Too hot to blog.

Holy cow, I don't think this summer is EVER going to end. (Of course, give it another six months and I will be whining about winter.) Here's what we've been up to...

• My little sister Laura came for a week-long visit, which was filled with fun, sunscreen, and pancake mix. People, I have the BEST sisters. I didn't take enough pictures, though.
• We went to the State Fair. It was the hottest day in recorded history, and we all basically died of the sweats.
  
  
  
  It took milkshakes from the Dairy Barn to restore the natural balance (and chocolateyness) of the universe.
• The kids started school on, consecutively, the two hottest days in recorded history. Porter actually began kindergarten the day after Betsy commenced second grade, so I didn't get to take an official 'first day of school' pic of them together. They are both pretty cute, though. The year is still new enough that they are actually excited about school. And Porter shocked the heck out of me at his 'kindergarten orientation' that I went to with him... his teacher asked him to write his name on a piece of paper and draw a picture of himself, and he actually did it. (This is the kid who usually throws a fit if you get him within ten feet of a crayon.)
• Then, on the hottest day in recorded history, we went to Conner Prairie. Laura and I each brought an American Girl doll in historical garb, and we had lots of fun setting them up for photos.
• I've been to the pool a LOT - we went four times in a week while Laura was visiting. I've actually gotten a tan line, something I usually avoid by deploying the SPF A Zillion.
• I'm completely earwormed with this song. Curse you, Amazon and your free MPS downloads! It's just a gateway drug!
• I've watched a lot of TV miniseries/movies this summer. I went through all of Band of Brothers again, then Lost in Austen (it wasn't good, but they managed to make Wickham really sexy), then Little Dorrit (it was so cute), plus Matt and I watched the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended edition, of course).
• I wrote some fanfiction, too.
• I've been doing a lot of sewing, down in the basement to avoid the highest temperatures in recorded history, although I would do it anyway. I actually made a dress for myself: Seen here against the lovely backdrop of my shower curtain. But look at that fabric! It's all sewing notions! And it's Alexander Henry, of course.
• I'm sewing a lot of doll clothes, too. Actually,August has been a really good month for me, sales-wise. I've been selling them on both eBay (woo hoo free listing fees) and Etsy, and I think I have shipped like ten dresses this month. I made this one for a summer-themed sewing swap on American Girl Playthings, and as soon as the recipient posted pictures (her photographs are much better than mine) I had like three more people contact me and ask me to make them one. So I've been working on that.
• My little girl's hair went curly this summer. I'm not sure if it's due to the hottest summer in recorded history - we'll see if it stays that way when autumn hits - but boy is it cute. Amy's completely fixated on baby dolls, and she's also been practicing her animal noises. This video was taken when a bunch of Blinns were here for the day (watch to the end for bonus Miles!)
• It's been an exciting summer for my side of the family. One of my sisters got engaged, another one found out she's having girls (plural), my sister-in-law is having a baby pretty much any day now, and after thirty-one years Dad got the fat envelope from Kodak. As for us, we are working on getting Betsy prepared for her baptism in December, and planning our trip to Disney at the end of October. I'm sure this heat will end soon!

The happenings around here

School is almost out, so I had better get a blog post up before summer hits and I spend all my days driving my kids around. Why did nobody tell me before I had school aged kids that planning out their summers is practically a full time job? It's not that I think they are overscheduled, it's just that with a different thing going on every week, I have to figure when to fit everything in and still have some time to play and go to the pool and whatnot. I think it'll be fun, but I know I will be relieved when it is over.

Anyway. Here's what is going on around here.

• Garage sale season is in full swing. After several disappointing outings, I found some really good stuff last weekend.
• After driving past it on the way to church every Sunday for nearly four years, we finally got a membership to our local living history museum. We actually got a coupon in the mail for free balloon tickets with purchase of a membership, only by the time we got there the wind had kicked up & they cancelled the ride. But they gave us rain checks so I guess we will have to go back another time!
• I'm keeping really busy (but having fun) making stuff for my Etsy.
• I've been kind of obsessed with The Dodos lately, especially this song.
• Speaking of obsessed, Amy gets really mad if we don't let her wear a dress. She is all about the baby dolls lately, but they have to be naked. She's also figured out how to jump, which is really funny since she barely clears the ground.
• Betsy keeps telling me she is going to be an author when she grows up. She loves to write little stories and then illustrate them. She is really loving first grade (they hatched baby chicks!) and she's been doing well with her spelling. Betsy is all about compound words right now. Sometimes I have a hard time explaining to her when a word isn't.
• And Porter is almost done with preschool. I took him to the kindergarten orientation at his school last week... I needn't have bothered, he already knows his way around the building and has been riding a bus for the last two years. I think he's really ready, since he's already reading and everything. Plus, in kindergarten they do a unit about dinosaurs.
• Oh yeah, we booked our next vacation to Disneyworld. We'll be going at the end of October when the kids are on fall break. Woo hoo! By then it will have been more than three years since our last visit, which I think is a decent interval. The kids are getting hyped up for it already.
• Betsy's dance recital is this Saturday. Be watching this space, I'll post video. She likes to put on her costume (it's purple) and practice the dance, so I can verify that it is, in fact, wicked adorable.

