See Stitch Run. See Stitch Play. See Stitch at the Beach today.

See wee Stitches in the sand. Watch the water lick the land.

See the carports made by hand, sticks and stones, cars and sand.

See Stitch son wonder, “where’s my pants?”

Naturally we dropped everything today to escape the lovely wooded shelter (cold) of our home and soak up all the sun. The Sun! Did you see it? Hurray!

My children are mostly clothed because of course our pale skin it sometimes soaks up too much sun. No such injuries today. We have to start slow though! And speaking of slow…

and one more picture of the pants, cuz I WUV THEM!

The weather is still undecided here, blustery, rainy and then briefly and tantalizingly sunny. The boys seemed to be a bit under the weather as well, having picked up dad’s yucky cough.

In brief moments of calm, I whipped up these pants for Moo. They were just on the edge of my mind for a few days, and he maybe getting a bag to match, because they are too cute.

The jeans used to be Uncle Steve’s (you make a few quilts out of jeans and people start bringing them to you instead of the thrift store) and the corduroy is from the fabulous box Robin brought by a few months ago. Some of those small beautiful pieces were perfect for a snail shell.

Now if I could just get him to pull his pants up! That maybe a battle I’m fighting forever!

Note to Self
Always take pins out of your mouth before you sneeze.

It rained a lot today. It was certainly a let down for this Mama and her brood. While the weather hasn’t been ‘nice’ it has certainly been tolerable outside weather lately. Especially for rough and tumble bundles of energy who need to get outside and beat each other. Honestly! Where do they get that from?

That saying boys will be boys? Apparently true. I only had one brother and he must have been out numbered or something because he never attacked the three of us the way the boys go after each other. One minute they’re playing at the opposite sides of the yard and then an internal gong goes off and they literally run to each other and commence to pummel. It’s exhausting.

And far from over I’m sure.

Today’s downpour was no picnic, the bear cubs were trapped inside and cranky. We colored, we glued, we pretended we were snails, we pretended to make pancakes, we built a fire (for real), we watched movies, we pretended to be snails (again)…..then we made cookies. Because it was a cold, damp day and it called for cookies.

Eating cookies is of course only half the fun.

*Marilyn has put together a blog for people interested in cloth diapering. I posted there today for the first time…I’m pretty sure my post has something to do with cloth diapering…but it may just be the title.

I finished up Capt. Crankypants birthday gift on Saturday, in time for his mom to pick it up while dropping off some fabric at my house that she is getting rid of.

Because what I need is more fabric.

Speaking of which have you seen the Kaufman Amy Schimler ‘critters and creatures’ line? Hello Snails! and Turtles! I think I need some. I may have to run to fabric depot as I’ve checked the forty mile radius of quilt shops in my area and no one seems to carry it. Harumph.

I’ve started making weekly list of To Do things in my sewing room. It helps somewhat to keep my mind organized and you know how I love to cross things off lists! This week I managed to cross almost everything off my list. Except for that one item that is always on the list.

Jeff commissioned me to make a quilt out of his race t-shirts for his son over a year ago and it’s been hanging over my head (literally, on my wall) for the last month. The problem with Jeff is, he doesn’t yell at me enough. I mean frankly I have a tendency to get off track..have you noticed this?

Where was I?

T-shirts. This was one of those pesky ‘it will just take a minute’ projects that sneak into my pile. The Bloomsday Finisher’s T-shirt. But it is red.

Red.

Eh. So it was an adult medium, and now it’s 5T longsleeve*. It’s still red, but it’s not in the goodwill pile so it’s got that going for it.

Which reminds me of a quilt I should be working on. The problem with ‘working on’ things around here, is all the help I get. The help that usually looks a lot like this.

Who doesn’t love a good game of pick up pins?

*All I did was lay a 5T shirt on top of it then cut around that and sew up the sides. Super Easy!

My Mother’s day started off as all Sunday’s do, with a run. A quick three miler, and by quick I mean, does my husband have to run so freaking fast? Seriously! Other dashers were unable to attend they were apparently off with their Mother’s or something, but as my mother lives 3,000 miles away and his mother was watching our adorable children (and by this I mean stuffing them full of pancakes and crack syrup so that the were sure to be wound up in an hour when we picked then up) we were able to do our bodies good with a early morning cleansing run.

You must of course cleanse your body and soul if you are going to go to a Mother’s Day brunch which I was (Scott is still bitter that he didn’t get to go, so don’t bring it up, but duuude. Not a mother! Get a grip) so I ran the cleansing, three miler.

It was the first time I ran all week, since I spent Monday and Tuesday monster walking around the house in Bloomsday recovery mode and the rest of the week being a mother! Which generally means, I’m lucky if I get to go to the bathroom and I’ve totally given up on the thought of Ever. Going. By. Myself.

All plans to teach Moo to ride his bike in the next three weeks before school lets out so that I won’t be forced to push two children in a jogger this summer have proven unsuccessful, because dude! Why would I peddle when you are pushing me? Moms. They are so hilarious!

Speaking of hilarious. This is what the pre- school Mother’s Day Craft was. ( For the record: My name is Brittany, everything else is a lie).

I may have cried a bit about the carrying him in the rain part. Not that I remember doing that..but I’ve certainly carried him plenty of times, and it rains alot here. So there you go.

Go kiss you Mommy.

