Not much sewing going on here for various reasons. I am still recovering from the 10 day/bi-annual visit of our 11 year old nieces!
I will start that 2 years ago we took the then 9 years old girls for a week, I cried more than they did-it was horrible-I felt so inadequate. I took vacation time while they were here, we planned all these day trips and had great activities planned we were excited....
Went to Hershey Park for the day (5 people-not cheap) only to learn that the girls do not like amusement rides-so while the hubby and the son or me and the son sought our thrills the other adult had 2 feet firmly planted on the ground with 2 pouty young ladies.
Went to Penn's Cave, bought tickets only to learn that one or the other didn't like boat rides or bus rides.....got my money back on that one luckily.
Went to a swimming pool with slides and water sprays and cool stuff to find that one didn't like getting their head wet. We sat on the blanket and she pouted while my son and the other had a grand time.
They are allowed to stay up past a decent hour and`1 sleep til noon-at that time we lived in a ranch house with our bedroom right off the living room and Hannah Montana at 1AM is NOT COOL to me!
Then there was the cool Aunt Shelly saying I would buy them an outfit for school....ended up at the Limited Too-because they are picky dressers and they would defiantly find something there.....can I saw that was almost as much as a student loan payment!!
So that was 2 years ago.....This trip had some thought into before they got here-laugh I know the best laid plans....
This year I did not take any time off-the hubby wanted to do this and he is retired so he could schlep them all over and not have them like it. We would do bigger things on the weekends, together. During the week they would do day trips and cheap activities.
I also planned the menu around exactly what they would eat-we had a LOT of steak those few days.
We established some ground rules about bedtime, behavior and language right off the bat.
So we started off good-hadn't seen them in a few months, how is everyone, do they like their new school, was your summer good....then they spotted my sewing toys-OMG don't you know THEY LOVE TO SEW!!!
My husband got all gushy-awww-look you can be their mentor as you would a daughter(not even closely related duh? As if!)....I grudgingly opened up my sewing toy shop-laying out a few ground rules:
1. Not buying anything-so whatever we decide to do has to be from the stash and something they could work on while I was at work-figured this would give the hubby a break during the day.
2. I had to approve the fabric they wanted to use
3. They could not just use the toys-I approved what they used on what IE Gingher scissor must NEVER EVER TOUCH Paper!
We decided on raiding my stash of 4" squares and making pillows. Easy enough. OK a headstrong 11 year old on a sewing machine scared the HELL out of me! I corrected her finger placement a million times then finally decided I couldn't watch and if she sewed her finger than at least she would learn....even the scissor usage was painful to watch.
So after an evening of sewing squares together one decides that they don't really like sewing and the other decides it is too hard and needs a break...2 days later they want to know when am I going to finish their pillows-uh never...you wanted to do this you finish them.
Heartless? May seem that way but what you don't know is that during the two days it took them to make that request, the hubby and I had been following them around picking up glasses of table tops, wet towels off bedding, wet towels off carpet, wet towels off wet towels, throwing away half eaten items, gathering shoes from all over, closing doors, closing the refrigerator, shutting off lights, reminding that we don't call each other names, you must take turns on the video games, being anti-social in public with arms crossed is UNACCEPTABLE-don't go or stay in the car, No you CANNOT be online after I go to bed.....
After about a million re-threads on the machine (the ghetto machine NOT the Viking!) Exasperated-I finished putting them together. At the end of the visit we had 2 cute pillows somewhat made by them-only 1 twin agreed to having her picture taken-this would be the professional pouter niece.
That is how the visit was sewing related-the rest of the drama and the reason I will NOT do that again for AT LEAST another 2 years is not for this blog. I did walk away with a DEEP appreciation for having only 1 child with the bonus being his MALE gender! They are great young ladies-just moody 11 year old girls who have different rules than at my house which results in being allowed to do more grown up things.
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