I'm tweeting through election day. I just signed up on Twitter the other day and am taking this opportunity to see what all the fuss is about. And I need something to keep me busy today. Follow along....

Oh yes, the boys have the day off from school. According to our school district it's a "day of low attendance" (due to Rosh Hashanah), so they just give us the day off. Which means moms like me are looking for something to do with their kids all day. Today, we chose the aquarium. (Gotta come up with something for next Thursday....)

wee one said "oooohhhh" each time she spotted a fish

Despite the fact that the boys have only been in school for a total of 6 hours in the last 4 days and have been trapped inside because of the rain most of the other hours, I did manage to restart the ill-fated baby shedir hat.

It fits now and I'm loving the cables, so I'm not even going to go back and fix that little goof in the cable near the beginning (please tell me you can't see it!).

Man, could I use a day off.

After I told them to turn the tv off, they set up a 52-card game of Card Sharks in their room. I heard them upstairs yelling "lower than the Queen, higher than the five..." just like in the real show.

Oh, please let this rain stop so we can go outside again.

Less than a week of school and I've already got one boy home sick with a stomach bug. He woke up twice in the night to throw up, poor little guy, so he's gonna spend the day relaxing and watching Nick Jr. (because the pre-school shows are "kinda funny" he says). To make matters worse, boy #2 woke up crying this morning because the tooth fairy forgot to come. I'm ashamed to say that this is not her first time forgetting. Or her second. It's unbelievable what a terrible tooth fairy we've got here. She totally sucks and so needs to be fired. I'm thinking that if she forgets again, we're going to tell the boys that they can just give their teeth to us and we'll give them two bucks. (wink.) But for now, we've hung a big sign on the boys' door to help the tooth fairy find her way to us.

The tooth fairy may have been distracted by my poofy-sleeved Rebecca sweater. Check this out:

This is is the front piece, knit up to the beginning of the armhole/yoke. Now look at how wide the sleeve is in comparison! Yikers.

Between having the boy at home today and me trying to flag down the tooth fairy, there won't be much free time for me to knit any more on the crazy sleeve, but there may still be some crafting. When he's feeling up to it, we'll spend some time working on his homework for this week: a collage about himself. Can you believe it, I found all these pictures in the blog archives!

recipe for a sick day: collaging and watching Nick Jr.

TrundleBot waits

Last night's game of RoboRally had to be paused on account of it being 9pm and way past bedtime. I could only get the boys away from the table if I promised to snap pictures of the game as we left it so we could set it up again and continue it today. B's TrundleBot (above) is way ahead, but S and I still have hopes of getting our little robots all the way through the maze of conveyor belts and lasers safely.

the factory floor where the robots race!

After putting the game away, I got to work on this.

wtf is that?

Also awaiting their continuation are the boys' lion and tiger toys. (Started last August. Progress made in January. Forgotten until now. Heh, heh. The last time I worked on and blogged about these, I joked that they probably wouldn't be done until July. Whoops. That's not going to happen.) Anyhoo, these little buggers are pretty complex, with shoe uppers and intarsia tummy patches and separate face muzzles (also with intarsia, natch). The yellow bit above is the head. That long flap folds down, then you flip it over, fold the sides in, sew the muzzle on and it's supposed to be an animal face.

Ya-huh. Now you can see why I'm always taking month-long breaks from this project. Thank goodness the boys are more anxious to get back to the robots than they are to have the stuffed animals!

The boys had their birthday party over the weekend - a pool party!

They had 17 little friends join them for swimming, pizza and cake. So now we've got about 17 cool presents to play with all day, every day. Yesterday it was Monopoly.

I had forgotten what a long game Monopoly was! By the time wee one's nap was over, I'd totally missed my chance to blog. But I did own Fenway Park and Times Square (the new dark blue properties on the board). I've been taking pictures of the boys as they play with each of their new toys so we can make goofy thank you cards to send to their friends.

