Gattiland!

Spent the afternoon & evening with Greg, Jessica, Abigail & Blaine! We went to Gattiland for dinner and Sariah, Abigail & Blaine rode some of the rides. It was fun, but it was also really late for Sariah, so she was pretty grumpy & tired.

Abigail & Sariah, two blond beauties. Riding the Carousel. She liked it, really!

Riding in Firetrucks with Boys (well, just Blaine.)

Cows!

We went with Christi and Sara to the Arboretum for Amy's ice cream and to play on the big stone cows. Its a ton of fun, I highly recommend it!

Sariah got caught between these two trees and started calling for help, so I of course took pictures instead.
These two had such a fun time together! They like to chase eachother around and give eachother hugs.
New best friends!

Sucess! OR How to Sew a Pirate Costume with a Whole Lotta Effort

Tada! A big thanks to my friend Ann who came over today and opened my eyes to all the little screws and things on my machine, thus making it work perfectly, thus allowing me to finish Sariah's Halloween Costume over a month early! Hurray!

She's going to be the cutest little pirate to ever sail the seven seas!

ARRG

I know, I've been using my twitter to give you random tidbits of information instead of really blogging, my bad. Actually life has been pretty uneventful, but since my poll ended today, I thought I'd give you a little costume update.

The pirate costume won, and since I was kind of leaning that way anyways, I started working on it. Here's the pattern I'm using to make it, but the fabric is different colors. We're going with a blue, green, brown, gold stripe for the skirt and head scarf, a green sash and a brown cord vest w/ light brown sleeves and collar. I've already finished the skirt, sash, scarf, and I'm half way through the top, but my machine is acting up. I'm not too worried though, I've got some time to finish it.

Who knew I'd be that mom that makes my kids costumes from scratch. Before I could barely sew in a straight line....

Amen, Sister!

I'm all about THIS post over at Mormon Mommy Wars. Check it out!

Oh, and in case you were wondering (like my mom) where I find these things, I'm pretty sure it had something to do with THIS post, because that's the one I have saved on my favorites list.

Pictureless Weekend Update

Because Marin Can't Remember to Pack the Camera...

We had a lovely weather weekend in Madison, which is great because Friday afternoon we packed the car and headed to the EQ Ward Campout. This was our first test to see if we were going to be the camping type of family. Turns out we are! Sariah had loads of fun playing with the other kids or chasing after the dog that was there. She also did really great sleeping in the tent. We brought our pack n' play along for her to sleep in, and our tent has dividers so she got her own "room" inside the tent. I think that helped.

Our test is awesome. Its large and has a hinge door (like a real door.) It sprinkled all night, but we stayed warm and dry. I actually got a pretty good night's sleep until Sariah woke at 4:30am. I imangine she would've stayed asleep longer if the other babies & kids hadn't started waking up too.

We had lots of fun around the camp fire roasting hot dogs & marshmellows, and in the morning there was a pancake dinner provided. I think I can confidently say that we'll be camping again soon.

Saturday we played catch up at home, then after church on Sunday I headed off to a orchestra practice. Our stake is holding a music "event" on th 19th. There will be several choirs singing and we've also gotten together a chamber orchestra to play the 4th movement of Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 5 (simplified). Think "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." There's also a string piece, "Jesus, Once of Humble Birth", that'll take some practice.

I haven't seriously played my violin since I did a chamber music camp for adults during the Summer of 2001. So this was pretty scary. It came back alright, but my violin needed some tlc. My bow could use re-hairing (tough luck), and I noticed half way through the practice that my bridge was leaning. So I thought, ok, I'll just fix this after practice, but then during a run through, it popped right out! I was lucky it didn't break in half (which is what happened last time this happened.) I was double lucky that the bridge isn't warped, so I was able to replace it.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy playing with a group. I dislike playing solo, but there's something about hearing the harmonies come together that I enjoy. It reminds me why I once thought about being an orchestra director. There's apparently at least 5 violinists in our ward, so there's some food for thought for you.

So it was a good weekend, we've enjoyed spending lots of family time together!

a-MAZE-ing Labor Day

Nothing says Labor Day Holiday like a large corn maze, right? Well why not. So we headed over to Lodi and The Treinen Farm Corn Maze.Here's Doug and Sariah at the start of the maze. They hand you one eights of the map and you have to find all the check points to complete it. They also let us borrow this stroller for Sariah, which was nice. Doug surveys the land.
Here's what he saw.Yay! Check point 1.
Here's Check Point 2

Check point 3
The family that runs the farm owns this terrier, and he's a very nice, social dog. He kept Sariah occupied through the whole maze since he pretty much followed us through. I think we were really only one of three groups today. Sariah was so excited, she kept say "dog! dog!" and she tried to talk to him a lot by saying "woof, woof!" over and over... (We had just taught her Sat. that a dog says woof.) She even wasn't that afraid to let the dog smell her hand and pet his (with help.) She gets really excited and laughs really loud near animals.
Check point 4
Check point 5
Check point 6

Check point 7
We made it out!
The one picture of me, to prove I was there too.

We had a lot of fun, and it was a great family activity. We'll probably do it again next year!