We said goodbye to Germany this week. We had a really wonderful vacation this year and the boys were particularly sad to have to leave their grandparents' special little place in the world. Here are a few photos from our last days in the land of oma and umlauts.

Wee one played some soccer at a village festival. She looked like a natural! Out of all the kids, she seems the most German to me. She started talking while we were visiting last Christmas (just waiting for us to really speak German), she loves being outside in the "fresh" air (and when the Germans say fresh, they really mean cold), and she happily pointed to all kinds of crazy meats and cheeses on the breakfast table and said "try dat?". And yesterday, back home, when another child wanted to play catch with her, she refused to use her hands, instinctively let the ball drop and started kicking it.

The boys in perfect synch in a three-legged race. You gotta bet on twins in a three-legged race! They had so much fun at the festival, participating in the team games organized for the kids. I was so proud of how they dove right in to play with other kids besides their cousins and talk with other folks besides Oma & Opa. I think they're starting to feel at home in Germany and I know it makes their grandparents as proud as it makes me.

Americans eating "Americans" (a German black/white cookie). We brought home a ton of the kids' favorite German treats like Leibniz cookies, Kinder Riegel, Lachgummis and over a dozen Überraschungseier I packed in German egg cartons (although, oddly, eggs come in boxes of 10 and not 12 over there - now that's taking the metric system a little too far in my opinion)!

Wee helped pack by putting her five favorite things in a basket and carrying that around for three hours saying "time to go? time to go? time to go?" While I was trying to cram a score of new books and presents and clothes into the suitcases, she was carefully protecting her basket with her two "lipsticks" (chapsticks), a hershey kiss, a tiny pink play cell phone and a palm-sized plastic gag spider (she stole that one from B).

The boys have got this traveling thing down. With almost twenty cross-Atlantic flights behind them, they aren't phased by it at all. In the plane, they got out their headphones and watched their shows, they made everyone shuffle all their trays around cause they had to pee right when the dinner service started (don't you hate it when that happens!) and they looked just as miserable when they couldn't sleep as any adult.

Hubby was fingerprinted and photographed at entry (why do we treat all non-citizens like criminals?) and we rode home "to my house," as wee one kept repeating in the car, tired but happy to be back.

Third grade this year! I decided to try to to start a little tradition of taking goofy first-day pictures in odd years. This morning I got this.

So glad they're not yet too old to be silly.

1. stop staying up late reading and start knitting again

I have got some kind of wicked vacation hangover. All I want to do is put my feet up and read really crappy novels.

saw this at the used bookstore yesterday and was so tempted - the true sign that you haven't given up summer yet!

In the meantime, my candy stripe jacket (in the deliciously yummy red cashmere!) is waiting, as is wee's orange buttercup baby jacket. Come on, Alison, snap out of it!

2. remove piles of crap from sewing corner and sew, sew, sew

I can just barely glimpse my sewing machine under abandoned quilts, half sewn summer things and souvenirs from Germany. I've got to clean up and get working on fall things.

Oliver & S Jump Rope Dress

Like this brand spanking new Oliver & S pattern that is winging its way to me right now.

3. rev up the Halloween machine

With only six weeks to go, it's time to get going on the kiddos' Halloween costumes! This year wee said she wanted to be a blue butterfly.

Simplicity pattern 3594

And the still wii-obsessed boys have demanded to be Mario and Wario. They don't ask much, do they?

After close examination of the pictures the boys gave me of Mario and Wario, I see that their Halloween costumes will have to include regular shirts (conveniently in their favorite colors), white gloves, funny bright-colored overalls, cool hats (again in their favorite colors - I'm beginning to suspect this lies behind their choice) and mustaches. I've decided to make at least the overalls.

And at Joann's this weekend I found fabric in the exact right colors! I even found the silly big buttons. There are no overall patterns to speak of (wonder why? doesn't your kid want homemade overalls?) so I'll be converting the pants pattern for B's batman costume from last year to a serviceable overall pattern for this year. I'm even gonna try to make B's a little wider so we can stuff some newspaper or something in there to give him that real round Wario look. But, oh man, I just know he's gonna ask for freaky green slippers too!

Wee's request to be a blue butterfly has got me on a bit of a blue kick. When I first asked her what color butterfly she wanted to be, I waited a beat then suggested, expectantly, "pink?" She thought for another few seconds and answered, "no, blue!"

So I picked out some sparkly blue satin for the butterfly jumpsuit, some fabulous sequined sheers for the wings, and sequins and lace for trim. Having only really sewn boy costumes so far, I've never worked with fabrics and embellishments like these before. It's a whole new world for me. It'll be a little "tricksy," as wee one says, but it'll be beautiful and blue in the end.

Continuing the trend, the fabric for wee's soon-to-be-sewn jump rope dress (pattern from Oliver & S) is also blue. I've loved this fabric line from Project Runway winner, Jay McCarroll, for a long time and am so excited to have found a good project for it. The colors in the line are a little psychedelic for a whole quilt, but I think this one print in this simple dress could be classy and fun at the same time. Those funky shrooms are a riot but, overall, the dress will of course be beautiful and blue.

Okay, I admit it: being the mom of two third graders is exhausting! I feel like I spent the whole of last week rushing from one thing to another: school, playdates, home for homework, off to swimming, and then little league, little league and, after that, a little more little league. In my few free waking hours, I kept myself busy, jump roping.

Wee one's jump rope dress (Oliver & S pattern) is almost done! The subtle a-line dress pattern is filled with all the usual fine detailing and tailoring that I've come to expect from the Oliver & S patterns. They take more time and care to put together, but, man, are they worth it. Check out the snazzy collar and placket on this one.

That took like three pages of directions. The placket is pretty darn clever and not too difficult. The collar, however, was tricksy. I didn't do it exactly right, but it'll pass once it gets its edgestitching. I got mega lucky with the mushroom print on the placket though. Two tiny mushrooms fell perfectly at the bottom and in the center of the top-stitching detail.

Cool, huh?

While I was sewing up her jump rope dress, wee one was jump roping too.

she tends to jump at the wrong time - you can see her mii face-down next to the word "miss"

The boys have introduced her to our new favorite wii games, Active Life Outdoor Challenge, including her favorites: jump rope and log jumping. As long as she can jump!