{Forgotten} Halloween Fun!

I tell ya, it's crazy that with Thanksgiving on the brain, I realized I completely forgot to share the dumplings Halloween fun.  So while everyone is chowing down on turkey and all the fixings, I'm backing up to the last holiday.  I wouldn't be so insistent on sharing these (old) photos if it weren't for the handmade costumes that were worn.  Although Havi had two adorable costumes to chose from- Minnie Mouse or Snow White, she chose to wear a petticoat.  Oh well, that's better than last year when she refused to wear a costume at all.

 Although Madeline was Sleeping Beauty at our church's trunk-or-treat, she opted to wear the flamenco dancer costume I made her two years ago.  I made it as long as I possibly could.  So thankfully, the length still worked, two years later.

 Caleb took me up on my suggestion that he be a tennis ball.  And since I waited until the week before Halloween to begin making his costume, I couldn't use a pattern.  Instead I found a tutorial online for making a ball shaped costume for a toddler and then made adjustments to all the pattern pieces to fit Caleb specifically.  It's constructed completely of felt and stuffed with fiber fill.

 Caleb has taken to posing while resting his arm on Havi's head.  The cutest!  Anyway, the dumplings did a little bit of trick-or-treating before the sun completely set.  (In the photo below, you can see the back of Caleb's tennis ball costume.)

The kids all had so much fun going door-to-door for all that junk, which I'm happy to say they consumed at a leisurely pace and have now lost interest in all that remains (which was most of it!)

Well, this past Sunday we celebrated Havi's 3rd birthday.  And I did manage to capture a few photos of the birthday girl and her mini cake.  We had planned on going camping this year for Thanksgiving, but unfortunately our friends going with us had to cancel at the last minute.  So we decided to stay home.  Patrick will be deep frying our turkey, and I will be whipping up some tasty dishes to accompany it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Gobble!  Gobble!

A low-key birthday

By the time Madeline's actual birthday rolled around this year, she had already been to Disney and had a party.  So we decided on the actual day, we would keep things a bit low-key.  While Patrick ran some errands in the morning, I snapped a few photos of the dumplings together.  Madeline is sporting a new top I made her.  My sister picked up this gorgeous Amy Butler and Sandi Henderson fabric for me *cough cough* a long time ago.  Thankfully the pattern I wanted to use it for called for the same yardage for the next size up.  I adore this pattern, as does Madeline...for its twirl power.

Once Patrick returned home, it was time to head out to lunch at one of his favorite-y favorite spots on the beach.  Being the homeschooling mama that I am, I try to get the kids to read in the car whenever possible.  Since we were going on two straight days of no school (the kids were sick the day before), I had Madeline read to me while we drove to the restaurant.  I think she preferred playing with her gum.

We ended up getting to the restaurant later than we wanted to. Our timing couldn't have been better though, as a table opened up by the window.  I know you can't see it in the images below because I was exposing the images for Madeline and not the background.  However, the ocean was right outside the window.  Although it was rainy, the view was still hard to beat.

Once we wrapped up lunch, we headed over to my favorite cupcake shop.  The dumplings picked out some candy while Patrick picked out a bunch of cupcakes.  I had wanted to make Madeline some cupcakes and a mini cake for her birthday, but I was also feeling under the weather the day before.  So I had to scratch that idea.

After finally making it home for some downtime and dinner, we regrouped and headed back out to the one place Madeline had been asking for all.day.  Chuck-E-Cheese.  The two of them couldn't stop smiling.  They had a fabulous time.  I didn't drag my big girl camera with me, though I did snap a few shots with my iPhone that I will have to share if I ever get around to doing an iPhone post.

Anyway, I just can't believe our girl is 5 years old.  It's hard to believe that three years ago, we were experiencing quite the adoption paperwork rollercoaster.  Wow.  I don't ever want to go through that again, thankyouverymuch!

Happy 5th birthday, for the umpteenth time Mei Mei Mooster!
We love you like crazycakes!

She's at it again...and an update

Let's just say that 2013 is starting off with a bang for Madeline.  This little girl of ours is bound and determined to do it all.  Last month, she learned to ride a bike without training wheels.  Last week, she declared to me that she learned how to hula hoop.  And to my surprise, when I walked outside to said hula hoop, she was hula hooping!  You may recall the photos I took of the dumplings hula hooping at the Winter Carnival.  Caleb was hula hooping then; Madeline was faking it. lol.  Now, she no longer has to fake it.  

And if learning to hula hoop wasn't enough, she has learned to tie shoes!  As with Caleb, I had Madeline tie my shoe when learning because adult laces are longer and, therefore, easier to work with.  She's had the first part down for a while, and she has watched me tying my shoe one-handed.  (I figured I'd better learn how to do it myself one-handed if I was supposed to show her how to do it one-handed.)  Well, she found her own way of doing it!

