a really good way to distract the girls while combing out their tangles."

We watched Pocahontas.  I haven't seen it since I was a ten year old.  I didn't like it any better this time around.  The kids liked it, but they didn't LOVE it.

Going to Church
At first I didn't plan on taking the kids to church this week.  The kids have been sleeping in until at least 7:45 on a pretty consistent basis.  I had no desire to get them up earlier in order to make it to Sacrament Meeting at 8:30.  So I just planned on staying home for the whole 3 hours.

But I'd done so many other things successfully this week I decided we would go to church too - just not sacrament meeting.  So after the kids woke up on Sunday morning I got them ready and we went to church for the last two hours.  They enjoyed nursery and I enjoyed Sunday School and Relief Society.

Here's a close up of Veronica in her little dress.  She looks so good in pink.

Preventing Boredom
Sunday afternoons can be awfully boring around here.  This week I decided that watching The Piano Guys on Youtube was a Sunday appropriate activity.  We might have also watched Dumbo.

In the evening I brought out the dominoes and those were enough to get us through to bed time - and beyond.  I heard the tell-tell plink plink of dominoes until at least 11:00 pm.

Getting the birth certificate

Brandon somehow lost his phone in the field on Wednesday so I'd only heard from him sporadically as he used other people's phone throughout the week.  Saturday night he'd called and mentioned that he might be home on Monday.  So instead of going to get the birth certificate like I'd planned we stayed home and cleaned the bedrooms on Monday.  But Brandon didn't come home.  By bedtime we were all climbing the walls so I planned on going to the court house to get the certificate today.

Around 2:00 am I woke up to the sound of Brandon in the shower.  I was so happy to have him home.  He still had to go in to work today so I went ahead with my plan to take the kids to the court house.

First we had to drive to the county seat which is about 30 minutes away.  The scenery was so pretty!  The courthouse was pretty good looking too.  Click here for a picture.

Anyway, I was worried there would be a long wait, but we were able to walk right into the clerk's office and have someone help us right away.  The County Clerk herself even came out and gave the kids suckers.  And a police women gave them some stickers.  It was a pretty exciting outing.

* * * 

Looking back over the past 8 days I can say that it went just fine.  Sure there were a few tense moments in there, but me and the kids proved that we can do things on our own.  

Brandon will be home from work this evening.  I have plans to leave him home with all four kids while I go out and do some Birth-o-ween shopping.  It's only fair that he gets his own chance to see what he's made of parenting-wise.  

Pumpkins and Waterfalls

Whenever we drive around here in the Texas Hill Country I will usually paraphrase a line from the Princess Bride and say to Brandon, "I'm not saying I'm willing to build a permanent home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely."

To illustrate that line, here is a picture I took while we were driving at 70 mph.  

We were on our way to the town of Marble Falls to visit the Sweet Berry Farm to pick out a pumpkin.  Normally I'm just fine picking out a pumpkin at the grocery store, but I knew that Brandon was craving a road trip. So when I heard about the pumpkin patch at a farm that was over an hour away I figured it would be something fun to do for Columbus Day.  The kids were all for the idea.

The farm had lots of activities that we could have spent A LOT of money on.  There was a corn maze, a pick your own flowers area, sand art, pumpkin painting, horse rides, bouncy thingies, and so on.  But we stuck to the free stuff.  Like petting the goats.  Derrick loved the goats.

And so did the girls.  I was impressed with how clean the animals were.  The staff must give the goats a bath every day because they looked great.

We could have bought some of the food that was available, but of course we brought our own picnic lunch.  We got the real farm experience and had about 100 flies swarming around our food the whole time.  

Brandon had fun showing the kids how these picture things work. 

And then the girls had to give them a try.

And then it was time to pick out our pumpkin.  They had all sorts of pumpkins.

We got over whelmed with the selection so we took a break and played around some more.

I have to point out something about the weather here in Texas.  It had been raining for several days.  And it was overcast on Monday so I assumed it would be chilly.  But no, it was humid.  And you can tell because the girls' hair was curling perfectly.  Lydia was especially having a great hair day.

