Told you I would blog again.

So here's the kids with a coconut.  Elena got it into her head that she wanted to eat one. And Leo acquiesced.  

 And here's Elena on the first day of school.

 And on the first day of school after we were caught in the rain on the way home.  Told ya Sebastian has been dressing like a pirate for weeks now.

 Good times, eh?

 Ana, after school on her first day of 8th grade.  She said she was the only one not to dress up at all.  She has since made the B team in volleyball and has practice everyday. She was a little disappointed to have not made the A team, but it's still a step up from C team last year.  Thankfully practice is after school and not before school.

 I really never take pictures of this poor child.

 I'm trying something new, I'm using Adobe bridge to organize my photos and editing them straight on Adobe photoshop. I used to use iPhoto and it was certainly simpler.  I'm not sure I like this way.  These photos are all wacky sizes and it takes quite a bit longer.  And they're still jpegs and I want to store them as tiffs.  But in the long run maybe it will eliminate the things I hated about iPhoto, mostly the lack of organization and ability to change the file name (on the computer, not just within the program.) It was a little depressing to realize I had tagged and changed the names of hundreds of my mom's photos and it didn't actually save the file that way. Any opinions out there, or what do you do to archive and store your photos?

 Nicolas is so funny.  Seriously.

 Here he is going, "MOM!  Stop taking pictures already!"

 And remember how Sebastian slept with a giant book about airplanes?  Well, we have a different creature on our hands now.  The other day Nicolas full on TACKLED Sebastian, after Sebastian took a way a toy he had been playing with.  Granted Sebastian was sitting down at the time, cause Nicolas can't even walk, but Nicolas just threw himself at him and knocked him over.  Poor Sebastian, I have a feeling you won't be teasing your little brother very much.

 In August, I taught an 1.5 hour sewing class for 5 days to Ana and two of her friends from church.  They made a skirt.  I loved the fabric Ana picked out.  She did a good job too, once she slowed down.

 I have been madly sewing on project that has not been going well.  It makes me really upset actually.  I'll post pictures and the whole story later, but anyway, it was so frustrating that I took a break to sew these.  They took about one afternoon.  I've been wanting to make superhero capes for Sebastian for a long time.  And I'm glad I finally did because as you can see by them sleeping with them, the kids love them.  Sebastian is sleeping with the girls now because he always wakes up at night scared and wakes up Nicolas, so we had to separate them.  Plus, Sebastian sleeps fine with the girls because he's not scared with them.

 I used this TUTORIAL to make them, only I made mine as wide as the fabric would go, not the measly 11 inches she suggested.  Also I have a layer of junky plaid flannel (that you can see in the light but not the rest of the time) sandwiched between the fabric, because I bought the cheapest fabric available  at Walmart and I wanted them a little thicker to have a little more stiffness and stand out more.  Then I made the logos? by blowing up the largest image I could find online in photoshop to a 8.5x11 size and printed them out and used that as a template on felt.  Then I just satin stitched around them.  Basic appliqué really.

All the kids have been wearing them constantly.  Well, what else is new?  Leo's leaving all this week to somewhere out in the boonies for a site visit.  Isabel and Sebastian took swimming lessons from my friend Brittney's younger brother, Robert.  He's leaving for the MTC tomorrow.  Isabel can swim now, but it's kind of a shrimp-like swim.  Sebastian half drowned, not once, not twice, but three times and has regressed to full fear of the water.  Oops.  I'm recovering two chairs and have decided that I am NEVER going to do it again.  What a lot of work and I don't even like them that much to begin with.  I just got them practically given to me, and they had been scratched up by cats. My children then began completely tearing them to pieces necessitating either them being recovered or thrown away, and as we have a definite lack of furniture to sit on, I decided to recover them.  My other project that I did complete in August was updating our 72 hour kit and go-bags.  That included updating our will which is good.  Umm, that's all that I've been up to since the computer died.  I had edited our karaoke songs and was about to upload them just before our computer blitzed, but that's when the blitz occurred.  Ruff.  This month--my goal is this month to figure out how to retrieve my unaccessible time machine files and finish blogging about Utah and then upload the karaoke songs.  I'm tired thinking about it. I also am almost done our Christmas shopping.  I love Christmas.
And so goodnight.  Have a great week.  Nicolas can say ball.  The end.