Isabel and the finished Red Dress

Isabel told me the other day that I was "THE BEST COOK IN THE WHOLE WORLD!" after I made Raman noodle soup for lunch. Umm, glad I can boil water.
When I went through the clothes in storage the other day I found cowboy boots for Sebastian. This immediately led to tears and wailing from Isabel because she's the only one without cowboy boots. I guess since we're moving to Texas, we should get her some, eh?
And this is my finished maternity dress. What do you think? Leo loves it. And I can wear my red shoes, so I'm happy.
It wasn't as simple as it looks because I had to make a ton of adjustments. See, these are my redrawn adjusted pattern pieces that I made.Amazingly the adjustments all worked. I used this book as a guide. I highly recommend it. Here's the adjustments I made:

• Increased the bust to size 38.
  
• Added 2 1/2 inches to the bodice because I'm horribly long waisted (19 inches neck to waist measurement).
• Added a 1/2 inch to the shoulders since I'm broad shouldered too.
  
• Lowered the bust dart.
• Made a 1" FBA.
• Added 4" to the length of the skirt
• Changed the pointy 70's collar to more of a Peter Pan type collar.
  

Oh, and my invisible zipper, didn't turn out to be so invisible. But it's nice and neat, so that's all right.

Sebas

Guess what?

We are moving here next month. Yep.
To Houston.
Which is pretty nice since the temple is only about 35 mins from Leo's new job.

And they have a soccer team. But don't think we're switching loyalties. Not the slightest.
No, no, we'll just go when they play Real Salt Lake, and then we'll be cheering for Real. :)

• So here's a few random facts from the Lone Star State.Although six flags have flown over Texas, there have been eight changes of government: Spanish 1519-1685, French 1685-1690, Spanish 1690-1821, Mexican 1821-1836, Republic of Texas 1836-1845, United States 1845-1861, Confederate States 1861-1865, United States 1865-present
• The King Ranch in Texas is bigger than the state of Rhode Island.
• More wool comes from the state of Texas than any other state in the United States.
• Texas is the largest petroleum-producing state in the U.S. and if it were an independent nation, it would rank as the world’s 5th largest petroleum-producing nation. Only 34 of Texas’ 254 counties have no known natural gas within their boundaries. However, no major wells have been discovered for a half-century or more.

• 
• The state's cattle population is estimated to be near 16 million.
• The armadillo is the official state mammal.
• El Paso is closer to Needles, California than it is to Dallas.
• 
• Texas has 15 kinds of rattlesnakes.
• More than five thousand wildflower species grow in Texas
  

• Texas has only one natural lake.
• At 268,601 square miles, Texas is the largest state in the contiguous United States and is the second biggest state in the U.S. (only Alaska is bigger). Texas is larger than many nations of the world, including every country in Europe. If it were a country, it would be the 40th largest country in the world, after Chile and Zambia.

The end.

La dee da.

The kids playing with our neighbors. This was right before Joshua wrestled Elena to the ground. Good times. They were all playing puppies and he was a particularly ferocious puppy.
Out enjoying the sunshine yesterday. It was beautiful weather!!! Today there's snow on the ground. It might be only the middle of February, but I'm ready for spring.
Mine and Natalie's kids (the neighbors). They go 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 8 months, and I'm pregnant. We planned that well, didn't we?

Silly cheesers.The mess in the girls room.
Why all the dress up clothes were out. I had been taking a nap, and when I woke up, I checked on all the kids but I couldn't find Isabel. I asked Elena and she led me here, and when I took off the lid of the toy box, sure enough, there was Isabel, fast asleep.

Ummm. Silly boy.
The red dress I'm making. I'm actually almost finished. But exhaustion curbed my attempt to finish it last night.
This is the dress I started sewing last February and never finished due to it making me look unfalteringly fat and pregnant. But now I am fat and pregnant, so I'm going finish it. Isabel loves this dress. I think because the lining is silky.

And these are the wheels I think my dad should deck his car out with. Sah-weet. Hee. Hee.

And in other news my sister is leaving for Morocco today since I've always wanted to go there--since I was five I swear! I'm a tad bit jealous, but I've mostly recovered from that and now I'm just super excited to see all the cool pictures she will take. And she promised to buy me something awesome. And that is all, I must go make dinner now.

This Month

This month I entered this contest. I making one of those maternity dresses in red. Here's hoping it turns out!

Other projects this month include: Filling in info on Colombia on Family Search Wiki, making cinnamon rolls, writing out a list of questions and then calling this guy down in Colombia who works for Family Search--hopefully he can answer all my questions about where Colombian civil registries are located!, digitizing a bunch of my mom's photos, and last and somewhat forgotten, doing research for my class.

Yes, I know it's almost halfway through the month, but I finally feel alive again!