Ten items or less

1. Amanda Ripley, author of The Unthinkable, is going to be on 20/20 on Friday night. I've been recommending the book to everyone - it's one of the most interesting things I've ever read. (The title and cover makes it seem like it's a scary book, but for me at least, it had the opposite effect.) So if you don't have time to sit down and read a whole book, catch the TV version of it instead.



2. One of my very best friends just opened up this Etsy store. Cute!



3. How's this for cool: a craft-themed line of scrapbooking supplies (from, of course, American Crafts)!



4. Porter and I discovered Wubbcasts the other day (YouTube with Mom is an important part of his after-bath ritual) and I think I am addicted. Porter really likes the water fight; my favorite is the hopelessly-earwormy Don't Lie. You are powerless to resist its catchiness...



5. I've heard the same song on the radio on my drive into work every day for weeks. Is the universe trying to tell me something, or is it merely a case of diegogarcity?



6. Look look! Mother-daughter dresses! And mother-daughter shoes! Oh, the possibilities...



7. I am so glad that all of the drugstore-brand cosmetics manufacturers have jumped on the whole mineral-foundation bandwagon... because that means I can finally afford it. And it makes my skin look awesome.



8. So, Butler basketball is doing really awesome this year. But, is anyone really surprised by that? I mean, at some point doesn't the word 'Cinderella' no longer apply?



9. I analyzed batch # 24601 today. And no, I did not pile all the lab equipment into a barricade and climb on top of it waving a flag. I did hum a little to myself, though. (It was a 5W20 semi synthetic, in case you're wondering.)



10. My babysitter's kid is finally gaining weight, now that she's started him on solids. She's also been feeding him some of the extra milk from my freezer and the doctor told her not to because (and this is a direct quote) my milk is "not fatty enough." Gee, I guess that explains the appearance of Amy's thighs...

Truth in advertising

I think that, in this case, the sentiment speaks for itself:


So anyway, in the interest of full disclosure and all that, I should tell you that this is going to be a very long and rambling post. You may find it boring, as it's comprised mostly of things I thought of when I was up at 3 a.m. Consider yourself warned.


We got a new bishop on Sunday. His name is Craig. This means that 3 out of the last 4 bishops we've had were Craigs. (I should make a list of them... har har.) In fact, a previous bishopric even had an emergency backup Craig. He moved away to a different state... and promptly got called as bishop. Man, am I ever glad my husband is named Matt.


Yay, there's a new Death Cab for Cutie song! I think that my favorite Death Cab song is still this one, however (plus the video is neat).


I finished a dress I started working on, like, a month ago. (The colors in the photo are a little off, but trust me, it's the best fabric EVER. Hey Mom, can you guess the designer?) The pattern is Simplicity 3875, only I used the View B sleeves and the View C neck. I had to make a new pattern piece for that, plus I changed the back a little. Oh, and I added pockets.

I am really happy because this dress ACTUALLY FITS ME, RIGHT NOW, and it's NOT MATERNITY CLOTHES or ANYTHING. I knew there was a reason dresses were invented.

Porter's birthday is on Sunday. You know what I realized? I like cake a lot better than pie, but I am actually a lot better at making pie than cake. (I'm also pretty talented at making Pie.)


Amy is doing better at sleeping, but only in her carseat. I get the feeling she's going to love her baby swing, once she gets enough head support to use it. I got out my baby sling today, too. It's useful for when I'm on the computer and actually want to use two hands to type because I swear this baby wants to be held all the time. I am so going to miss it when she's a toddler, though (or a snotty teenager, right?)

Every time I have a new baby, Matt and I watch the entire series of Band of Brothers. We got started when Betsy was brand new and Matt went to Blockbuster (!) to rent a video (!!) that we could watch while I was sitting around nursing. Needless to say, we had to see the whole 10 hours of it (plus bonus features). It's sort of become a tradition since then, because as we all know nothing says "Welcome to the world, sweet baby!" like guys getting their legs blown off in the Ardennes forest...

I'm a bit late blogging about it, since the new episode airs tonight, but how great was this?

As someone who was fake-proposed to, I found that scene hilarious. Long story short: Matt took me out on a super romantic date, horse carriage ride, you name it, with a jewelry box in his shirt pocket. (I found out later the box was fake - he didn't even pick up the ring until the next day.) And took me home and kissed me goodnight and didn't propose to me. And stood on a street corner the next day holding a cardboard sign, you know, like a mendicant. So if Jim shows up in the season finale with a sign that says "Will Marry For Food," I will seriously die.