Zoomorphs

stream machines

Tomorrow, back to knitting....

My lys has this old Fisher Price dollhouse for kids to play with that I totally remember from my childhood. I didn't have one, but I'm beginning to think that I must have wanted one. It's a great sturdy toy for the kids who come into the store and after playing with it (and customers' kids) for a couple of years, I kinda decided that if I ever had a girl, I'd find one for her. Now I have my girl and so now I have my dollhouse.

After trolling ebay for a few months, I found this one, complete will all the little people and little furniture bits. And then I couldn't resist getting this additional accessory for it.

It's a grandma with a sewing machine! I really like having the kids' toys and books include my hobbies. Seeing someone knit in Goodnight Moon or Book! or Ivy and Bean makes me hopeful that my kids won't grow up thinking I'm a total freak. (Even though searching online for a vintage Fisher Price Little People sewing machine does kinda qualify.)

Yesterday, for an early birthday present, I took the boys to their very first ballgame at Fenway Park. The Red Sox vs. the Twins. The Twins - how perfect! They were so excited. And so was I!

The boys wanted to make a sign to hold up between innings, in the hopes of maybe making it on tv. The game was much too interesting for the tv crew to be picking folks out of the crowd though. There were a lot of hits and a lot of runs, but still it stayed close for the first six innings. Then came the seventh....

bases loaded - look for Tek's red socks on second base!

In the seventh, we loaded the bases and scored a total of 7 runs, turning the game into a bit of a blowout. But if you're a 7-year old boy and your team is doing the blowing out, it's awesome!

If I zoom in on the green monster in the back, you can almost see the final score of 18-5.

I live for this.

It's the last day of first grade! The boys' classes celebrated with "First Grade Olympics", including:

the long jump

the shuttle run

badminton

and soccer

I sewed my first blocks for the civil war sampler, including:

"Lincoln's Platform" block

"Underground Railroad" block

And did the last bit of embroidery on wee one's bonbon sweater, including lilac and still that red (love that red!):

I think I finally got a good picture of the red here.

It's the first day of summer and the last day that I'll have time to take a shower and sit and write a post like this until September. Yikes!

Well, it's a cool rainy day here, so the only picnic pictures I have for you are of wee one helping me plan the arrangement of the ugly picnic squares.

I was actually worried that my ugly picnic blanket was too pretty, so I searched through the dregs of my fabric stash and found even uglier uglies to add. Here's the final arrangement with the ugliest of uglies all added in. Oh, that's gonna be one ugly picnic!

click for the big ugly!

Instead of having a pretty picnic today, we went to our town's annual flag day parade.

There were folks dressed in colonial costumes. Later they fired off old-timey muskets which scared S and made him cry. But a nice man came by and threw a handful of lollipops towards us to make it all better.

I kept the wrapper on for wee one.

B got a blue one - can you tell?

We got to see our neighbor driving his antique fire truck. And then the big highlight of the afternoon, the boys' favorite, a street cleaner!

Woo hoo.

peanut farmer kits from Peanut Butter & Co. in NYC

The boys have become peanut farmers. Next stop: the White House!

I spotted the boys on tv as they watched Lance Armstrong run in the Boston Marathon today.

click for the big blurry version

Go Lance! Hi boys!

Some recent art and paperwork that the boys have brought home from school....

B's handwriting practice from Red Sox opening day

S's best baseball diamond (attached to fridge with matching green magnet!)

some free drawing in art class

I was a little skeptical about this one until I saw the back.

Heh. Heh.

click for video!

horrible chicken fabric I nixed from my March block of the month

the boys dyed easter eggs!

a blue egg for the blue blog

the easter bunny "hid" some eggs for wee one

Hope you had a happy Easter!

Yes, it's pink eye, making me yucky and gunky and keeping me from trying on or playing with any of the new things mama just made for me. Pictures of those next week!

