CAN’T WAIT.

Wednesday, I took the kids to Barnes and Noble where they got a disney princess book, and a book about ambulances (i’ll let you guess which one goes to whom…) and I got…

Bend the Rules Sewing, by Amy Karol – of angry chicken fame.

Thursday I pored over the book and decided to make nearly all the patterns therein… But mostly, I wanted to make “Charming Handbag.” Next in line is the scalloped baby blanket and a ton of bibs.

Friday I stopped at the fabric store and picked out the lining for my handbag. I knew what I wanted for the bag itself, but I was fairly nervous about picking out a complimentary fabric for the lining. I am pretty pleased with my selection – I think it turned out very well!

I knew that if I were to actually USE this bag, I would need a pocket on the outside for my keys and my phone, so I made my own bias tape (instructions are in the book!) out of the lining fabric and edged the pocket with it.

My only issue is the straps – I am going to redo them with some sort of lining inside and wider, as they are a bit flimsy and I want them a lot sturdier – but I am pretty proud of myself.

Isn’t it pretty?

I found the most precious fabric ever for the scalloped baby blanket. I love it so much, that I must confess I decided, “screw babies! I’m going to make this for my own girlie!” and bought 4 yards. I can’t wait til I finish it and show you.

-amy is not to be operated under the influence of alcohol

I’m always forgetting to take pictures of the things I make, so here we go. Taken with my camera phone RIGHT before I stuff it in a big oversized padded envelope and drop it in the mail. That’s how close I was to not taking some photos.

Our friends the caterpillars (who should turn into beautiful swallowtails) brought us great joy for a week or two. We would run out and squeal with glee and watch the great plump caterpillars wiggling about in our parsley (the kids were excited too!) They stripped our parsley plant naked, and now we haven’t seen a wiggle from them since.

I feel so used.

(Not really. I’m thinking of planting more just to entice them back.)

I waited to relate this until I had the pictures taken and off the camera and uploaded. Yay!

We had a lovely father’s day. The kids got up and snuck downstairs while James and I slept in a bit. I must say, this is the nicest part about them getting a bit older. When they started making a bit of a racket, I got up and went downstairs with them so daddy could sleep in.

We got out the present we had gotten for James and got to work. I mixed up some concret, poured it in the mold, and then the kids got busy sticking glass bead-like things in it, making hand impressions, and trying very hard to distract me so that they could do letter stamps all over the place willy nilly. I, however, used my mom-powers to not get distracted and kept all the words as actual words.

The resulting garden stepping stone turned out quite nicely.

I am pretty unoriginal, as this is the same thing we did for Father’s Day 2 years ago. I’m glad I got a fancier kit this time, because in the other one, we had to just scratch the letters into the concret with a toothpick and it really didn’t look that great. We had to embellish everything with paint.

I don’t mind that it’s unoriginal and now we have 2 because look at those handprints! We’ll want those later! Too cute!

So we made the stepping stone and set it in a safe place to set for 2 days. After we let James sleep in, we brought him breakfast in bed (poptarts and coke) and all the homemade cards and pictures the kids had made in school.

The sweetest part of the day was after I shooed the kids from basically jumping on Daddy, he turned to me, his eyes moist and said, “I’m so happy we have them. I love being a daddy. They make me so happy.”

We spent the rest of the day poking around at the Potomac mall (legos for ethan, new shoes for jocelyn) and then came home to launch teeeny tiny rockets at a nearby soccer field.

Everyone had a great day.

Thanks for being such a great daddy, James. I love you.

-amy

All taken in southern Utah, in the La Sal mountains near Moab, or in Arches National Park.

Iris

brother Joe’s daughter, Avery

Jocelyn

(L-R) brother James’ son Kirk, sister Susan’s daughter Clara, Avery, Ethan

(L-R) Kirk, Clara, Avery, and Kirk’s younger brother Kade

Clara

Clara Jane and Jocelyn Grace

cactus flower

On a VERY VERY frustrating note, Ethan’s right eye is red and inflamed.
If you’re keeping score, this makes round THREE of pink eye for Ethan. His last day of eye drops was on Friday, and now it turns up again.

ARRRRRRRRRRGH!!

Today is SUPPOSED to be the last day of eye drops for Jocelyn’s bout of pink eye as well, but I’m thinking we may want to drag her into the doctor to make sure it’s REALLY GONE before we stop giving her drops.

So James stayed home with Ethan today, will be taking him to the doctor later this afternoon.

I guess the silver lining is I got to eat lunch with my men-folk! Cuteness and handsomeness ensued:

Jocelyn loves band-aids. I blame the band-aid makers who put strawberry shortcake, hello kitty and characters from the movie “Cars” on them.

I can’t really blame her. I totally buy this brand of feminine hardware because of the pretty poppies on the box. I’m a sucker for poppies.

She knows that she gets one when she gets hurt.

As such, whenever she even bumps into anything, she will tearfully declare, “I need a band-aid!!”

Therefore, we’ve instigated the “bleeding” rule. If it’s not bleeding, you don’t need a band-aid.

When we were camping, there was a lot of running around full tilt with exposed elbows and knees on hard surfaces, like gravel. And red rocks.

LOOK at all that skin! Of course there were going to be some scrapes!

A lot of the time, the kids were also pretty tired and grumpy. This was due to the jet lag (2 hr difference), staying up way later than their usual bedtime (campfires are so cool, and i need to stay up and burn marshmellows i will never eat!), getting up with the sun, and not napping.

So when Jocelyn fell and bruised herself (which happened about 26 BAJILLION TIMES), there were a few times I relaxed the very strict ‘bleeding’ rules about bandaids.

This is the reason she loves the bandaids.

The day before we left, she took a really bad spill and scraped up both legs, both elbows, her forehead, and even got a cut (which bled) on her nose. She felt so banged up that she actually refused to walk the rest of that evening and the next morning. (I was getting worried, but then she started to run around, though somewhat gingerly.)

A record was broken, because those bandaids, she left in place for TWO WHOLE DAYS before pulling them off and sticking them all over her body.