But really if you want to know some (I’m sure) totally possibly real information about Mother’s day, click here and visit another Bossy Mom.

It’s possible that I spent all of the day on the computer catching up on blogs, reading emails and ignoring my children…but I will never admit to it.

I can tell you one thing I wasn’t doing.

Sewing.

We have a playgroup birthday bash tomorrow and I’ve several projects to finish tonight like this RoadMap Quilt for Capt Crankypants who turned three this month.

His mom pieced the background and then I’m stitching the road down and quilting the rest.

Sleep is for the weak…and lazy…

or is it for the ones who got their work done….eh.

And we’re back! Thank the internet gods and anyone else who gets in my way!! I will love you all equally!

And I think we can safely move on..

A few weeks ago (back before the Internet fiasco of ill repute) Molly at Foothill Home Companion ordered us all to Start this bread tonight. So I did.

And I did it again tonight, because it is darn good and worth the wait. And if you are really quick you can eat it all before the kids get back from Neverland.

Not, that that happened.

9 ½ weeks.

Okay, it hasn’t been that long since I had internet but, its been almost that long! No Really. Okay, only two weeks.! That is a long time. And I am very sad.

Not to mention really, really annoyed. Because we arrived home Sunday night to a message from our internet provider informing us that The Phone Service Monopoly That Must Not Be Named had told our internet provider that we had requested our DSL be disconnected.

Which is totally true, and why we requested a new modem.

Let me pause to bang my head against the keyboard as I type this…

No, it doesn’t really help, but it’s more productive that talking to The Phone Service Monopoly That Must Not Be Named..apparently.

*sigh*

Not that I don’t enjoy spending every day at home waiting for the phone to ring in the hopes that it might be the Internet Provider or The Phone Service Monopoly That Must Not Be Named returning my call, cause…gosh. I do.

Who wants to play outside when The Sun has shown up for the first time in six months, that would be silly!

And the inactive modem makes a fabulous lapel pin.

But enough about my internet woes, lets talk about my Monster Walk. Because dang, does my patootie hurt. I don’t know if it was that last two miles of Bloomsday or the ride home but yesterday found me a painful bundle of sore muscles.

And my little men, they were so sympathetic. Never once did they walk across my legs as I lay face down in the grass, nor did they consider belly flopping on my inert body when I managed to roll on to my back after twenty minutes of trying. When I hobbled out of the car at the grocery store, the thought of rushing out in to traffic when they could just stand still (FOR THE LOVE OF PETE! STAND STILL!) never occurred to them. Not once.

Between the muscles, the children and The Phone Service Monopoly That Must Not Be Named, I sometimes wish I drank a whole lot more.

New topic coming tomorrow I promise! Maybe I’ll read some of your blogs, that would be nice, I feel totally cut off from all of you. Hi! *WAVE*

Sunday morning dawned sunny and warm, in complete contrast with the forecast I looked at that said SNOW! I woke up feeling awesome which was a decided improvement over the OMG runtothebathroom nauseous that I felt all day Saturday.

Which is why I slept through the majority of Winky’s Smurfday party. Which was not very smurfy of me at all. On top of that I was too sick to eat the very smurfy cake which was so smurfy blue that a certain young diapered smurf had very smurfy diapers for two day’s after the cake. I can only imagine how the rest of the Smurfs fared….TMI?

I woke up nervous Sunday but excited to be in race condition. I fortified myself with water and bananas. And we took obligatory pictures on the lawn, just in case the search parties needed to see what we were last wearing. Here we are with TurboHusband, (and he really is, he ran with the Elite Men…..show off) pre-race. (These are our race faces…in case you are wondering)

Not to be confused with the Post Race Face….

TurboMarz’s Biscuits and Gravy, the real Reason Scott will drive Six hours in the car to run 7.5 miles.

This is where Turbomarz kept the children while we were out running and she was at the bar.

Or maybe not…

The run itself was over surprisingly quickly. I struggled a bit with some cramping and tried to take in a lot of water, my biggest fear was dehydration, due to Saturday’s nausea. We walked twice, once on Doomsday hill and once around the Seven Mile mark, but other than being overly cautious and not wanting to be stupid (ie taken off the course on a stretcher) it was great. I say we walked twice because The Man ran/walked with me. The whole way. At my very, very slow snail pace.

We had a lot of fun, which is saying alot when you are running for seven and a half miles with someone who runs at a three minute faster pace than you do and after a day of being sick. We enjoyed the sun, and the uninterrupted conversation. And to me the race was a lot about how far we have come as a couple. When we first ran together, back in the dating phase he would leave me in the dust all the while I tried my darnedest not to be left. I would run hard and fast, and on several occasions make myself sick trying to keep up with him.

It was during one of the times that I stood hunched over, being sick when he told me “I’m not really getting much out of this exercising together”. He was 23. I was 22.

Eleven years later, we are able to run together at our own pace. We have passed the time in life where we need to prove ourselves to each other and we can simply walk through the water station, or pause at the endless lines by the port o potties.

And it’s hard not to be in love with a Man who high fives all the little race fans along the route or even that weirdly dressed Mime guy. Even harder not to fall in love all over again with a Man who grabs your hand as you cruise down the hill towards the finish line.

And it’s darn near impossible not to be totally in love with someone who has found the time to stick by your side through all of it.

Of course, I’m not trying very hard.