For Kayli and Andrea

Today I drug out the huge gallon-sized bag of half-melted crayons that I've had for the last two years--actually some of those crayons I've had since at least 6th grade if not earlier. They melted on the driveway in the bag the first summer we lived here. I don't throw art supplies away, even if they are just crayons because I figured I'd do something with them someday. And today was the day. Anyway, I dug them out of my craft box for the kids and then gave myself a huge blister making pink and red crayon shavings. We then melted them between wax paper, cut them into hearts and hung them up in our window for Valentine's Day. They look really cute, mostly because I only let the kids sit at the table while I did all the work. (Yes, this is why I don't do crafts with my kids more often.) Then I unwrapped the rest of the crayons and melted them down in my muffin tin to make these. Other than that, I babysat today, managed to exercise, changed the sheets on my bed, took the kids to the Bean museum where they petted a live python and Isabel fell on her head on a hard concrete floor, and went grocery shopping to Sam's Club where Isabel proclaimed that I was the "Best Mom Ever!" because I bought Edamame beans. Umm, yeah. And because I have Pinterest, but never use it, here's the link to the Crayon Hearts.

In other news, Kayli wanted to know what instruments I bought in Colombia. So here they are.

Some percussion instrument made from a gourd.
Native flute thing with cool design.
Ah no, freaky Scream face design on the other side.
12-stringed guitar.
Pan flute.
Maracas.
And what Leo calls our Voodoo Magic Rattle. In actual truth, he didn't remember the name of a single instrument except the maracas, although I know he's told me the names before.

Also for my dear sister Andrea who doesn't Facebook, here's a few recent posts:

Elena doesn't like the boy who I carpool every other week because she thinks he talks too much. So today she was really upset when I went to pick up Ana from school and she begged for me to just take her home "really quick." I told her no. So she hid under a blanket the entire time he was in the car. Ana and I were laughing so hard! When Ana asked her if she wanted a potato chip, she stuck out one hand, and that was it. What a goof.

At dinner tonight:
Elena, "What kind of meat is this?"
Me, "Steak, it comes from a cow."
Isabel (very loudly and enthusiastically) "This cow is YUMMY!!!!"

My two little girls are still awake and it's 11:30 at night. They are apparently putting on a play in their room, and Elena said to Leo that they couldn't possibly do it tomorrow because she might forget the lines. We went to see a short kid's version of the Merchant of Venice today at BYU and I think that's inspired all of this.

The other day instead of taking his nap, Sebastian crawled out of his crib and up on my shelf with all my crafting/sewing/pictures-needing-scrapbooking/etc on it and started destroying things. When I found him I said very sternly, "You are in BIG trouble!!!!" (I meant it too.) Then Sebastian said, "Otay, mommy." And then he was in significantly less trouble. How do little boys manage to so completely win over their mothers?

RootsTech

So this is where I spent today. And last night. Last night I volunteered for a shift helping register people in and in return I was able to attend for free! Yeah for me! It wasn't too bad volunteering either, I met people from all over the world, including a couple who live down the street from my Aunt and Uncle in Stirling, AB, Canada. Funny, eh? Especially since there are over 4,200 people in attendance. I got a free t-shirt and the guys running it bought us all a Crown Burger with fries and delicious chocolate shake. Yum.

Today, I didn't feel it necessary to wake up extremely early to get there in time for the keynote speaker, so I arrived in good time for the first seminar (11 AM). Yes, I like my sleep.

And well, the seminars I attended were so-so. One was just a website the guy made with random tools, genealogical tools for the most part, but also tools like one that automatically snipes for you on Ebay. Umm, yeah. Cool, but not that useful to me. The next I kind-of slept through. It was about restoring documents using multi-spectrum photography. Again, cool that they can take charred and blackened documents that suffered damage in WWII bombings and produce photos that are readable. However, completely useless to me since I can't afford the $$$$$$$ equipment. I thought it was going to be more along the lines of using photoshop. And the next two were about umm....creating a blog that looks like a webpage (there was NOTHING else appealing that hour). Yeah, I got that down, and another about "Creating Interactive Family Histories." It was all right.

Really, my greatest find of the whole day was this:

I now know what I want for Christmas. Ahhhh, sigh. It was love at first sight. What a beautiful little thing it is. A mobile scanner, about the size of an iPad. Next time I go to Colombia, I am taking this with me. Hopefully, the next time we go to visit any of his relatives, I have this with me. It works way better than a camera because you don't have to worry about lighting, tripod, etc., which was what I had been taking with me on my next trip until I saw this beauty.

The other thing I found that was so tempting, was the DNA testing. I would love to have Leo Y-DNA tested and mtDNA tested. And autosomal DNA tested.

I think it would be fascinating. I don't think my own would be that fascinating because I know a lot about my genealogy already. But Leo, that would give us an idea if he's Spanish descent (okay more than likely) but also some native tribe or Italian or I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't be that cool, but honestly, DNA is just fascinating altogether, even if it didn't tell us much.

Hopefully the seminars are better tomorrow. But I will say this, it did certainly increase my enthusiasm to start working on some family history projects that have been shelved for a while. My many, many projects. :)