We’ve been battling a very, very, gross stomach bug the past 2 weeks, but I think it’s safe to say that we’ve beat it. Phew!  I’ve got lots of posts up my sleeve.  Let’s see if life will cooperate with my plans of regular posting.

Another Christmas book I got was Design it Yourself Clothes by Cal Patch.

And, truth be told, I spent a big chunk of my Christmas vacation with a list of measurements, a roll of newsprint, a ruler, pencils and erasers.  I got Brenna in on the action too and she drafted her first skirt pattern.

Then it took me awhile to get any of the sewing done, but here they are!  Super simple a-line skirts that fit (almost) perfectly (I’ve lost some more weight since I measured it seems.) cut from my stack of designer home-dec fabric.  I had only just barely enough, so we skipped hemming them and I just made a lot of green bias binding.

I learned a lot, even with such a simple design.  Like– it’s much easier to put in an invisible zipper with an invisible zipper foot, and french seams are easy and pretty.  Brenna even sewed her own.

And it looks cute with my warm boots– my snuggly warm Colorado winter boots.

I’ve done some preliminary runs through my basic t-shirt pattern and have visions in my head for that button down shirt.  Now to find the time…

(Thanks Barry and Brenna for humoring me through the photo shoot!)

My 7 year old likes to rank things.  He likes to know what’s best, what’s worst, who’s best, who’s worst.  He constantly asking about our favorites.  So, when he asked what my favorite things are about Christmas I immediately turned the question back on him.  I thought, without a doubt, in that split second that I was waiting for his answer, it would be presents.  He surprised me, though.His favorite thing about Christmastime is the music.That made my heart smile.Every morning, after breakfast is eaten and cleaned up, after everyone (or at least the majority of us) is clothed, we gather around the piano and sing.  I love to sing.  My kids love to sing.  It brings a happy tone to each day– which is especially needed after a morning of nagging to get the dishwasher unloaded.  Usually we pick a song from the Primary Children’s Songbook (if you click through to the song book you can click on songs to hear them).  Now that it’s Christmas we get to branch out a bit.  This is our favorite:

Tomie dePaola’s Book of Chrsitmas Carols.   We found it at a library sale when we lived in Ohio and it has become a much loved favorite.  It has all the standards, Angels we have Heard on High, Away in a Manger, Joy to the World, Silent Night, but it also has some that are less familiar like Oh, How a Rose ‘Ere Blooming, and The Friendly Beasts.  It’s all these song coupled with the illustrations that make it so special.

We can never sing just one song.  I think the shortest morning singing session we’ve had this month has been 20 minutes.  Everyone has to pick a song, then remembers that they really wanted to sing another.  We Three Kings is on regular rotation.

This morning I decided to it was time to make our morning music time a bit more interactive.  I broke out the pipe chimes

and the bells.

There was much dinging and donging.  We did get through several songs without too much silliness.  Ian was actually really good at watching for me to point to his color usually dinged right in time.  It’s alway fun and festive to have the bells out.  Well, it’s fun as long as I pretend no one is fighting over who gets the light blue bell and I keep the yelling of  ”Do not bang your bells together!” to a minimum.  It seems that the best and most worthwhile things take the most effort.  It certainly would have been easier to just leave the bells on the shelf in the basement.

But, it’s their favorite part of Christmas!

There will be much more dinging and donging over here during the next few weeks.

To top off this musical day, Brenna had her Christmas piano recital and did a fabulous job.  She has become quite the performer– singing solos in church, singing with the Colorado Mormon Chorale’s children’s choir, and tonight playing Greensleeves beautifully from memory.

I think the music is my favorite thing about Christmas too.

When Brenna was  tiny I was very idealistic about Halloween.  I saw it as a little microcosm of life– that she could be anything she wanted, and I would help her get there.  Silly, I know, but the dressing up and making was so much fun.  As each new child has entered our family that whole idealism has, well, gone out the window.  Now it is a last minute scramble to get the costumes decided on and all the stuff gathered up.  Halloween ranks right up there with Christmas on my kids’ list of favorite holidays.  At least once a day, ALL YEAR LONG, Logan tells me what he’s going to be for the next Halloween.  I guess there is some magic in the thought that he really can transform himself into anything he wants.  This year he settled on being a pirate:

Jonah was an alien:

Brenna was leopard:

Then there was Buzz– which has been Ian’s everyday uniform on most days lately:

And for the third time we had a little dinosaur.  I made this hood and tail when Jonah was a baby.  Logan was only 3 months old his first Halloween, so he was too little to wear it, but Ian did, and now Hunter:

(Barry took these pictures in the church parking lot during our Trunk-or-Treat.)

The only sewing I did this year was make Brenna a tail and ears to pin on to her sweats– the rest was just paint and hairspray and a good dig through the dress-up and recycling bins.

We lit our Jack-0-Lanterns and did a little Trick-or Treating around the neighborhood too.

I’ve really needed updated photos of my kids for my mantle since, well, I think the last time I had pictures taken was 2 years ago.  I’ve got lots of snapshots of course, but I needed portraits.  The thought of making an appointment, getting everyone clean and dressed and somewhere on time has been giving me hives.

 I have big windows and lots of natural light in our family room, so yesterday I hung a big brown sheet at one end of the room and snapped away.   Most of the pictures I took turned out like this:

Out of focus, fake smiles, silly faces, or Ian in the Buzz Lightyear costume he found in the dress-up bin about a month ago and hasn’t taken off since (I had to bribe him with chocolate chips). Click here to see the out takes bigger, if you’d really like.

