Good grief! I can’t believe it’s already a week since we went up to Omaha and helped my sister and her family celebrate Max’s second birthday, but there it is…I’m such a SLACKER!
My niece and nephews are such awesome little kids!
Here’s the birthday boy himself, enjoying an ice-cream-cone cupcake. The big kids decorated them, and they were extraordinarily colorful. Sis has a great stash of really vibrantly colored sprinkles, and Elizabeth & Alex were very generous with them.
Elizabeth is one of the silliest kids I know, and always a crackup to spend time with. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a kid with as much vim as she has.
Alex is an awesome kid, too. He’s such a thoughtful little guy, always trying to lend a hand. He helped me take Ruby for a walk, helps his little brother with breakfast, and loves to assist his dad with yard work.
Matt, my brother-in-law, had gotten this cardboard barrel that the kids were all extremely taken with. They spent a good, solid hour-and-a-half rolling down the hill in their yard in it. And/or otherwise monkeying around in it.
You know how it is…the simplest stuff, often things that would otherwise be thrown away, end up making the best toys.
On that note, I figured that it would be hard to go wrong with Duplo blocks for Max’s birthday present. I already knew that the big kids liked Legos. Audrey had a stash of Legos that she’d had for years that the kids always played with, and I sent them more at Christmas time (easy present!). When Max opened up his new tub of Duplos, it was instant fun. He commenced to making a very, very long tower out of the four-button blocks, while Alex built a garage and Elizabeth built a one-eyed robot:
Building really cool stuff seems to run in the family. Matt recently re-acquired this AWESOME chair that he’d built many years ago:
It had been semi-lost/stolen in one of his moves years ago, and via a bit of asking around, he finally tracked it down to an old acquaintance’s storage unit.
Here’s Audrey and her enormous cat who looks like Maru. Boda is such a ridiculously friendly cat that it is hard to photograph him…he wants to run up and rub his big ol’ noggin against the camera.
Mom and I had been going for a bit of metaphotography, but she put her camera down too soon. In our family albums, there are a lot of photos of Grandma taking a picture (or pictures that Grandma took of somebody else taking a picture).
I guess it’s family tradition!
Somehow, my dad managed to evade photography, but I did catch him chuckling it up on this video of one of Alex’s many trips down the hill.
And Ruby decided that she needed to nap on/under/or between Joel’s and Dad’s feet.
She’d spent the afternoon gleefully chasing the kids or fetching a tennis ball that Alex was only too happy to throw for her, and she managed to wear herself out pretty well. That’s always a good thing…it can be a bit of a challenge to get the bulk of the energy out of a young collie/aussie/possibly-golden mix.
It was a pretty awesome visit (if rather short) ’cause it’s always great to get to spend some time with my family.
I also distributed a little bit of sewing. I made a skirt for Mom. We’d gone fabric shopping when they were visiting KC in June and she found this very cool abstract vine-print fabric to make up a skirt from this pattern.
This fabric was such a great choice. Firstly, it hangs and drapes beautifully and was easy to handle with little tendency to fray. It’s also pretty much entirely wrinkle-proof, which makes it a great option for travel-wear. I tried a new-to-me lining fabric which purported to be static-resistant, and while I was handling it, it lived up to its promise. Lets hope that continues during regular wear, too.
I also made my sister this skirt, which is a copy of one of mine that Audrey had borrowed and liked. It’s a versatile, flared denim skirt with white contrast topstitching. Years ago, I bought a whole bolt of dark denim that has like 1% lycra. I’ve made a couple of pair of jeans and three skirts off that bolt and still have probably 70% of it still around. I’ll be wearing (or sharing) this denim for many years to come, I can tell. At least it’s good fabric.