Gentle Years

When I was young, growing up with ten siblings, we did a lot of things for ourselves-we had chores, raised animals, tended gardens, and sewed.  I like sewing, but for years didn't have a working machine.  Then this past Christmas GB and PB bought a new one for me, and so far I have only used it to make things for LB.  This past week I worked every night on her prom dress and spent all day Saturday on the skirt.  She is a complicated child, so of course the dress had to be complicated as well.  I detest hemming second only to patching, so I thought I was being smart when I bought lace hem edging, only to realize later that the skirt had three tiers to it.  Since the top two tiers were not sewn down the sides, and since the satin frayed just about every time I touched or ironed it, that meant three regular hems plus four side "hems".  Fun, fun fun.  Anyway, here are the results:

Here she is with one of her friends-hopefully you can see some of the skirt detail.

And here is the choker that I made to go with the corset.

Then she needed a bag for small stuff

We followed that day with Mother's Day.  GB had a migraine, so I went to his house to get my card after church, did my grocery shopping, visited Mom, helped Aidan fly his new kite-both in the afternoon and again in the evening-and visited with PB and her boys.  MB had the good grace to get his first tooth on Saturday-his gift to his mother and something that has been long awaited!

Today we celebrated Aidan's fifth birthday, though that date (estimated) is still three days away.  The party was early-10:30 to 12:30-to accomodate all of the guests' naptimes.  The kids played outside in our unseasonably beautiful weather, had lunch, played some more, opened presents, then had cake and ice cream.  Since it was time for our social worker to make her six month visit, she came to the party as well.  This gave her a chance to meet Aidan's friends, see him with his whole family (big brother and big sister and their families), and meet his daycare director (her daughter was a guest) as well as some of his playmates' parents.

After our nap, we did it all again.  LB turns eighteen tomorrow, so the evening party was a cook-out but I cooked in.  She doesn't like hot dogs or hamburgers so I roasted a pork loin and we had that with the usual salads, chips, watermelon, etc.

Some of the pictures are here, some are under LB's page (click on her name on the home page for that link), and some are under photos.

Here he is with his favorite playmates from daycare.  One highlight of the day for me, though, was when it was time to eat lunch and he insisted that he sit beside RB to eat.

Below he is sitting on "the bike" that he wanted.  He loves Diego, and wanted a bike, so fortunately they came together.  Then he is blowing out the candles on the cake I made-notice the Spider Man theme to everything.

Here is a short video of Aidan, between parties and before his nap, playing with the party favors from his sistr's party-we broke them out early.