cute kids

It Was An Adventure!

On Wednesday afternoon, my middle kid and I left for Tampa, FL where he was to rehearse and perform with the Middle School All-State Band for the 75th annual FMEA conference. This was a Pretty Big Deal, as he was only one of two students and the first 7th grader from his school, as well as one of only twelve trumpet players from the entire state of Florida to make it into the Band.

It was amazing. The FMEA conference brings something like 8,000 people to the city of Tampa and features performance ensembles from elementary, middle, and high school grades in all genres, including Choir, Orchestra, Jazz, and Guitar.

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I’m kind of bummed I didn’t get to go to all of the concerts, tbh.

My kid’s group had about 17 hours of rehearsals over 3 days to put together their portion of the concert on Friday evening.

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130 members!
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warming up is srs fuckin bzns

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Trying out unusual/expensive instruments at the conference was a major highlight of the event.

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The kids really learned a lot from their director and they were absolutely fantastic. What an amazing experience for these young musicians! I’m so proud of and happy for him, and, not gonna lie, more than a little jealous haha.

If you want to have a listen to the pieces they played, click here. (Not from my kid’s concert obviously, just collected from YouTube.)

 

cute kids

Day 119: ONE

It is so hard to believe how quickly this year flew by. Happy birthday Miss Baby!

taliaturnsone

cute kids · Knitting · Zombies

Too Fast

Life marches on, as they say, and things at chez moi have been busy but fun. The Bigs have been taking a weekly nature class down in Ft. Lauderdale and T has been growing big and fast. Today she is 207 days old, or 6 months and 24 days. She is a proficient crawler and can pull herself to standing and cruise along the furniture. I’m serious. The last couple of days she has been practicing standing without holding onto anything. I anticipate walking by Christmas (or the New Year at the latest).

baby, staaaaaaaahp

And finally I’ve started been knitting again. I cast on and finished this pretty shawl to throw over T’s shoulders if we ever get any cooler weather here.

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I didn’t really have much of this hand spun  from last year’s TdF so basically it’s just the first half of Grandmother’s Favorite Dishcloth, knited until I ran out of yarn. It’s soft and cozy and should keep her shoulders nice and warm when those cold northern winds start to blow through and bring the temperature down below 75°. And yes that is considered cold down here. Stop laughing, it really is! Really!

cute kids

Been Busy

This poor blog which I’ve barely touched in a year. My poor knitting projects which have laid idle for months. It’s been kind of busy around here, as you can imagine and I wonder how anyone will find read these posts anyway now that google no longer supports reader. Then again, maybe that’s for the best and I will start writing for myself again, like I did back when my blog was good. Anyway, in the meantime you can always find me tweeting @kniterrupted. It seems the most I can manage right now.

cute kids · Zombies

And then this happened…

I know it’s been a very long time since my last post. All I can say is that it’s because reasons. The biggest reason is this:

T was born on April 29th, 2013. She was 7 lbs, 2 oz, and 19 inches long. She is a very calm, chill little baby. The perfect addition to our family.

cute kids · holiday cheer

Merry Christmas!

Hope you had a wonderful morning full of surprises!

Adventures · cute kids · Doozer · Knitting · Lace · life

Well Then.

So it looks like I let 2 whole months go by without a new blog post! And while I ordinarily wouldn’t let it go so long, I think that I must’ve needed the head space, because I am returning to you revitalized and more inspired to write than ever. So inspired, in fact, that I purchased a new blog domain over the weekend which I will move over to eventually. But more on that another time. What today needs is one of those posts where I tell you all about my adventures during the months of my absence.

Firstly, my knitting. Back at the end of March, I finished another utterly random Baby Surprise Jacket.

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It just needs a wash and 3 little buttons. Of course this cute little jacket needed some matching bootees, too.

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And so there you go. Very cute. But in between finishing the BSJ and the bootees, my fibery doings took a bit of a detour.

I finally got off my lazy ass and warped my loom. Seriously, the whole time I was asking myself why I waited so long. It’s not that hard, you guys. Really. It only took about an hour to warp this project and then it was about 2 or so hours of weaving.

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Of course I neglected to get a photo of the finished product before I delivered it to its intended recipient, you’ll just have to take my word that it came out beautifully. And, it was so much fun that I made another one.

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As you can see, I have a lot to learn about weaving still. But first and foremost this project taught me that weaving sock yarn isn’t necessarily the best idea. Plus, my skein of Saami had a lot more orange in it than I remembered. Still, it’s warm and cozy and very colorful and cheerful. I’m thinking this is perfect for E, if I can get him to wear it.

