So, my kids will each be getting less Christmas presents this year as I have to replace the camera that none of them will fess up to breaking....If I subtract the cost from our Christmas budget...they each get NOTHING!!! I am kidding, but it does stink. I have to have a camera for Thanksgiving and Nate's birthday this week, and Christmas...So, expect completely boring blogs for a while...
Dana - "I'll just put it right there and you can watch it and if anyone comes near it you protect it, pie, cause I forget what it's called. Oh yeah, lemon bars."
Translation - "Mom will you watch my lemon bar while I go upstairs and take a shower so that Kimmy doesn't get into it and eat it all gone."
Dana - "Mom, so you know who we are I have one of these around my neck that is green diamonds, and Kimmy has one that is purple circles, so you don't forget, okay?"
Translation - "Mom, don't you like the green necklace I am wearing and the purple one I put on Kimmy?"
Nate - "Mom guess what I did? Did you know that 12,468 plus 11,221 is 23,689?" Mom - "Awesome Nate, how did you know that?" Nate - "I counted it on my fingers, duh."
Kimmy, after walking over to me, grabbing the remote off the couch next to me, walking about three feet away, turning around, and smiling like a tricky trickster at me - "Mine now, mine now, mine now, hahahahahahahaha!"
We always have a really good time with them because their kids are so close to the age of our kids.
MaKenna who is almost 8 was dressed up as Minnie Mouse
Sydney who is just a couple of months older than Dana was dressed as Ariel, the Little Mermaid.
It took us an hour and a half to cruise the mall, which gave the kids plenty of candy, so we only went to a few friends houses after that. It was a fun evening. 
And from this picture, you can see how much he loves Kimberly too!
I spent the least amount of time on this costume, and it was actually my favorite one as far as cuteness goes.
The hardest part of the whole thing was keeping the black fuzz off the white fur.
I made the head-piece and then lined it so it wouldn't irritate her. Then I stuffed it full of batting to give it some shape. I was afraid that she wouldn't like having something on her head all the time, but even though it made her head sweat and gave her "panda-head hair," she didn't try to take it off once! In fact, she wore it around the house for about an hour yesterday.
Since the movie doesn't come out on DVD until this next week, I didn't have any reference for how to make Po's shorts. I spent about 3 hours total searching Target and Walmart for a Kung Fu Panda book so I could get an idea for how to make them.
The suit was also supposed to have soles on the bottom of the feet with leather paws. Instead I skipped the soles and wrapped the foot edge with 1/2 inch black double fold bias tape. I had also planned on doing some sort of fabric wrap around the ankles, like Po has in the movie, but by 7 am on Halloween morning, I just stopped caring. Jared made fun of me because he said that Kimmy didn't know any better, and I could have just used one of Dana's old costumes, but that was just not fair. Whether or not Kim cares, I care, and she is just as important as the big kids, and when she is a teenager and hates me, I can pull out pictures of this costume and show her proof of how much she matters to me and how much I love her!
Isn't this last picture just classic? She is not upset about the costume, rather she was ready to go and play outside, but the big kids weren't ready and it was raining and wet, so I made her come in and wait. KIDS ARE AWESOME!
In fact, one of the coolest things that they did to Batman's costume was give him this cool cape that when charged with electricity or something, it would become stiff and he could like hang-glide with it. Here's another movie still of him doing just that:
I was totally excited when I found this really cool, shiny pleather material at the fabric store. I knew that it would work perfectly. However, I had to squint over movie stills to figure out how to design the top. Here's my finished product:
Here's a closer look at the bat design and the muscles I "built-in" to the costume (this is one of my all-time favorite pictures of Nate too, he's just so good lookin'!)
In order to make the top, I sewed lines in it where his muscles should be. After that, I had to stuff between the lines I sewed with batting, and the top hade to be lined so that the batting would stay in place. It was kind of time consuming, and I don't know if my pictures do it justice, but I really loved the way it turned out.
We were also able to find Batman's utility belt and his expandable wings online. The wings were really cool, cause you wore them like a backpack. When you wanted them to pop out, you just pulled the ripcord, and they would shoot out. When it was time to put them away, like to walk through doors, you pulled the rip cords at both shoulders like 4 times and they would gradually retract. Nate kept forgetting to pull his wings in though, and ended up poking a lot of people.
So, it was bedtime, and I was just starting to cut out the pieces for the costume. As I was ushering the kids up the stairs for bed, Nate turns to me and says, "Don't forget to drink a lot of Diet Coke so you can stay up all night and finish my costume!" I couldn't help but laugh at that, he's so funny the way he expresses himself sometimes. Of course, I did end up staying up all night to get the costume done. Nate is an early riser anyway, but he woke up at 6 am and before he even came around the corner at the bottom of the stairs and saw me, he calls out "Good job staying up and making my costume Mom. I am really proud of you." It was too funny. He was so excited about the costume that he put it on right then, and I couldn't get it off him all weekend!
The last few pictures have been of Nate and his 1st grade classmates in their Halloween costumes. It is such a fun holiday, and the school does such a good job making the day special.
I tried to upload some movie stills here so you could see what the dress looked like on, but the quailty was crappy, so instead here's the link to check them out: http://www.costumersguide.com/enchanted1.shtml
You will notice Giselle holds her hands really delicately throughout the movie. That is what Dana is tryin to do in this picture, with her pinkies out, but it looks more like she's doing hang loose instead.
All the glitter detail you see on the dress are not ribbon or trim, they are actually lines of fabric glue sprinkled with glitter, with the excess shaken off. It was a nightmare to do, I will probably be finding glitter everywhere for years to come. 
I didn't do the orchid flower at her waist, because the one I got seemed really too big, and it was very cream compared to how white the dress was. I also had some trouble finding a good set of butterflies for the neckline. After endless hours at various fabric and craft stores, I finally decided to make one out of sparkly foam, and glue rhinestones to it. I skipped the small one all together, and added small bridal flowers on the left instead. You can't really see them very good in these pictures.
Dana's preschool doesn't let the kids do Halloween costumes cause it's just too much trouble, so she went with Nate to his school so she could walk in his Halloween parade with him.
She had an awesome time hanging out with Nate in his 1st grade classroom.
We also got to participate in our Ward's Halloween Carnival. 
I was really pleased with how the dress turned out, even though I found traces of glitter in my dishwasher yesterday!
Dana loves to wear necklaces and perfume to church...such a girly girl!
Aren't they so cute?!?!?! 
By the time that we got down to the last few ballons, the kids seemed to have either figured out how to aim, or how to pop the ballon over someone's head with their fingernails.
And she's a member of Red Sox Nation
I don't know if you can tell, but her hair is in 1 inch long piggies in this picture.
So, every year at Nathan's school, they have a back to school night. They do a dinner and a carnival to help raise funds for the extras at school like fieldtrips and supplies and stuff. At this year's carnival, they had a professional face painter. I know that sounds like it's not a real profession, but it's true, this lady had a whole portfolio of all different kinds of face designs she had done (Okay so maybe you would probably call her a professional makeup artist).
So Nate had her paint a firebreathing dragon on his face, we thought it was going to be more dragon face, but it was fun and Nate felt like he looked tough.
Dana got a butterfly face painting. She wanted pink and purple, but the lady thought the orange would go good with her hair. I think she kind of looks like a lion or something. 
Dana also purchased a blow up guitar toy at the carnival with the tickets she won. When we got home she wanted to rock out.
Holding the guitar like that with all the face paint, I thought it looked a little like a KISS rock concert in our living room. Aren't kids awesome???