Derrick tried to drink some rain water that had collected on a pumpkin.

We wandered around some more trying to find a good pumpkin.  They all looked so good it was hard to choose.  Finally Brandon picked one up and said, "I like this one."  And that was it.

We also picked out 5 "baby pumpkins" for 75 cents each.  Well the girls picked out about 15 babies, but Brandon narrowed it down to 5.  The girls were so cute when it came time to buy the pumpkins.  They told the sales lady that we had a "mommy pumpkin" and "her babies."

The kids were still wired when we got to the car so we decided to go to the park so they could get their wiggles out before the ride home.

Veronica had been asleep in the front pack the whole time we were at the farm. (I fed her right when we got there)  I nursed her in the car when we got to the park.  Then I joined up with Brandon and the older kids.  I didn't bring my camera with me, which is a shame because there were some really cute moments.  Mainly, Charlotte treeing a squirrel on a telephone pole, and Charlotte running away from some ducks.

Then Derrick started playing in a muddy puddle and I remembered I had a camera on my phone.

So I was able to capture this gem of a photo.  We're such great parents.

Brandon had found some thin rope so he made a little leash to get our Muddy Mister Derrick back to the car.  I'd predicted that at least one of our kids would end up muddy by the end of the trip and I'd brought extra clothes for all of them.  So Brandon took Derrick to the bathroom to get him cleaned off and changed.

Since we'd planned on cold weather Brandon had packed our camp stove and a can of stew in addition to our usual peanut butter and honey.  We hadn't cooked it at the farm which meant we still had food with us.  And that meant we really didn't have to go home yet.

I knew we were close to a state park with one of the waterfalls that I've wanted to visit.  I did a quick check of the map and found that we were in fact about 30 miles from Pedernales Falls State Park.  So we drove out there, paid $12 ($6 per person over age 12), and went on a little hike to see the falls.

The falls were pretty, but I was kind of expecting them to have a steeper drop off.  They were more like cascades.

But still it was cool to see that much water moving over the rocks.

We sat at the viewing area and watched the water.  We also snacked on pretzels.  (And for the record, I'm the one that put Charlotte's shoes on the wrong feet)

Then we decided to get daring and take the kids closer to the water.  We had to take them down lots of steps.  Derrick held my hand the whole way down.

We saw a lizard.

We never made it to the water.  We ended up on another cliff.  I wasn't too comfortable taking the kids by the water anyway.  The area was closed to swimming because the current was so swift.  And despite Brandon's reassurances that we'd watch the kids really closely and make sure they stayed away from the water, I knew that they would want to touch the water.  So we didn't go any further.

Instead we set the camera up on a ledge and took an awesome family photo with the auto timer feature.  I knew if we tried enough we'd finally get a picture where I was happy with how I looked in it.

And then we went back up the steps.

We got back in the car and drove the short distance to the picnic area.  Brandon heated up our stew on the stove.

I'd finally had enough with my long sleeve shirt and the humidity so I pulled off the shirt and just hung out in my thin undershirt.

Here's my good looking, hard working husband.  I love that he likes going on these adventures as a family.

We'd talked about taking the kids to the swimming area of the river.  But it looked like we'd have to go down (and then back up) more stairs.  I was starting to wear down and the idea didn't sound very fun.  Plus we had less than an hour of daylight left.  We were worried that the kids would be upset that we didn't go swimming.  But they found this faucet and forgot all about the beach.

They had so much fun playing with that faucet.  Brandon and I watched them and joked that we were getting our $12 worth in water.  By the end this is what the kids looked like.

We pulled them out of their wet clothes and changed them into the last 3 diapers that we had with us (Lydia squeezed into a size one).  Derrick was out of clean clothes so we just wrapped him in a blanket.  The girls each still had a clean shirt so they wore those without any pants.  Then we put all the kids in the car and drove home.  They all fell asleep within the first few minutes.