text from my sister

robot

twirlygirl's brother let me take his picture for exactly eleven seconds before he was done

funniest thing i ever heard

after we flew into arizona lily started noticing things that were different from wyoming.

look! cactuses!
hey it's not cold!
no snow!

we went to get a few groceries and trader joe's had mini carts.

mini shopping carts!
good-looking avocados!
free grocery store stickers!

after driving around downtown for a while she asked from the backseat:

why are there no peas here?

i didn't get it.

she told me to look out the window

ahhhh, no p's.

i love her.

lily's a little closer

i ♥ twirly dresses

so does she. i made this dress for my little cousin person the other day and she informed us that she'd be wearing it every day. no word yet from her mom if this has been the case.


the pattern is actually again from dana. of course. i didn't even mean it to be. i went googling one night for a way to make a nightgown without a pattern and found her shirt dress tutorial. which i know my sewing friend has shown me before and even said "allie! make this! it's easy! it's cute!" (she really talks like that and i love it) and i agreed that hers were but just didn't do it.

so first came lily's nightgown. ugly flannel hippie mess. somehow i didn't read the part about elasticing the sleeves. next came my attempt at it again....too small and too many goofs. into the trash. then lily's dress. she loves it. because it's pink and it's twirly and it has two layers in the skirt. so i started one for madi to show her mom some sewing machine tricks and made the skirt too long and she said let's just move the waistband up and it was my favorite thing ever.

the minnie mouse 50s housewife i love lucy dress. soon lily will have one in blue.

i like her yellow walls

once upon a time we lived in arizona and one of the best things about it was becoming friends with the warner girls....and kyle, the warner dad.

my lily and her paige were just teeny tiny when we arrived. i wanted to be friends with her because she had the love-my-new-baby-loving-mom-glow and she liked me because i made a joke in a talk at church about how you'd never forget my name because saying 'allieOOoooops' was so dorky. it really is.

we played a lot. paige liked to yell and squeeze lily.

then we moved. sad.

then we went to visit. yay!

paige still likes to yell and squeeze lily.

so that might have been set up. lily's since learned to squeeze back.

also they've both developed quite a talent at comedy.

knock knock

who's there

a chicken

a chicken who

why did the chicken cross the road

why

because his head was on backwards

big sister gracie as pretty as ever and perhaps the best babysitter yet.

and we've eached added one since then. hopefully it doesn't take another birth before we get together again! we love you too.

the boy

I MADE a couple more things for my little guy

so the shirt's too small. but the sleeves and neck (and the white balance, yuck) showed improvement from my first try:

want the formula?

minus

=

+1 then minus

=

the toy box labels post except if you turned around

we own an old old house. like older than my grandma old. and we call her old grandma pilch. she doesn't know.

have-to-walk-through-the-snow garage, no master bathrooms, if max drops a ball on the wood floors they go rolling every which way. little bedrooms. but it does have FIVE of them. so my kids and my living room's clutter level are lucky that we get to have a play room.

this is it on a good day. no...i think playdates are good days. so this is it before a good day tornado hits.









getting used on our last babysitting swap night

Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum!

the most popular day at kinderkamp (I didn't name it that, thank you) this time around was pirate day! arrrrrr.

we all donned eye patches (2 circles of felt with a long piece of yarn sandwiched between...then I stitched a rough circle to keep it all together) and i sang a version of yo ho yo ho as the welcome song. and read a charlie and lola book in which there are pirates.

then made treasure chests (these were a kit from oriental trading co). actually assembling them looked too tough for 3-4 year olds so I did most of this the night before and then the kids practiced their scissor skills by cutting our treasure and jewels

what do pirates eat? goldfish of course. and orange juice. at least i chuckled to myself.

then we had learn-to-be-a-pirate stations:

1. buried treasure: digging for Lily's dress-up jewels in a bucket of sand
2. hearing a story about mermaids
3. walk the plank
4. fishing for your supper
5. sword fighting (but pirates always know that if they hit each other they get their foam swords taken away so no one did)
6. ahoy matey pirate card game

Lily's talked about digging up the treasure nearly every day since....this one might be a repeat next time!

i don't love photographing quilts like i love making them

fabric is Snippets by American Jane (2 charm packs)

and

vintage pillowcases from sparklepower's etsy shop