Halloween 2011

As promised, here are pictures of the Halloween costumes I made for the kids this year. The base did a fun night that included a hayride, finding pumpkins, trick or treating, pizza and juice, and games. The kids had a blast! And since I was so pleased with how their costumes came out, I thought I'd break it down just because I want to.

Jedi Mind Trick

Getting a good picture of Cameron's costume proved to be really difficult. That kid would not stand still for anything once he had his super awesome Luke Skywalker costume on.
You better watch out!
1. So, starting with the jedi robe. I had an old brown curtain that I had actually previously cut up and make my cushion cover templates out of when we were reupholstering our couch. I didn't have enough left over to make his robe, so I just took the cushion covers apart since I wasn't using them anymore, and was able to get enough fabric out of it. In fact, I was able to make his boot covers out of it too. My inspiration for the boot covers came from Cheri of I am Momma Hear Me Roar.
She didn't really have a full tutorial for them but I just played around with it, and figured it out. They turned out looking really good. They completely covered his shoes, but didn't look too big, like a lot of the store bought covers do. And they stayed in place with some elastic wrapped around the bottom of his shoes.
2. The pants. I had previously picked up a somewhat stretchy khaki colored skirt at our Airmen's Attic when we were still in MT. I was planning on eventually making it a little smaller to fit me, but it turned out perfect for his costume.
3. The belt I made from some tan fabric and some ultra firm fusible interfacing. It closed with a strip of velcro. Then I embellished it with some other fabric colors. He was able to hang his light saber right on his belt.
4. And last was the tunic. Two long rectangles of fabric cut and hemmed. It's hard to see in the pictures, but hemmed it so it looked tunic-like. If that makes much sense. They just wrapped around him like an X, and stayed in place under the belt. We seriously had to fix them like 20 times though. Next time, I'll either stitch them together so we can just slip it over his head, or pin it in place. That drove me crazy!
And that's Cameron's costume. He loves it!
Hello little Ewok!

If I had one good picture of Ethan's costume AND him smiling, I would have used that one. Oh well. So, since being in Belgium, I've had a heck of a time finding fabric. So I went to the Pxtra on the Army base we usually go to (about 35 minutes away), and I bought a brown plush blanket for the body suit. I actually used the wrong side of it because it looked a little more shaggy. Then using another idea from Cheri, but in a different way, I took one of the shaggy toilet seat covers and used it for the belly. The ears were out of the blanket, and the hood was out of the same tan fabric as Cameron's belt. Then I embellished the hood with some embroidery floss. The hardest part of Ethan's costume was getting the hood to lay right. I actually had to make it twice, because the first one didn't fit over his head...oops! Oh, and the body suit came from a baby/toddler Halloween pattern a got from Joann's when Cameron was a baby. I didn't follow it exactly because I didn't need a mouse or panda. But just used the general directions for the suit.
Okay, if you've gotten this far...just some fun pictures.

Cameron's friend Seth from school, one of the other American kids.

There were quite a few Star Wars costumes there, so we got them all together for a picture. Laya was one of the people helping out that night. She's stationed here.

P.S. My skeleton shirt idea came from Ashley of Make It and Love It. I googled templates, but couldn't find anything I liked, so I decided take her pictures and trace it right from my computer screen to my freezer paper and then used the freezer paper technique and some acrylic paint and textile medium to paint it onto my shirt. The shirt I got from the thrift store at the Army base. It was the only maternity shirt I could find in black and long sleeved, so even though it was kinda funky shaped at the top, it turned out well!

Oh baby!

More Halloween pictures to come of the kids. I made all of our costumes, including my skeleton shirt.

So, baby #3 is on the way! Due March 13th. Today I had my twenty week ultrasound (20 weeks and 2 days). And the verdict is...BOY #3. After having a miscarriage in January, I now understand the heartache it brings. And maybe you understand why I don't announce earlier like most people. But, baby is healthy, and we are excited and happy!

We're tired...

Mostly because of this type of thing day after day...

We may also be tired because Ethan thinks 20 minute naps everyday are good enough, and because Cameron doesn't get naps anymore. It's a rough life for him right now.
And we're all tired from the bug we've been passing around this past week. Luckily I didn't get it (knock on wood).

The end.

The European American Candy

When we moved here, I was astonished to find an Aldi grocery store right in our neighborhood. Then I found out that it apparently is a German company. What a small world. Anyway, we decided to go in yesterday and walk round.

And here's a side note: every grocery store closes by 6:30pm at the very latest. It drives me crazy! And when you go in the grocery store, the entire store is refrigerated. Here they don't really have refrigerated sections, unless it's a frozen item. They have refrigerated stuff all over the store, so it's freezing in the store!