When I was finished with all that weaving, I kind of lost my knitting mojo for a while. To say that I am sick  of the Orange socks is a bit of an understatement. I even tried to force myself to work on them, which we all know never works to endear a project and make it more fun to work on. Plus I was a bit bored with baby sweaters, to be honest. All I could think of was how I wanted to make another lace shawl like the one I’d made for my sis. Ultimately I accepted that there was no denying lace’s siren song. I acquiesced and cast it on.

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It’s actually quite a bit larger than in that photo. I’ve already increased again and am almost finished with this middle section. Then it’s on to the twee little triangles which gave me so much trouble I enjoyed so much the last time. I can’t wait!

Now, on to other things. March was kind of a strange month. My husband went to Florida for business for two weeks in March, leaving the kids and me to our own devices. We celebrated Pi Day:

And I took the boys up to Kent Falls to enjoy the March Heat Wave of ’12.

Yes, they are hot and sweaty and wearing shorts. I think it was like 80° that day. But, as is Connecticut’s wont, the weather turned cold again and we are back to wearing layers and wool.

It was so cold, in fact, that the favors for the outdoor wedding we attended on the 31st of March (the Mister’s cousin’s) were fleece blankets. No pictures of all the frozen attendees, sadly, but I did get a couple of shots of my little cuties in their tuxedos.

 

It was a black tie optional affair, and we optioned the shit out of it. Here we are back at my MIL’s place afterward:

Matchy!!! OMG we all look so tired. Not the kind of regular tired that you get when you’ve been working for a living, but a fancy sort of tired from being strapped into an uncomfortable bra and wearing pinchy shoes for hours and hours. (Good gravy my hair is straight. I know for a fact that I set that shit with hot rollers before we left but by the time we arrived at the wedding it had already reverted to its natural state: straight straight straight. Gah, stupid hair.) We had a lot of fun anyway and we looked damn fine too.

And then it was April. April was a rather busy month here. We celebrated Easter with another family in New York and had so much fun that future Easters have been ruined for us. Here we are setting off fireworks.

  

Because that’s how we roll, bitches.

Hubs went away to Florida on business (again) the following week, but it was too cold to do anything fun with the boys while he was gone. Mostly we hunkered down and got ready for the next week. Remember how I said we are moving to Florida? Well, the day after the Mister returned from Florida, I got in the van with the kids and drove down to find us a place to live.

OMG you guys I loved it down there! I am so much more excited for our move than I was before, I can’t even. Have you seen these beaches?!

This is in Ft. Lauderdale. The sand was soft and deep and the view was gorgeous. The waves are enormous though (well, compared to Long Island Sound). Everyone is going to need swim lessons.

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These guys live in the canal behind our new place (all the water there is heavily managed and so there are canals and man-made lakes and ponds everywhere). Yes, they are considered a bit of a nuisance down there, but aren’t they cute? That big male on the right was making quite a show of himself for the little female that came with him over to us to beg for food. Birds are strange and feral ducks are even more so. We also saw a flock of ibises and tons and tons of little Indo-Pacific geckos. The kids are hell-bent on catching the little things, which reminds me of the alligator lizards which are common in southern California. I spent many happy afternoons with my friend Jen hunting (and failing to catch) one for a pet. Speaking of alligators, we did not see any alligators, although the realtor assured us that due to our proximity to the Everglades conservation area (literally less than 5 miles away) it’s fairly certain we’ll see an alligator in the canal or even our yard at some point. So yeah. And, even better? There is a nature center just around the corner and down the street from where we’ll be living. This move is going to be a good thing for us. I can’t wait. Only 28 days to go!

And here is Doozer because he hasn’t been on the blog in a good long while.

And now you are all caught up. What have you all been up to?

cute kids · holiday cheer

Happy Holidays!

It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks around here. I’ve been knitting and baking and generally making merry, which culminated today for our winter festival of choice, Christmas.

It’s been a pretty great day.

I wish you the warmest of the season’s spirit. May joy and peace be upon you and yours today and always.

cute kids · holiday cheer

Testing, testing

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This post is coming to you from the aforementioned iPhone. When my kids say cheese, they really mean it.

birthday · cute kids

10

Today is Isaac’s 10th birthday. I am in awe that so many years have passed between this:

and this:

Because the former seems like yesterday. Happy birthday, Isaac!