I think I may have run out of things to say for now. Aren't you relieved?

Clean this mess up, else we'll all end up in jail

Yes, I actually cleaned. I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and my house is now... um, I'd be lying if I told you it was spotless, but it's pretty good. The toilets are scrubbed (yuck), the kids' rooms are picked up and vacuumed, the kitchen is wiped down and I only have one load of laundry waiting to be folded. I got most of this done during General Conference (which is, incidentally, the only time we ever use the baby monitor). So, the house is pretty much ready to bring a new baby home to. I still have the grocery shopping to do so we won't starve (at least I don't have to buy food for Cutie Pie).

I've been having a lot of contractions, but they are all totally irregular and therefore nothing other than a nuisance. Thank heavens for Pitocin. (I am a big fan of better living through chemistry.) In fact, I'm pretty sure if it wasn't for Pitocin, I would still be pregnant with Betsy, which would be really inconvenient now that she rides the school bus.

I also got some scrapbooking done. (This no-scanner thing is killing me. As soon as Matt gets a job offer, I think that's the first thing I'm buying!)

So, it's four more days until I go into the hospital to have my little girl. (Unless I actually go into labor, which I have the tiniest hunch might happen - but I also thought Cutie Pie was a boy.) My sister Emily is driving up tomorrow (or down, depending on your sense of direction) so I don't have to worry about the kids. I mean, she'll only be here a week, so she can't possibly scar them too badly. And the timing of that is good because the first new episode of NCIS since the writers' strike is going to be on tomorrow night. Not that I'm looking forward to that, or anything.

The weather is really, really nice right now. I have the windows open and everything. It was, like, forty degrees and raining the day we brought Porter home from the hospital and that was at the end of April - I sure hope this lasts!

(P.S. Who can guess what song the title of this post is from? I bet Mom knows it...)

Get your kicks

I've been sewing again! I spotted this fabric at JoAnn's last week (it's Alexander Henry, of course) and thought, Now what can I sew with that? Fortunately there had been a 99-cent pattern sale a month or two before, so I had several skirt patterns to choose from in my stash. This one is Simplicity 3841 and I love it. The only downside is that there's a zipper... well, it was time to stop delaying the inevitable. My machine doesn't take a zipper foot, so I hand-basted everything, and only did the topstitching by machine. The topstitching is crooked but when isn't my topstitching crooked? Anyway, it's not too noticeable, I think, and the zipper zips and unzips, so I'm calling it a victory.

(I wrote a pattern review here - I always have a lot to say about my projects.)

On a completely unrelated note, the Number of the Day yesterday was 7, and they actually played The Alligator King And His Seven Sons. I was shocked - it's been years since I've seen that anywhere besides YouTube. I always assumed that the reason for the omission was the reference to the 'perfume that smelled like cheap cigars' and of course, Sesame Street can't have anything even resembling an endorsement of smoking, because hundreds of thousands of kids will start lighting up, because don't you know Sesame Street has that kind of power? (*eyeroll*) Anyway, they have been bringing back some of their old stuff from the vault - Everybody Sleeps was always a favorite of mine, and those wacky pinball sequences - and they have some new sketches which are quite good as well (like the Grouch broadway musical 'Scramalot.')

random stuff...

We went to the State Museum on Monday (all the museums are free on MLK Day). They had a really gross exhibit about bugs and dead bodies. Fascinating, but gross.

I'm 97% done with my Hall of Fame entry. Still waiting for York Photo to send me my prints so I can finish up the Crafty Combo. Why do I keep ordering from York? They always take f o r e v e r to send me my pictures.

We're teaching Betsy how to write her name now. She's got the E and the T and more or less the Y (it looks a lot like the T, but I'm forgiving) and we're working on the B. S still has her completely stumped, however.

My voice is nearly hoars from rrawring with Porter.

The Colts are playing the Patriots in the conference championship this weekend. I hate to be a Negative Nellie, but aren't the Pats the ones who always knock the Colts out of the playoffs? Much like the Packers and the Dallas Cowboys. I don't, however, reserve the same level of hatred for the Patriots as I do for the Cowboys. Some teams are just pure evil.

Don't overcook angelhair pasta. Not a pretty sight.

Old Navy is having a massive clearance sale. No more 97-cent capris for me. But, I got Matt some work pants for $8 (good thing, they inevitably end up with ink on them) and a scarf for 75 cents. Now his neck will be warm when he's walking from the parking garage, because I am a good wife.

You actually haven't seen cute, until you've seen a 1-year-old do the motions to 'Popcorn Popping.'