iPhone Halloween Costume Complete!

Update:  Here are my 4 costume-clad little people at 7:45 this morning!

 

I finished it!  I made this iPhone Halloween Costume for my 9 year old son using the idea from here.

So the picture is not great with a shadow and all, but maybe tomorrow I can get a better one of the 9 year old actually wearing it!  LOVED the printable template for 6 of the app icons from the link I mentioned.  They made things super easy to cut out with my felt.  But since I was making a larger size costume, I added 3 more apps for a larger screen area.  Those were considerably harder to create (the 3 on the far left of your screen)!  My husband and kids love the "Plants Versus Zombies" game, so my husband helped me create an icon to match the one from the game to surprise the 9 year old.  He drafted, I cut out and glued on.  It turned out pretty cool, if I do say so myself!

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Halloween Hot Chocolate and Other Fall Fun

Usually in our part of the country it still feels like summertime for Halloween, but this year we had a very nice cold front and it actually feels like fall!

Which led to me inventing Halloween Hot Chocolate:

(Don't be too impressed, it's just regular hot chocolate with whipped cream and then orange and black sprinkles!)

My 7 year old even got to wear her cute, new boots to her friend's birthday party on Saturday!

There was a soccer game with a need for long sleeves under the jersey!

And unrelated to fall but completely reflective of The Chaos, I told the little kids to pack any toys they wanted to take with them to their brother's soccer game.  The 5 year old came down with a suitcase!  We were running late, so I just shrugged my shoulders and let him load it in the car.  But, I had to giggle at the crazy as he rolled it across the field!

There was pumpkin carving complete with a lot of pumpkin goo.

And Little Girl doing her best imitation of the new jack-o-lantern:

I'm loving all the fall fun, and even was inspired (okay, forced because nobody had anything to wear that wasn't too short), to unpack the winter clothes into the kid closets and figure out what fit which child and who needed some new stuff.  BUT, I'm not entirely packing away the shorts yet, it's supposed to be back in the mid-80s here by the end of the week!

How do you explain trick-or-treating?

One day this week I tried to explain trick-or-treating to our little girl adopted from Ethiopia 10 months ago.

Me:  "You dress up in a costume, go to the neighbor's house, knock on the door, when they open the door you say, 'Trick-or-treat!', then they give you candy, and you say, 'Thank you!'"

She laughed and laughed, thought that seemed like the most hilarious thing she'd ever heard!

So, yes, Lil' Pumpkin as you've figured out a million times over, Americans are weird!

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In other Halloween related news, for some reason that I can't remember right now, I showed my 9 year old this idea for making an iphone Halloween costume.  He was completely sold and excited about it!  So guess what we'll be making over the weekend (only not for a baby, but for a 9 year old)?

 

                                    Source: eatsleepmake.com 

I hope it's not too disastrous and of course we had to wait until the last minute!

At least I had the huge win of talking my 7 year old daughter into wearing the Dorothy costume again this year, (The one I sewed from scratch last year, and purposely made big because it was so much trouble I wanted years of wear out of it!).  She just needed some bigger ruby slippers and she was set.   Like last year, it was the allure of getting to take a stuffed dog "Toto" to school in a little basket on the Halloween parade day that won her over!

And the younger kids were happy to pick out a costume we already had from our costume bin!

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We will not be giving out the typical snack-sized chocolate candy bars this Halloween.  Now that we've learned more about the issue, the tie between candy bar makers and child slavery in Africa is just too horrific.  And it seems all the big names in candy are suspect or guilty.  So, it's small, organic, fair-trade chocolates for our trick-or-treaters.  If you'd like more info. about the tie between chocolate and forced child labor,  this post from Kristen Howerton is excellent.

I am ashamed that it took us having a daughter from Africa before we became more interested in issues like these.  It should have mattered before, too!

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Happy Friday, Friends!

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Those Two!

My youngest two children are only about 18 months apart in age, currently 5 and 4 years old.  They were as thick as thieves all last spring after Little Girl came home from Ethiopia because the bigger kids were in elementary school and the littles had precious time just the two of them.  But over the summer there was a lot of the boys playing together and the girls playing together and then my 5 year old joined his big brother and sister at elementary school this fall.

I was beginning to worry that the sweet friendship between my youngest two children had faded, but they've hit their stride again.  Lately they've been scurrying up to the playroom for their own adventures while the two oldest kids are busy with homework!

I'm trying to focus on how much I love that they are playing together, because together those two are quite the mess-makers!  Last night I refused to give them dessert after dinner until they'd cleaned up all the messes they'd made in the playroom.

