Hello, Neighbor!

Finn in his cardigan in honor of Mister Rogers' birthday.



All of his new sweaters are pullovers, so we went vintage with this little cardigan. I love when he sports vintage clothes...it somehow makes me feel like we're suddenly transported into a more carefree time, if only for a moment.

(Don't mind his hair - he awoke from his nap with a bit of side flip. Also, I can't quite bring myself to cut his hair just yet.)

a day at the museum

I took this family photo at the Children's Museum, where we recently spent an afternoon with some visiting out of town family. Things started off nice and easy. Among other things, Finn enjoyed the bubble-making see saw with some of his cousins.


But things got really interesting once we made our way up to the third floor water play area. He had no notion of the joy he was about to experience.


Fish anyone?

Finn loves to splash in the tub, so I knew he would delight in this "exhibit". He splished...



and splashed...



and even dunked his face in a few times. He was thoroughly soaked to his toes.



I knew in advance that I should have a change of clothes if we planned on letting him play in the water, but I wasn't thinking about the shoes. He should have been wearing the provided sandals like his cousin Annie.


She wore the shoes, but refused to put on a raincoat.

Once he was done splashing in the pool, he went on to do some hydro engineering with the big kids.




By this point I think his hands were probably numb, but he did not want to leave the free flowing water.

However, the place was closing so we had to do our best to wring him out. He even got his first blowdry.



Our party included 7 kids ages ranging in age from 14 months to 13 years and I think all of them had fun. Actually, we didn't even get to enter the hands on art area on the first floor (which I love). It closed earlier than the rest of the museum, so I'd plan on going there first if you're interested.

Overcome...

So, I've been noticing signs (or so I thought) that my babe is ready to move from his two nap a day schedule to a one nap a day schedule. Yesterday we had a morning playdate that served well as a trial run. Just as I suspected, he fell asleep in the car on the way home, had lunch and then went down for a nap...not too reluctantly, but he didn't sleep all that long either. Today was the first "regular" day of trying the schedule and this is what happened...




The little guy couldn't even finish his lunch before he was overcome with sleep. I kind of wanted to just leave him there, but figured he would end up waking too soon and be really cranky. So to bed he went and without much trouble. He's still out, so we'll see how this goes.

Mmmm....doughnuts

Okay, so I'm late. I'm asking you to just play along and pretend this was posted a month ago. For the second year in a row, Finn and I happened to be visiting Nana and PopPop in time for Fastnacht Day - aka Doughnut Day, Fat Tuesday, whatever you like to call it. We always make homemade doughnuts and lots of them.

Who doesn't love deep fried dough?



Even the little ones lent a hand or two.



A little girl after my own heart. Yes, I had an affinity for eating raw dough.



I said "had". Honest. Oh, you ask where is my kid? My kid was in the next room dumping toys on his face.



He does this all the time. Legos, puzzles, you name it. What can I say?

Soooo...now you want to see pictures of the finished product. Ha, are you nuts?! I like to take photos, but I like engorging myself on fresh from the grease doughnuts even more, so the camera had to be put down. Turns out Finn's alright after all. He made an eager appearance in the kitchen in time to chow on doughnuts just like the rest of us.

Who's that girl?

I'm sure most of you will recognize this darling little lady known elsewhere as The Boss. She just turned one year old and I had the pleasure of photographing her cuteness to commemorate the occasion. She was soooo much fun!



Isn't she a doll?! No offense to any of the other little cuties out there, but I'm having my lawyer look into arranged marriages as I type. I may never have a girl of my own, so I gotta be prepared.

This next one is especially for her mommy. The Boss wants to let you know that she misses her spiky hair sometimes, too.



And despite her growing up, that picture still says baby to me, so Happy Birthday Baby A!!!

Wrap up....

Alright, here we go. I'm going to get '07 wrapped up right now. In the interest of time, I'm just going to share some highlights of the holidays...
We spent Christmas with my family. Santa received special instructions to visit us there. Finn got some very nice things and luckily he did receive some much needed toys (as much as anyone really 'needs' toys, anyway). I also made him some nice new jammies which he received on Christmas Eve so that he could wear them for the next day's festivities.


He was referred to as "Peppermint Pants" pretty much the whole day. My family has a "come in your jammies" Christmas tradition, so even those who live elsewhere drive to my parents' house Christmas morning in their jammies and most of us never make it out of our jammies the whole day. Here is Peppermint Pants chilling after the excitement has died down.



I will also share a gift that Finn got from my sister....knitted fruits and vegetables! These will be an awesome addition to his (my) play kitchen once it is moved to my house from my parents'.


I taught my sister how to knit last year and over Thanksgiving I mentioned knitted produce as an awesome thing to knit for kids, but had no idea that she had jumped on it and got busy with the knitting, so I was surprised. She is the last of the four daughters in my family to learn how to knit, so we now have three active knitters in the family and one who is too busy raising six kids to even think about knitting.

And here are some magnets that I made using paper and clear gems. A few sets were xmas themed and the rest just pretty prints cut from Paper Source catalogs.







These were gifts for the women in the family. An easy project, albeit smelly due to the super strong glue I used. R kept saying that the house smelled like asparagus - I don't know about that, but it did have an odor. My only regret is that the magnets aren't as strong as I would have liked and I didn't bother to test them before I made about 50 of these suckers. I also made a couple with a photo of Finn that he gave to his grandmothers.



Alright...I think that does it. Now I can move on. Happy New Year!!!

Baby Gifts :: Part Two

Geez, I'm getting really behind with the blogging. So, I'm going to try to start off the new year by catching up.

During my last week at home before the big holiday travel week, I visited the Kline household and got to meet the newest resident, William - on his first birthday, actually. As a gift for the new baby, I decided to make a project from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, the Birthday Pillow. But instead I made it an adoption pillow commemorating the joyous day that Will officially joined his new family. Aside from early technical difficulties related to the printable cotton fabric, this was a fun and easy project. The text is printed and then embroidered in matching thread. Here is the finished result:



Will really was as happy and smiley as Annie always says he is. I think the boys will have lots of fun together in the year to come!