Halloween beginneth

This is birthday fun. She just finished her cupcake. It was a pretty informal party this year. I didn't send out invitations I just invited by word of mouth. It was unfortunate that one of her best friends was sick so she wasn't able to come, but we went over later and brought cupcakes and wished her well.

These next shots are the queen of the spiders. Check out the spider tats and the ones crawling in her hair. I tried to get the hair to stand up on end but she moved too much. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. Once we got in the car she smoshed her head all around and would have destroyed it anyway.


And finally a look at the final versions of all three of us.
Yes my ears really are pointy. I loved that part. They looked great.

You may be wondering why I post this a week before the real halloween. . . we went to a party. By next week I hope to have a few more minor details. I'm going to try to use all of the scraps from J's and my costumes to put together a cloak for me. Alisabeth needs more arms and we definitely need to improve it enough so that she can go outside for several hours after dark (about 30-40 degree weather).
Other than that they're pretty well done. I'm going to shorten the overtunic on mine a bit and add another hook and eye to Jason's cloak because he wants it to close more.

After Halloween is over I'm going to work on my next project. I'm going to make Alisabeth's Christmas gift. She loves the neighbor's oversized beanbag chair, so I'm going to make her a smaller Bitsy version. I'm trying for "large enough to last till she's ten, small enough to fit in her room comfortably with everything else." We'll see how it goes. So far I haven't been able to find a solid pattern and the stuffing beads are impossible to find out here in the boon-docks, but I have found them online. Any suggestions, please let me know.

What she got for #2

These are the gifts from grandparents. They aren't very good because our camera battery was dead so we had to take them with the computer webcam, but it's the best we could do.

I couldn't resist.

This is for all of the grandparents. The video won't work through the email though, so make sure you actually go to the website to watch it.
www.jtflannery.blogspot.com

Chagrinned

So one of our CD's came due this last weekend which means shopping spree right?
Just kidding, but we did need a few things. About a week ago I noticed that I was having a hard time getting Alisabeth's size 6 shoes on her feet, so I needed that, plus with winter coming I needed some long-sleeved shirts (because I have none that still fit her).
So I headed off to Walmart and Payless Shoes.
Walmart went swimmingly.
I got into the kids section and Alisabeth was running happily back and forth between the "giant" mini-mouse dolls and the other stuffed animals so I took the opportunity to call my mom and see if she wanted to get in on the shopping spree and buy some of Alisa's birthday and Christmas presents. As we talked I noticed that Alisabeth wasn't running around anymore so I start walking toward her last known location and hear "Where's your mom?" I hurry my steps and find a woman hurridly trying to untie some baloons. She tells me that my daughter had climbed on top of the clothing rack to reach the baloons and since she didn't know where I was she thought it safer to get them for her. I thanked her politely and tried to show that I wasn't one of "those" moms.
So we head off and continue getting a new coat for daddy and thermals for mommy and chalk, a new learning toy, new clothes, thermals, tights and a halloween basket for Alisabeth. Then we headed to payless.
I looked at the size sevens but I just had this nagging feeling that I should actually measure her feet before buying new shoes. (plus they had a buy one get one half-off sale). So I find a scale, put her foot down and think "No, I must be seeing this wrong"
The sales lady confirmed it. Alisabeth's feet are now officially a toddler size 8!! AHHHH!
I put the new tenni shoes on her feet and stood her up. You should have seen this kid happy as a lark "Bitsy's shoes, Bitsy's shoes" It was cool. I felt horrible and then we went home, trailing our baloons after us.
My other great event this week was again a shopping incident.
I actually printed off coupons, planned my budget and looked at the adds. Albertson's had some great deals so I headed their way. I bought a junk load of stuff.
As the lady was finishing up with me, they usually tell you how much money you saved . . . she said "You saved se. . . " then she stopped and double checked shook her head a little, raised her eyebrows and finished, "You saved $70.17." I was way excited. I'm getting better at shopping so that we're saving money and so that I'm aware of the price fluctuations. . . Hopefully one of these days we'll spend less than $250 a month :)

Jason also had a good week. He's been learning some great stuff in his parenting class and right now they're putting together case studies of "disfunctional families" that another group can analyze and see if they can determine the best way to fix it.
Jason's group is working on a family where the father is working about 60 hours a week so that they can living in a large house. The oldest son is beginning to look toward other sources of male models and so the first thing their group is going to talk about is the need to get the father figure back in the home. Whether that means they need to downsize on house size or on other spending so that he can work less and be available more. It sounds like a pretty interesting project and class.

Alisabeth is doing really well. She counted from 5 to 10 the other day with absolutely no prompting. I was overly proud of her. She is also using possessives and 3-4 word sentances. We're still working on using words instead of whining or grunting, but she's amazing. She recognizes over 100 different animals and objects (based on books and blocks and driving down the road) it's just so cool to watch her go.
Now if only the potty training were going as smoothly.

Winter cometh. . .

I woke up this morning at 6 so that I could go baby-sit for a friend of mine (the wife was out of town for the weekend and the husband had class this morning). I happily open the door to go and set up Alisabeth's stroller before I wake her up and there's an inch of snow on the ground. . . Ewww!!
Granted I was expecting it sometime soon because it's been strangely cold the last few days, but still. . . it's one thing to know doom is coming and another to see it before your face.

So new things this week? Alisabeth can parrot quite a bit. In fact she's gotten good enough to parrot a prayer over lunch and dinner. It's really neat. We say "Dear" and she says "Heavenly Father" and then repeats the prayer, but when we get to "Jesus Christ" she doesn't say Christ she says Amen. . .we're still working on that part.

Jason got ahead on homework and has been working on the same project all week. I guess no matter what they've tried the water pump is still leaking. (It might not be a water pump) They've replaced all of the seals a couple of times and tried everything he can think of and the problem persists so today the teacher said he was going to work with him to try something different. I hope it works out. . .

As for me, I worked on Halloween costumes all week. Alisabeth's is mostly put together. I still need to figure out the hair part, but everything else is done. It looks pretty cute.
Jason's cloak is done except for the detail work. I have to put edging on and the hood. It looks pretty good. After that I'll need to fit it to his height and then deal with the bottom detailing.
I also finished the inner part of my dress. I just need the elastic for the empire waist. It looks pretty good. I need to get the right material for the top part now.

That's our excitement. We watched General Conference this weekend which is where the prophet and other leaders of our church get up and share messages and important ideas. It happens every six months and gives me a good idea of what I need to work on for the next half of a year. As I listen I feel that little nagging voice telling me how the messages apply to me. It's such a cool experience every six months! This year the focus of all the speakers seemed to be around service, love and not only finding out the Will of God, but also doing it. I appreciated that.