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Another Shirt Dress

I had to take a break from sewing to focus on other things, but Derek kindly cleared off his desk for me last weekend and has let me leave my sewing machine up in our room.   I’m hoping to clear out my pile of mending/sewing projects before the baby comes.  First up was attaching a ribbon waistband to another shirt dress (made from an old shirt of my dad’s!).  Elizabeth loves it, of course (it’s nice to have an undiscriminating recipient–anything in dress form gets her excited!).  And I’ve promised Susie one next!

blue shirt dress

Another SB Zoo Trip

We’re trying to get in a couple last trips up to the Santa Barbara Zoo before our membership expires at the end of the month.  Monday, we finally got to bring James along, and the kids ran off a ton of energy while Sarah and I chatted.  It worked out well for all involved.  (I still came home totally exhausted–I’m in the breathless and weary stage of the third trimester for sure!)
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We’ve had to work very hard lately on getting the kids not to mention things in front of Susie that might give her ideas…just when she’s happy and content, Elizabeth will talk about snacks or something else that they can’t have right away, and suddenly I’m dealing with a screaming toddler who doesn’t understand the need to wait.  While Derek was gone, the kids and I bought ice cream and had it several times, but since I’m unable to give baths at this stage of pregnancy (it causes my hip to dislocate), I waited until after Susie’s bedtime to bring out dessert.  (The big kids can eat ice cream without making too much of a mess, but it’s a lost cause with Q.)  I warned the big kids that if they mentioned it in front of her and made her want some, they wouldn’t get any!

All of that is to say that last night, Tommy came up with a creative way to ask about dessert without his sisters knowing.  I’d made Gooey Butter Cake to serve Aaron and Janelle who came over for lunch, but at the dinner table, I told the kids they couldn’t have it twice in a day.  Tommy piped up, “What about i-c-e, um, c-r-e-m-e?”  I guess Derek and I won’t be spelling to each other in front of him anymore!

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On an unrelated note, Elizabeth informed me last night that she loves to go shopping with me (big surprise).  When I asked what her favorite place to shop was, she said, “Vons!”  (The grocery store that had ice cream on sale last week.)  I told her that when she got bigger, she could go to Vons to shop for me all by herself!  She said she’d want to take Susie along.  I told her that when she is 16 and Susie is 14, they can go shopping for the family every week!  She has been joyfully discussing her 16th birthday (and ability to drive a car to Vons) ever since…

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Thanks for praying for my sleep last night–the kids were asleep by 9, I was asleep by 9:15, and I slept hard until 3 (at which point I was so hungry despite having a double cheeseburger for dinner that I had to get up and fix myself a meal and was wide awake for the rest of the night).  It’s amazing how much better I feel after six solid hours of sleep!

Playing in the Mud

It was so warm and sunny this afternoon that I decided to let Elizabeth skip her nap if she agreed to spend the afternoon outside.  Soon the kids were making a mud pit and singing, “We’re playing in the mud, we’re playing in the mud; we’re getting things all dirty, all dirty!”  I figure this is way more important than Tommy doing phonics, right?

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And I think this was really God’s goodness to me during a really rough week.  Please be praying for my sleep–I’ve only had two and a half nights of sleep in the past week, and the two full nights were because I drugged myself with a ton of Unisom and went to bed at 7:30 while Derek dealt with bedtime routines.  Other than that, I’ve had three nights of zero sleep and a very small amount of sleep last night.  With Derek gone in DC through the weekend, though, I don’t want to drug myself while the sole adult in the house overnight, which means that I’m going on very faint fumes.  My head is fuzzy, my coping abilities are waning, and I am fantasizing about when this baby is out and I’m done dealing with heartburn, varicose veins, SI pain, braxton-hicks contractions, breathing trouble, and restless limbs.  While I’m wishing we were closer to our parents so I could get some grandma backup, I’m glad that the weather here is nice enough to send the kids outside while I rest on the couch.  But could you please be praying for me to be able to have restful sleep without drugs for the next couple of nights?  Derek gets home the middle of the night Saturday, so I just have to make it for about 56 more hours.

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Blob Painting

The kids have been begging for weeks to paint.  It’s hard to believe that I taught elementary art in a previous life, because these days, I avoid mess-making art projects like the plague!  My excuse of late has been that it’s too cold or rainy to paint outside, and our house is too small to paint inside.  But today the sun was out, and the kids convinced me that 55 is warm enough to be outside.  So we looked on my pinterest boards for inspiration and came up with making Valentines by blob painting hearts.  (I have to say that I’m so impressed when bloggers take so many pictures of an artsy procedure–I was hovering over Elizabeth the whole time, trying to remind her to rinse and wipe her paintbrush between colors, and the couple times I took a break to grab my camera, paint got all over the place.)  The kids really loved it, and we’ll probably try to talk about symmetry at some point when we’re gluing these down to construction paper to make the actual Valentines.  And right now, I’m washing a load of kid clothes, hoping that the paint will come out of Tommy’s favorite shirt…

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privit

Last weekend, we made like SoCal natives and headed to Vegas for the long weekend.  Except that we avoided Las Vegas proper.  Instead, we spent a couple of fun, restful days hanging out with “Mr Vinegar and Miss Gloria,” as our kids call them.

Gloria won the girls’ hearts by letting them try on some of her necklaces and dress-up clothes…

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After church, we drove over to the Hoover Dam.  Like the Grand Canyon, it’s one of those things that I think you have to see in person to appreciate the scale.  (I’m not saying it’s as big as the Grand Canyon, just that it’s way more impressive in person than in any pictures I’ve ever seen…)

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“Mommy didn’t tell us we’d be going to Arizona this weekend, too!”

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Gloria set up a homemade pizza making station for the kids, which was a huge hit.

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We stayed up really late both nights, playing Attika, Alibi, Puerto Rico, Bohnanza, and probably something else I’m forgetting.  And before we left Monday, we walked down to their neighborhood park to burn off some energy.

My daredevil girls…

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What’s a Hillsdale reunion without frisbee?

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And that, folks, is that last out-of-town scenery you’re going to see on this blog for a good, long time.  I’m sticking close to home for the rest of the pregnancy!

 

ballerina chores

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