Okay, so where was I? We went in, and started walking around. And we found a dozen eggs for 26.09 euros! Huh? That's about $38.50. I don't get that one. But we continued to walk around, and found a cute pair of shoes for Ethan for 3.99 euros, some Feta (Clint LOVES feta), some batteries, a snack box for Cameron...um whatever. But then we found CANDY! And we must have had a hankering for some American candy and it didn't help that our entire family hadn't had dinner yet, because we sure found some. Well not really, but we were amazed that Europe has their own brands of candy just like American candy. (And some stores do carry real American Candy like Hershey's but this one didn't) Let me show you what I'm talking about.

Starbursts (these weren't quite like Starbursts, but they were still so good)

Snickers (Clint's favorite candy bar is Snickers and he said these were better, but I thought they tasted exactly the same)

KitKat (a tiny bit different, but still very good)

Peanut M&M's (exactly the same!)-they had regular too

Just some chocolate wafers we wanted to try, and they were sooo good!

See? American candy!

Then we hurried ourselves out of the candy isle before we grabbed more stuff.

(Oh, and blogger is really starting to make me mad with their formatting issues, which is a HUGE reason I don't blog a lot. Can someone please tell me how to make this easier?)

Olives.

First Day of School!

So I sent Cameron off to school for the first time today. He has been waiting and waiting for this day for about a year now. So we went outside to the end of our driveway and waited for the bus! Cameron was beyond excited, but I think he might have a been a little skeptical also thinking it might just be like any other day where he stays home with Mom and Ethan.
But to start this day off right, I made some of my mom's cinnamon rolls. For some reason my dough had a super hard time rising/raising? but in the end they turned out great. I think Cameron was a little too excited to get his new school clothes on that he only ate about half of his.

He chose Spiderman over Lightning McQueen. This made Dad happy and Mom wished he would have chosen Lightning McQueen (it was cuter).

Ethan was there to show everyone how cute he is with his little crusty icing face.

The school is all about safety. They even have a separate playground for the preschoolers to use. Well, the schoolbus came by our house and just kept going. They were picking all the kids up on the other side of the road first and then they swing back around and pick the kids up on our side of the road. This devastated Cameron. He thought the school bus wasn't coming back!

But after some explaining, he was good to go again. And of course I made him give me a hug and kiss before the bus came, just in case I didn't get one.

Just playing here, "No mom, don't let 'em take me!"

Here comes the bus.

The door opened and he got right on, sat down, and buckled himself in. They have buckles! I was right, no goodbye.

But I did finally get a wave!

Have a good year Cameron!

Um...yeeeeaaahh...

That's the best title I could think of for this post. It been...a while. And I'm not picking up where I left off. That would be ideal, but I'm lame like that. Maybe one day I'll post pictures of the last, oh 8ish months. Maybe not. But I thought I SHOULD post, and what better thing to post than something totally random.

And the best part is, that you can't really tell how big Ethan has gotten since the last pictures I posted of him. But, he actually is still pretty small. Let me think...at his last few doctor visits, he's been in the 5th percentile for weight, something like 20th for height and 50th for head circumference. So apparently I'm not feeding him. But you'll see in the pictures to come he loves to eat...peanut butter that is.
We were eating lunch, and the awesome mother that I am has been out of bread for oh about a week now. Yes, bad mother. Got it. So we ate peanut butter and jelly on saltine crackers for lunch instead. (I used to do this as a kid all the time, except I had a huge sweet tooth and used honey. I thought jelly was more appropriate). Well, since I was just making them as they ran out, I kept the PB out and when Cameron was done eating he decided to go into the play room. Our high chair (which was given to us) doesn't have a buckle, and when I came back in the room to get Ethan out because he wasn't quite done eating, this is what I found. And unfortunately I decided to leave my SD card in my computer. So when I grabbed my camera really quick, I couldn't get the picture that I wanted. It was the oops-you-caught-me face. Anyway, some pictures of Ethan in the peanut butter. He LOVES LOVES LOVES peanut butter. I can't stress that enough. He asks everyday for butter (and it sounds like butter but remove the tt.) Anyway, he's a cute kid, and is getting into absolutely EVERYTHING now. Hurray, I just love the terrible twos. It makes me feel like I'm in my terrible twos with the way I react to Cameron and Ethan sometimes.

And Cameron. He's four, as of August 15th. He starts dutch preschool on September 1st. I think normally I would be just fine. But this is my crazy Cameron we're talking about going to a school where they speak Dutch, and he doesn't, all day Monday through Friday (with Wednesdays being a half day). Yes I am a bit nervous about this. He will also be riding the school bus. But they've told me that kids that young learn so fast that he'll be speaking Dutch in a few months. Next year when he starts kindergarden, he will go to the American school. Oh did I mention we moved to Belgium? I guess I will have to do some major updates huh? Anyway for now, here he is in all his glory on his birthday, the day we moved into our new house, the day the ruined pineapple upsidedown cake for the first time in my life, and with his baseball cupcakes that I just had to make because I felt horrible for not giving him a proper birthday.
And of course one last picture of what we deal with everyday of the week here. Only kidding, mostly it's just rain, but they call for hail a lot, and then sometimes we get it.