Lucky for us all, S and B spent almost two hours this weekend playing Lord of the Rings The Boardgame with daddy and defeated Sauron, destroyed the ring and kept the world safe for hobbits everywhere.

This is one of hubby's favorite board games, not only because he liked Lord of the Rings but because it's just a good game (for an excellent review, see this site). It's actually a cooperative game where all the players are working together to defeat Sauron. Each player is one of the hobbits - B was Frodo, S was Sam, and hubby was Merry - and they venture through Moria, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair and Mordor together aided by other members of the Fellowship through cards along the way. They begin the game a certain distance away from Sauron (the original Dark Lord!) on the scoring track and as events unfold, Sauron creeps closer and closer to them. One of the hobbits holds the ring and if he is overtaken all is lost. The game is actually pretty tough to win with most parties eventually being overcome by Sauron. But although the boys did have some tense moments, they caught some lucky breaks and made it all the way to Mount Doom to toss the evil ring into the volcano.

Note this is not a Dungeons and Dragons-style role-playing game, although there is some die rolling and characters do have some special abilities. Still it's all card and decision based. It is complex though, requiring an adult to help negotiate the difficult choices. There is, however, an excellent kids' version for folks with younger kids. Oh and for the ladies, unfortunately it's not a movie tie-in game, so sorry, no Viggo Mortenson or Orlando Bloom pics on the cards or anything!

The eye of Sauron is upon you. But don't worry, S and B are looking out.

Wee one has a new idea for blocking the hemlock ring blanket.

And she loves the fabric bowl I just finished for Dani's leap-year birthday.

Bowl facts: fabrics are Kaffe Fassett's Targets and shot cotton on the bottom - love that teal! - and the instructions are from Fast, Fun and Easy Fabric Bowls or online at Simply Quilts. Not that any of that matters to wee one.

While I'm making lunch in the kitchen these days, wee one keeps busy inventing new dishes. She's got a bin full of plastic pretend food and a toy microwave (both hand-me-downs from her brothers) and she randomly tosses things in the microwave for "wee one surprise stew".

Today on the menu: carrot-chicken-cheerio-orange-french fry-pie pie. Actually pretty tasty looking as far as her dishes go. Last week I found her shoes in there!

Happy Valentine's Day!

For this week's peek at the kids, the boys at play.

Their favorite activity these days is playing this "game" on the computer where you solve little puzzles Rube Goldberg style by building wacky contraptions. My old (old!) computer came with a game called the Incredible Machine that hubby and I loved to play before the kids were born. About a year ago, we introduced the boys to the thing and they raced through those puzzles in no time! This one is even cooler (the boys' words, not mine) because it has lots of bombs and explosions.

In both games, once they solve all the puzzles, they can invent their own contraptions and save them. The boys have over fifty contraptions saved on this game already. They'll build for a half hour or so and then when it's time to save, they'll call out something like, 'how do you spell explode?" Just check out these great names!

This appeared yesterday on the door to the boys' bedroom:

"Everybody and daddy can come in here only if you don't break my toys."

So cute how S thinks we go in there to break his toys. Or how he thinks that wee one, the only one who does go in and break his toys, could read that. Or how he thinks that daddy isn't a part of everybody.

(PS - I had to close comments on this entry early because it was being super spammed! Sorry.)

Me: "Boys, why do you have today off from school?"

B: "It's King..."
S: "Martin Jr....."
B: "Luther...."
S: "Martin Luther...."
B & S: "King Day"

Me: "And who is Martin Luther King Jr.?"

B: "He's our King!"

Me: "Naaah, we don't have a king."

B: "Oh, right."
S: "We have presidents!"

Me: "Yes. So who was Martin Luther King Jr.?"

S: "He was special. He was nice."

