Easter dresses 2013

Sunday, March 31

I am not a big fan of Easter in March - mostly because it means less time for me to work on the Easter dresses for my girls!  This year I bought the fabric way back in February, but I always seem to be making a mad dash to get them finished up by Easter morning.  M&M did a good chunk of work on her own dress this year, but it was a very difficult pattern - especially the bodice - and we didn't like the sleeve so we used a sleeve piece from another pattern and tried to make it fit the dress.  She got many compliments on her dress at church.  I found the fabric for the younger girls' dresses in the clearance aisles at the fabric store.  MJ and Kay's dresses were the same in a different color fabric and the same for Kitty and Blondie.  And Kitty and Blondie's dresses were a pretty hard pattern too that took a lot of fabric and had many layers.  M&M had a hard time finding some fabric that she liked and then ended up loving the one that we finally picked.

MJ was in no mood for having her picture taken when we came home from church, as you can tell from the pictures.

This picture was taken during the Easter egg hunt, not right after church with the rest of them.  After she wore this on Easter I ended up shortening the dress about 3 more inches.  It looked cute long, but she almost ripped the skirt from the bodice from trying to get up and down the stairs and onto chairs.  It was so long that she kept stepping on it and kneeling on it.

If you look closely, the ribbon along the top of these dresses is actually made into little bows all along the top.  It took a little while to do it and decide if we liked it.

We added some of the contrast fabric at the top of the dress to create some contrast between M&M's skin and the dress. I think it really helped to tie the colors together.

Easter 2013

Sunday, March 31

The kids finding their Easter baskets:

It was kind of funny because just the night before we had been watching Mission Impossible where one of the actors is hanging from the ceiling and the person in the room doesn't notice him because he doesn't look up.  Luke's basket was hidden just on top of one of our bookshelves, but it took him a long time to find it even though it was almost in plain sight!  

After church we went to my parents' house for dinner and an Easter egg hunt in the backyard.

Decorating Easter Eggs - 2013

Saturday, March 30

My parents came over Saturday afternoon to decorate some Easter eggs with us.  We had a bunch of leftover tablets from previous years so we just used those this year.  It was a little bit of a guessing game to see what color each tablet would turn out once it was added to the vinegar water.  MJ loved drawing on the eggs with crayons.  She also thought it was neat to watch the eggs in the water.  M&M did a good job with helping out Kay this year.  And as always, the kids would love to decorate more, but there is only so much you can do with hard boiled eggs!  Especially when some of the kids don't like to eat them...

Birthday breakfast

Saturday, March 16

On my birthday this year, the kids got up early by themselves and made me breakfast in bed. It was really sweet - and the first time they have really done anything like this on their own. Apparently they came up with the idea earlier in the week and found some muffin mixes in the kitchen that they could use, so they made 2 different kinds of muffins and some orange juice.

Kid talk

The other day, MJ came up to me and said, "So I was thinking... I want to watch Friendship is Magic. Can I pretty please watch it?"

A couple of weeks ago the flowering trees around here were all in full bloom and as we were driving out of the neighborhood Kay said, "Mom! Look at the blossoms popping on the apricot trees!"

Then a few days later the blossoms on our fruit trees in our backyard were all gone and when MJ looked out the window and saw the trees she said, "Mommy, the popcorn tree flew away!! What should we do?!?"

I was cleaning off the kitchen table in the morning while MJ was still eating breakfast. I was taking off the place mats one by one and wiping them down and stacking them. When MJ was finished eating she said to me, "You can take my place map if you want to Mom."

MJ is really starting to like meat. The other day I made taco salad for dinner and MJ kept asking for more brownies. It took me a few seconds to realize that she was calling the hamburger meat in the salad, brownies. So I told her that it was called meat and the next time she said, "Mom, can I have some more meat please?"

Last week we were kneeling down for our family prayer before bedtime and it was Kay's turn to say it. DH instructed her on how to say it so she could try it on her own. He finished with, "Kendra, you know the words..." After a few seconds of silence, MJ piped up and said, "Awkward..."

MJ singing

I was able to take some video with my ipad of MJ singing "What Makes You Beautiful" by One Direction:




Here is the song with lyrics by One Direction in case you're not familiar with the song and want to hear the original:

Kid talk

Polka-nuts - This is what MJ calls polka dots (sounds like a combination of polka dots and coconuts)

Stranger cheese - This is what MJ calls string cheese

One day I asked Blondie to turn on the bath water and tell MJ and Kay that they were going to take a bath.  When Blondie told MJ, MJ ran to the top of the stairs and said, "Mommy, did you say so?!?"  She was very excited to be getting into the tub!

Kay at the kitchen table when she spilled something:  "That was just an accident on purpose."

When MJ was sick with a stomach bug she called throwing up spitting.  When she was getting ready to throw up she would start to say, "Mom, I'm spitting."  That's when I knew I needed to quickly find something for her to throw up in.

One of the nights that I was up with MJ when she was sick we were sitting on the couch together and I asked her how she was doing.  Her response was, "I'm a little freaking out."

When we were dying Easter eggs for Easter this year, MJ was watching the egg that she had put into the dye solution and she said, "The egg is taking a little drink."

One day I was sitting at the computer doing something and MJ came up to me and said, "Mom, ya know, you're actually pretty."

Family dinner

Saturday, April 27

DH wanted me to blog about this in the hope that one day he can remember it and laugh!

On Saturday I picked up some pizza for dinner because I had a couple of free vouchers that needed to be used.  We were sitting around the table and I had the pizza boxes in the middle of the table.  Just after we said the dinner prayer and started passing out the food Luke accidentally knocked over Blondie's cup which DH had just finished filling up with root beer.  So we got that all cleaned up and then not 2 minutes later, M&M knocked over her cup of kool-aid all over the table and Kay's chair (somehow it managed to miss Kay though).  If it hadn't been such a mess it might have been a little comical...  And Luke had just mopped the kitchen floor right before dinner...