Those two are double trouble for sure!  But, oh my at the cute!  And the loud!  Those two are my two loudest children and you put them together?  Well, just be glad I'm only posting photos of those two and not videos!

He Rides!

I had this post a few weeks ago where I talked about how my husband and I would sometimes sit up late at night and say, "Wow, we have totally failed as parents! We are incapable of teaching our kids to ride bikes without training wheels!"  And then finally our 7 year old daughter learned to ride, which made us feel tons better, but there were still 3 other children to teach.

Well now we have achieved 50% of our kids riding a 2 wheeled bike!

The 9 year old figured it out a couple weeks ago after a very frustrating 60 minutes out in our driveway that aged my husband and me by at least 5 years.  At least!

His desire to learn lasted for about the first 45 seconds.  But we would not let him quit.  There is a time as a parent to push your kids and a time to back off.  I think we get that judgement call wrong pretty often, but this time it was obvious that we couldn't let fear win.  The cost was far higher than just him not being able to ride a bike.  I could see the future holding many hard things our oldest would need to do, things that would be scary at first but in the end he'd be so glad he did, like going away to college or the first day of his first real job.

I let about a week pass and then when he was so excited to get his homework finished to go out and ride his bike, I casually asked, "So, are you glad now that your Dad and I forced (and it was forced) you to learn how to ride?"  He could actually say, "Yes!"

Imagine that, sometimes Mom and Dad really DO know best!


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Little Girl Turns 4!

Celebrating a 4th birthday with a child who has never before had their birthday celebrated is something special!

I first had this experience about 8 years ago on a case as a volunteer advocate for kids in CPS custody.  The little girl's foster mom and I planned a small party for her at the foster mom's house with cake, balloons, and some neighborhood kids.  Due to circumstances in the home she was removed from, the little girl had never had a birthday celebration before.  The way she lit up over the modest cake and candles, the way she was so very incredulous that the balloons were for her!  I will never, never forget it.

Little did I know back then, that there would be a day about 8 years later that I'd be celebrating another very special little girl turning four who had never had her birthday recognized before, my daughter home from Ethiopia 10 months!

Our Little Girl turned 4 years old on Saturday!  And her excitement over it all was huge!  She knew it was HER day and ate up every bit of it!

Sweet Little Girl,

We were so thankful to be able to celebrate this day with you.  Last year we were so sad to have met you, to know it was your birthday, yet not be able to be together with you when you turned 3, but God comforted us with the amazing news we got on your exact 3rd birthday that we had officially passed court in Ethiopia and were legally your family!!  We vowed that it was the final year.  That never again would your birthday pass by just as any other day.  Forevermore we would make sure you knew how loved and special and precious you were!

Your face radiates joy, just like in that picture, every single day.  You are spunky and loving and feisty and sweet and loud and bossy and athletic and smart and active and amazing and really larger than life!  It is a privilege to be your family!  God created you and He has watched over you every second since.  He has already done tremendous things in your life and we can only imagine what else He has planned for your story!  Now that we can be, we will be loving you and cheering you on every step of the way!

Much love,
Your forever family


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Not so much a week in review

-This is really going to be short this time because I'm tired!

-It has been such a busy week that right now I literally don't remember what happened early in the week, so this little week in review is really just focusing on today.

-Amid a variety of other activities today, we did family pictures with a photographer.  Four kids plus trying to get good pictures taken is an Olympic event!  It really should have had it's own day, or maybe it's own week so I'd have time to recover!

-Did I mention the photographer had us meet her at this really pretty location, but it had all these decorative water fountains?  We keep chasing the kids away from walking right on the edge, but they were super drawn to the fountains and I was sure one of the four kids would go in before the photo shoot was over with.  Thankfully nobody did, Little Girl just stuck her arm in once.

-I didn't realize my boys' hair was a little long for the pictures until the night before.  Because I'm completely nuts, I attempted a little home trim with my husband's electric razor, you know just to clean things up a little on the sides.  Not quite disaster, but close.  The boys kept moving at the wrong moments and then I couldn't get the sideburns even, so they just got shorter and shorter! 

-And I convinced my 9 year old to wear shoes that were too small for the pictures because I haven't gotten his fall dress shoes yet (the boys are still wearing brown leather sandals to church in our tropical climate), so he wore last year's. 

-I'm going on a kindergarten field trip to the fire station with my son's class in the morning, so off to bed I go!

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