Last Saturday we went to the National Book Festival downtown. I was impressed, and I hope that it continues even after Laura Bush is no longer the First Lady. It will be even better once the kids are a few years older. They're not quite at the age of wanting to stand in line to have their picture taken with Clifford (or the characters from a number of PBS kids shows) or to listen to Katherine Paterson speak or wait in line to have David Shannon autograph their books. The weather was quite warm and very humid - it rained most of the 2 previous days - and we got pretty hot walking so much. Luke did very well walking from the Metro station and back. He got really tired by the time we were sitting on the train going home, but he didn't complain.

I didn't have much opportunity to take pictures since it was just me and the kids (Alec was working) but here's one after we walked from the Metro to the Mall. They were having a "tea time" snack before we went into all the festivities.



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Here's a fun one. This is what happens when you set the table and then go into the kitchen to finish making supper while your 18 month old stays in the dining room. It only took about 1 minute for her to do this with Alec's napkin.

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I finished the book I was making - the one where I try out all my fun new stitches. Here are a few pictures of the finished product, some close-ups of more stitches, and Erin playing with it.

Need to work on getting the strap the right length - it's hard to judge.

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Look who's using a fork!


Successfully (most of the time)!

(By the way, she's eating pancakes with sweet potato in them - a DD recipe that was a hit.)
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Luke and Erin have been fire and ice lately. Erin has been biting a lot more - Luke has a big welt on his back (of all places) where she actually broke skin and she's bitten him in several other places in the last few days, too. He is in her face a lot and I think that's why she bites him - or pinches.

But then they will play nicely and are more cuddly with each other at the same time. Here is Luke hugging Erin after breakfast yesterday.


And here they are on the couch watching Luke's current favorite movie, Larry Boy and the Bad Apple.
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Here's what you get when you clean out a closet you haven't dared to broach in a long time:

That is a grocery bag's worth of train tracks and trains. It was in the closet for at least 2 years.

Luke's favorite has been a ferry boat. It has guard rails on both sides that come up when it pulls into the "dock" pieces.

I keep finding pieces of track that would've been nice to have had all these years. Pieces that make connecting tracks easier and so many more trains to play with.

Here's what it looks like when we combined it with the track we already had. So much track we used the floor instead of the train table. Thankfully, it still all fits in the train table drawers.

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And, lastly, heard in the bathtub tonight. Luke likes to play with bouncy balls if he's alone in the tub (Erin tries to eat them if she's there). It's funny to hear a 3-year-old when he's playing with bouncy balls in the bath.

"My balls are clean now, Mom!"

and later,

"Now my balls are dry, too!"

The new sewing machine

I promised some pictures so here they are. This will be quick - it's a rainy day and Luke wants me to watch "Moe and the Big Exit" with him.

Here's a picture of the machine. It's a Singer Futura CE-250. My favorite feature is the stop needle - you can set it to stop with the needle up or down. It sure makes machine applique a lot easier! I keep finding myself reaching for the fly wheel, though, because I'm not used to it yet.


It has 100 pre-programmed stitches and there is a little pull-out list of them all so you can quick choose the one you want to use.

I've been messing around with the new stitches to see which ones work the best for what I want to do with them. Here are a few samples:





I'm almost finished with that little book and then I can start on the ones I'm making for Emily's roommate - FOR PAY. I didn't want to mess around with something I didn't know about yet on something I was selling. I still have to work on the buttonholes first, though, since I haven't figured out how to place them yet but the automatic buttonholer (with 6 different choices!) is pretty neat and easy to use.

And here's what Alec worked on last week. The lady he's working for right now had a commercial kitchen sink as her wash tub. She wanted to get rid of it because it was bigger than she wanted. Our old one was fiberglass with duct taped holes in the bottom. We knew we would get a new one once we start remodeling so Alec just put this one in now. The price was right and now we won't have to mess with that later!


Time for Moe!

Make Mine Toll House

So I tried the Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from the "Deceptively Delicious" cookbook. Bleah. The kids eat them but I'll stick to something that doesn't have CHICKPEAS in it. Yeah, you read that right. I was skeptical while making them, so maybe that pre-judged my opinion of them, but you really can taste them and I'd just rather not.

Here is a picture of what kids can do with a big sewing machine box. It's like a big kid playpen for Erin because she can't climb out by herself.

Tomorrow I'll post some pictures of the actual machine and some of the things I've been doing with it.