But the beauty of digital photography is that I could take LOTS of pictures.  I decided to go with black and white pictures so it didn’t matter what color the background or clothes were.  A few clicks in iPhoto, the Costco photo printing center, and $8 later, I’ve got these lined up on my mantle:

Not bad for a day’s work.

Barry’s aunt is a sock monkey making aunt.  Every new baby gets one, and they are well loved.  Even though they’re made from the same brown, white, and red socks, each one is unique– and they’ve got the kid’s names embroidered on them just in case.  The thing that amazes me is that Ian can look at the letters and figure out whose is whose!

 We’ve definitely got the 5 cutest monkeys ever.

The sock monkeys are pretty cute too.

So, has it really been since December 11th that I last posted?  Sheesh!  I’ve been so caught up in creating stable scenery for the ward Christmas pageant, a husband with Strep throat, sleepless nights with puking children (and parents), other intestinal problems of which I will spare you the details (they’re not pretty, let me assure you), gestating of course, and last minute holiday preparations and gift making, that it never even crossed my mind to make a blog post.  There have been several days that I didn’t even take a glance at the computer.  So, now I’ll play catch up, posting this week about the handmade gifts we gave this year.

These are my favorite, and the last ones finished.

I have wanted to try my hand at making waldorf dolls for ages and ages, but Brenna has never been much of a doll player and it always seemed frivolous to just make one for myself.  But, this year I decided I’d make some for Brenna and Ian whether they’d really like them or not, just to indulge myself.  I ordered my pattern and supplies, and then got underway.

Good news is, they are some of the favorite gifts this year!  Ian’s Boy has been a constant companion since it was unwrapped.  He snuggles him, sleeps with him, feeds him, and just carries him around.  Brenna has left me little thank you notes all around and on Christmas day she kept telling me, “I just want to keep telling you thank you.  I can’t say thank you enough times.  I love her!”

So, I was up late on Christmas Eve stitching and trimming hair and finally realized that clothes just weren’t going to get made by morning.  Barry had been saying the entire week that I shouldn’t stress myself out and just give the kids naked dolls.  So, that’s what they got Christmas morning.  But– the nakedness didn’t last for long.  Look what I got for Christmas!!

A sewing machine and a serger!!  Can you believe it?  I’m still in shock.   I quickly got to work and made some panties, diapers, and clothes.

Brenna even knit a hat, and made a coat and mittens for Julie so she wouldn’t be too cold here in Colorado.

I just can’t even put into words how excited I am at how well they’ve been received.

But, this isn’t all.  We were hard at work on some other hand made gifts as well.

Stay tuned!

One thing we’ve implemented this school year is that each kid (except Ian) has an assigned dinner night.  They plan the menu (which must be approved by the mamma, of course), help add the ingredients to our grocery list, and do as much of the actual preparation and cooking as possible.  Consequently, little hands in a bowl of sticky dough has been a pretty common occurance in our kitchen.  The book I raved about in this post is getting splashed and doughy, and the beauty of it is that I primarily just stand and watch.  On Brenna’s night last week she wanted broccoli, cheese, and chicken calzones– so she measured and stirred and taught her little helper how to make sure there isn’t any dry flour left in the bowl.  And with the dough left over after all her little pockets were stuffed with veggies, cheese, and chicken she put her braiding skills to work and made this:

I’m really enjoying day-dreaming about the implications of this routine we’ve got established.  I mean, by the time I have some kids in, say, the 11 or 12 year old range the number of late afternoons I’ll spend standing around the kitchen will be cut in half!  If they start chopping and boiling and baking when they’re 4, they’ll be totally independent in the kitchen maybe even by the time they’re 9 or 10!  I could get a promotion!  I could go from cook to managing supervisor– and maybe even by the time I have a teenage driver I could get promoted from grocery shopper to grocery list maker!  Oh, the visions in my head…

 But, for now we’re having fun.  The number of complaints about what is for dinner has decreased exponentially, my little chefs feel so very proud, and this mama is pretty proud too.

making… bread with my littles.

laughing… at Ellie helping Brenna fold the laundry.

loving… that 15 minutes of quiet scripture study has become a consistent part of our daily routine.

using… my craft space just a minute here and there– right in the middle of the action, just like I had hoped.

It was one of those days I just needed.  Not totally smooth and predictable, I think it will be many, many years before I have a day like that, but the time flowed and we flowed with it, and I’m happy.

My mom made Brenna a beautiful quilt for Christmas. While we’ve been here they put all the scraps to use.

Brenna did all the designing and sewing, Granny did the cutting. Their goal– to make a little quilt for Buttercup. (Oh, and I did the quilting and Granny the binding.)

It turned out very cute, and has been put to good use.

We have been in the throws of a very gross stomach virus over here.  I had it all week, last night Barry came down with it, and today I had Jonah and Ian puking along with other gross stomach virus-y things.  Hence the blog neglect, which is sad because we’ve got an Easter dress to talk about and a birthday, not to mention the homeschool convention I attended this weekend!  Geesh!

But, today I will leave you with this:

Poor Brenna was desperately bored without her constant companion (Jonah) by her side.  She worked hard on this to cheer him up.  I think he’ll be excited about it tomorrow.  In his delirium today he didn’t have much to say.

(Mush-mush is a little toy mouse.)

Click here for details of the birds.