This was her very first time tying it by herself.  I wasn't even sure she was going to do it because she did it completely different than what I had just shown her. But she did it!  After she ran off to play, I watched the video several more times so I could see exactly what she did.  Then I figured out a way to tweak her version to make it easier.  Instead of holding the loop in her left arm, she now just pins the loop down with her left arm so she can take the other lace around.  Also, she generally uses her left arm to help make the criss cross and pull the laces tight.  She was just being a bit silly using her toes because she knows she can't tie both shoes that way.  Stubborn and silly.  That's Madeline!

Oh, and one more thing....she's reading!  She's still working through Webster's syllabary and using the Writing Road to Reading phonogram cards to learn all the multi letter phonograms.  But  we've now added the McGuffey Primer and the Abeka K readers to the line up. She's something else, I tell ya!

Well, the reasons I have been MIA from bloggy land lately are many.  We are in the process of updating our home study for Havi, which has required me to collect a long list of documents (like practically all of the documents we needed for the original homestudy, with some of them needing to be updated.)  We finally sent that off to our agency this week and hope to get this update completed before our LOA arrives.  Our hope is to submit our Supplement 3 along with our I-800.  And we're hoping and praying that our Supplement 3 will be ready and waiting for our LOA to arrive and NOT the other way around.  I'm dreading the idea that this update might delay this part of the process for us, and that might mean bringing Havi home in July rather than June.  I soooo want to go in June.  *sigh*

And speaking of the little peanut, I have been busy sewing for her.  Prior to bringing Madeline home from China, I had the privilege of my niece Leah trying on new garments because she was/is just 5 months older than Madeline.  Well, my nephew Josh is also 5 months older than Havi, and I've already hit him up with a cute little romper.  My sister and brother-in-law are being such good sports and helping this mama out. lol. But unlike with Leah, I will NOT be photographing Josh wearing Havi's clothes!  I will, however, have to take some photos of the garments so I can share them here on the blog.

We are also preparing for a few special visitors who will be heading down here next week from Connecticut to help Madeline with an early birthday celebration.  We're looking forward to seeing Aunt Shell and Lydia!!!!  And we apologize in advance that the weather won't be bringing its A game.  But hopefully it will still be warmer than the winter you've had to endure this season.

I also haven't had much time lately to take any photos with my big girl camera.  So I just might have to whip up an iPhone photo bomb or post some older recents shots I've stumbled across.  I'll see what I can get around to...if I can pry my fingers away from my sewing machine.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Costumes and candy

This week the dumplings had a couple of opportunities to dress up and indulge in some candy eating.  Madeline's dance class had the chance to dress up during class this week.  I'm so glad they let us back there to snap a group photo.  Although she's partially hidden by sweet little pirate in front, you can see that she is a...drumroll please... Flamenco dancer.

I used McCalls 6418 to make the dress.

It really came together easily, although I didn't care for the zipper instructions.  So I just inserted it the way I wanted to.  It has three gathered layers for a lot of twirl power.  Gosh, I do love to sew for her.

Okay, back to the festivities...both kids had the opportunity to fill their bags with candy at our church's trunk or treat.  Caleb wanted to be an astronaut this year.  He loves to study science, so I'm not at all surprised by his costume choice.

Since it takes a long time to make your way through the line of trunks, we brought the stroller along.  Madeline was so funny getting her dress pulled up so she could sit comfortably. She's wearing six yards of fabric!

Madeline graciously let her brother rest in the stroller at times.  He's not a big gum chewer, but he thought he might chew some while he was waiting to move on to the next car.

Lollilops, of course, are never far from Madeline's mouth.  

Another favorite around these parts are Starbursts.  So we had some pretty happy kids.

And then after all the trunk or treating was over, the kids hit the bounce houses.  We actually packed a change of clothes for Madeline in case she couldn't bounce in her dress, but she did a fabulous job holding it up.  No wardrobe change was necessary.

Then it was time to head home.

And dig through each others bags at least one more time, looking for pieces to trade.

And there she goes again with another lollipop and her "I'm gonna look at my brother and pose" pose.

On Halloween night, we headed over to our friends' neighborhood to trick or treat with them.  This is how they passed out candy.

And here's our little candy eating crew.  The three big kids headed one way and the four little ones another.

The kids had a great time going door to door.  While a lot of people sat on their front porches passing candy out, some of them stayed inside and waited for little ones to ring the bell or knock. Well, Miss Madeline was so very eager to ring that bell.  She was too funny.

For more fun photos, stop by Lisa's blog.
Have a great weekend!!!