Seems like ages ago that I used to drive down to the New Haven Ikea with the boys to meet up with grandma for the afternoon. Once Ikea finally opened a store in our area we stopped making those long trips down to New Haven and I actually did a lot less shopping at Ikea. But last weekend when I was thinking of a good place to stop with the baby on our road trip down to NYC, my mom suggested our old friend, the New Haven Ikea: it's about half way, has food, comfortable spots for nursing, and lots of space for wee one to walk around and see interesting things. It was brilliant!

She loved the kids' furniture area. And I spied some fun fabric there too!

Ikea quilt!! Actually, all of their fabric is way cool, but the very large scale of the prints in most of them make them difficult to imagine in a quilt. Better for curtains and such. But these stripes are so fun and could totally work. I just gotta find the right pattern. And maybe make another visit to get some coordinating solids. Hee, hee, hee. Wee one won't mind the trip!

First wee one over the weekend, then daddy, then mommy, then big brother B and finally yesterday, big brother S succumbed to the stomach virus that's been going around. I gave him a little company by relapsing again and have spent the last 24 hours on the couch. I'd almost forgotten that we have a computer in the house - or a refrigerator full of food, for that matter!

Back on the mend, I'm getting around to unpacking from my weekend trip, doing all the laundry (that's stomach virus laundry - yuck!) and when those are done, organizing a few sewing projects. I got some fabric on the trip - can't wait to show you.....

She's off again! Ten months old and wee one's already made two trips to Europe and is embarking on her second trip to New York City.

We're on our way to visit grandma to show her how we're starting to walk and to deliver one or two of those secret gifties I couldn't tell you about to a friend. See ya in the streets of NYC (Sullivan Street for sure!)....

Seems like everything I'm working on right now is a secret present, long overdue. I've got a handful of sewing to do to complete my Christmas presents, none of which I can show you because people are watching, you know. Then there's the knitting projects! The big afghan may be done, but there's another large, lingering project still on the needles - no I can't show you that one either - and something only slightly smaller which I hope to be able to finish and reveal next week.

But oooooh, I wish I could show you some of these now because I am so excited about all of them! It's hard when you're excited about a project and you can't tell anyone! The worst is when the super cool projects are for your super cool crafting buddies (who else you going to make those übercool projects for, right?). You've got no one to get all psyched about the project with you. I can't reasonably expect hubby to get it when I go on about how perfect a certain fabric is or how interesting a specific pattern is. Poor hubby, who is patiently waiting for me to make him some more warm socks right after I finish my gift knitting. Maybe February, dear.

So back I go into the void to finish my secret projects in solitude. Wishing I could bring you with me for a sneak peek and a wee squee.

We're off to the airport soon to make the long trip home. Flying west from Europe to America is tougher with the kiddos because it's all daytime and they don't feel like sleeping. We tried to send the boys to bed a little early last night telling them that they really needed their energy for the flight home and they said, "yeah, cause it's boring." Yes, indeed.

We've packed lots of books and activity books for them as well as a few dvd's that they can watch on the computer. As a general antidote to the boredom around here, I give you a list of some of our favorite German games. I've mentioned the German games that we play a few times here and some of you have asked for some recommendations. Here ya go!

Family/grown up games:

Settlers of Catan - THE German game

Ticket to Ride - we gave this one to my sister-in-law and her family this year

Carcassonne - one of our faves

TransAmerica - cute little strategy game

Blokus - abstract tetris-style game for those whose brains work like that - the boys love this one

Lost Cities - great two-player card game

Wizard - awesome trick-taking card game

For the kids:

Hey, that's my fish! - we presented this game to S's class in show and tell and they thought the little penguin pieces were so cool

Chicken Cha Cha - awesome memory-style game for kids! - S's classmates liked this game the most because the German title translates to Zig Zag Chicken Poop!

Highly Suspect - a clever little dexterity and logic game with nice wooden pieces

They're not German, but they're fun:

Give Me the Brain & Save Doctor Lucky - gotta put in a word for these hilarious games from "Cheapass Games"!

And if you've got 8 or 10 people, you gotta play Werewolf

Have fun! We won't.