Bye, Bye...Busy?

My kid is not in high school, but she scored a part in the kids' chorus in our high school's production of Bye Bye Birdie. I find myself counting down the days until this whole musical goes "Bye Bye". Rehearsal every day this week from 3-7, which means I have to pick her up after school. I also get to drop her off on Thursday and Friday for morning performances and pick her up early Friday. Then there are the four nighttime performances. I'm going to throw a Bye Bye Musical Chaos party Sunday night.

I did manage to get her dress sewn without much problem. I wanted it to be authentic, because I'm insane, so I got an actual pattern from the 50's off ebay. Holy crap. Suffice it to say that I have a whole new knowledge of sewing jargon after trying to follow the damn thing. But, I think the end result is very nice and era-appropriate.

While I was at it, I made this. What the hell is it, you may ask? Well, I read somewhere that you can fuse plastic grocery bags together with an iron and actually use the resulting fabric to make waterproof stuff. So this is a....um....a sandwich bag maybe? I dunno. It worked pretty well, so I have hopes of a funky recycled bag tote bag or something. I feel really bad for the little ones having to be woken up early from naps, drug out in the cold at 7 am, and schlepped all over the county after their sister, so I've been trying to make up for it with fun activities...which is HARD when it's snowing and freezing. We had some fun this week with shaving cream on the fridge, and blottos. Blottos are a super-fun and easy project. But, they're messy, so dress accordingly. Just take a piece of paper (we used cardstock, but construction paper is fine too), drop on some food coloring, and fold it. The resulting blobs come out looking like a million different things. It's hilarious to see what the kids think they are...kind of like finding elephants in the clouds. You can then color on the paper or add stickers, and they make nice cards for dad and grandma.

If you have any sanity vibes handy, send some my way. I could definitely use them the next few days! :-S

Snow Day...AGAIN!

We're fairly sick of winter around here. Today we awoke to yet more white stuff covering the roads and cancelling the schools. It was too cold to go out this morning, but we managed to bundle everyone up for an afternoon outing. I always have fun in the snow with the kids, but it's the preparationg that I find so daunting. Getting two kids into snowsuits, hats, mittens and boots is HARD....getting four ready is, well, twice the pain in the ass. I work up such a sweat wrestling everyone into their gear that I'm surprised I don't catch pneumonia once my body hits the cold air.

I think it was Bodie's first time in the snow, since we usually go out during his nap. He was less than thrilled, as you can tell. The others loved it, though. Suddenly the slide was turned into a rocket launcher :) Once we found the sled (no matter how many times I repeat myself about putting the sled somewhere where it won't get SNOWED on, no one seems to listen) Molly and Owen had a few good runs down the hill. It scares the crap out of me - I can just see someone being propelled all the way into the road.

All in all, a good day, despite the cold. And we capped it off with some really good pork chops on the grill. Did I mention that we're sick of winter?