"... there are always more trick-or-treaters than neighborhood kids." Robert Brault

I love Halloween!

Pictures are on the baby blog.

I apparently tricked some of you with Nani's costume preview. The hat isn't normal sized--it's dinky! I figured a teeny hat would be way more adorable. And it was. It made the outfit.

In doing this costume, I learned compiling is much easier than sewing from scratch. I'm hoping to be able to compile most of her costumes. We'll see, though, once she starts getting into all these Disney princess movies I've bought her.

Baby blog updated

She had a birthday!

And there are also videos of her walking (with assistance).

An open letter to the kids outside

The streetlights are on. It's dark. My grumpy baby is sleeping.

Stop screaming.

You do this every night.

Where are your parents?

Exasperatedly,

Your (also grumpy, apparently) neighbor

My toes are froze and my nose is froze

I finally finished the quilt I made for Todd. He designed the pattern, and I think it looks great. Because I'm an uber-nerd, we made the pattern using Publisher (we even copy and pasted the fabric from JoAnn's site), but it was actually really fun and much easier to design it that way. I'm really pleased with how the quilt turned out, even if I did make several major mistakes ("opportunities for growth" Ü).

His two requirements were that it's warm and big. I put flannel at the bottom (my new favorite), and the quilt is the length of our couch. It dwarfs me, and it's so snuggly.

He even let me use this very cool paisley fabric as binding.

It's so sweet Todd encourages and supports my hobbies. I very much appreciate it.

Also, because we're getting into trying to warm ourselves, yesterday we bought me my first pair of boots. They're not at all what I thought I'd want, but I'm so excited about them and how practical they are; they're blasted warm (the inside is lined with fur). And they look cute with skirts, which was my goal.

These Things are good Things

At my mom's request, here's a teaser for Nani's Halloween costume. I'm excited that it's actually done already, and fairly proud of myself for making the whole thing (well, compiling it).

You know what happens when you assume . . .

We got a letter from the Maryland MVA (that's Motor Vehicle Administration, for all of you who are used to a "DMV;" heaven forbid local governments come up with one name for the same function) stating we didn't have insurance on our Camry and that we were going to have a lovely $300ish fine.

I hesitated calling the MVA because I cannot stand dealing with government workers. Most of the ones I deal with are belligerent, lazy, uninformed, and fairly unintelligent (though they insist on insinuating I'm the stupid one). Yup, I greatly generalize when it comes to government workers.

So instead I first called our insurance company and the Toyota dealership. Our insurance company is awesome and was very helpful, though they couldn't do anything to get us out of the fine. I called the Toyota dealership, and they gave me the usual dealership runaround. I'm supposed to hear from them tomorrow . . ..

Today I finally broke down and called the MVA, because the deadline for information is fast approaching. And lo and behold, I talked to someone who is allowed to think beyond the borders of our suspension warning, and she came up with a logical solution to our problem that did not involve a fine. AND she was nice.

Huh, who knew.

Baby blog updated

Her first boat experience.