Thursday, March 24, 2016

The Daffodil Festival that Wasn't

This past weekend Junction City had a daffodil festival. I was super excited because they are my favorite flowers, but it just wasn't in the cards. Today the kids and I went for a drive to see if there were any flowers still visible. It was then I realized that I misread all the Facebook promotions. In my mind I pictured fields of even rows laden with yellow blossoms. Then I read the description again and found that it was just a celebration of all the daffodils that sprout in random locations around the roadways. The festival was to celebrate the little bursts of happiness blooming around town.


This was the first time I've left the house by myself with all four kids. It was no joke, I tell you what. Honestly, I am so grateful that the older girls can be so helpful. Now we are just working on having the same definition of the word "help."


I had toyed with telling them all to dress in some coordinated way and then decided to pick my battles and not worry about it. I didn't realize until I saved the pics to the computer that the oldest three are all wearing UO gear. Winning!

 
Tate has yet to understand what it means when I want him to look at the camera... and I think it's just the cutest thing ever. Real life is awesome.


Don't look too closely or you'll see that "real life" includes icing from the chocolate donut daddy bought the little guy for breakfast hours earlier.


A part of me was disappointed that there weren't any large fields of flowers like I'd imagined, but it turned out to be a great morning. The kids were funny running around and since they are not formally groomed flower beds or private property it was less critical when the flowers would get picked. The poor things were browning and bruised before we got home but we have a vase of sunshine on our table and I successfully convinced them that daffodils are the best flower ever. Brainwashing complete.

Monday, March 21, 2016

Baby Girl's Blessing Day

Having a fourth child is really changing my level of dreaming. When T was blessed, I had grand ambitions and they didn't quite get met the way I hoped. This time I was much more realistic and planned, well, nothing. As in we didn't even tell our families that it was happening. Not by choice or premeditation, but more because we were busy and stressed and only remembered very last minute that it was this particular day or not at all. We were waiting until E was here, and before we knew it she was here. So..... yeah. I texted one person after we had it figured out. One. 

Not like us. 


Initially I wanted her to wear the dress my mom made for me as a baby. I was set on it, and then realized that is was not going to fit. We were about the same size at birth, but I was blessed at one month and she was blessed at three so the dress would have cut off her circulation. Clearly, that was not an option. I like her too much to do that.


Several months ago I kept a skirt one of our neighbors passed on to A that I thought was lovely and she wasn't interested in. I decided it would make a lovely blessing dress and made a plan. A simple three seam peasant dress would be fast and let the pattern of the lace shine. Then I decided it would be a good idea to do french seams so there wouldn't be anything rough on baby's skin. Great, but it did take it from a 30 minute project to somewhere a bit longer than that. Of course, other people's 30 minute sewing projects usually take me two hours. It's just not something I do often.


As it was moving along and coming together, my mom's sewing machine stopped working. I suppose it isn't surprising as it's about 50 years old, but since it is solid metal and crazy heavy I just assumed it would last forever. I had also lost the elastic purchased for the neckline and was trying to come up with a game plan for that one. A late night Facebook post begging for a machine to borrow landed me a loaner machine with a little time to spare. Ironically, it belonged to the same person who gave us the skirt. Basically, if it hadn't been for this neighbor our baby girl may have been reduced to wearing a stained onesie and a pair of jeggings.


Jim was baking cookies - which I have chosen to believe was to reduce his wife's stress level. Between consuming those and some caffeine I managed to stay up until it was all finished far too late that night (or was it early morning?). In the end, the dress was lovely, the day was joyous, and we have another little girl who felt thrilled that we waited to do the blessing when she was here visiting. It was a great, simple day. We love our little bug.