Trouble

I walked into Aven and Etta's room and found this:

Etta summits Mt. Table

Luckily Ian had just been taking pictures of them so the camera was close by. After I took her picture she proceeded to climb down all by herself.  Aven NEVER did this kind of stuff. She just wasn't a climber. We are in so much trouble. I hate to say it, but I would be surprised if this girl doesn't have a trip or two to the emergency room over the course of her childhood.

Speaking of trouble, here's trouble times two:

At Gardner Village's Witchfest

Despite all the trouble I am so lucky to have my two sweethearts.

Batgirl!

I took the day off yesterday due to a mid-morning doctor appointment that could not be rescheduled. Since the girls were at daycare I had lots of time to finish up Aven's Batgirl costume. The cape is the only part I actually sewed myself, but I am awful proud of it. I made the pattern myself (not exactly hard, but still), I also sewed that Batman symbol on the back of the cape with the machine- the first time I have ever done any real precision sewing with a machine and it turned out pretty darn good. This is just a little blog post to say "yay, Me!". And, yes, I do realize that Halloween is still seven weeks away, but deadlines stress me out, so I tend to get things done REALLY early. Anyway, enjoy some pictures:

Aven will actually wear a black tutu with sparkles on Halloween, but it's not here yet, so the pink one is standing in.

It's all satiny and shiny, so it was hard to get a good picture of it.

I totally want to make Etta a cape now.

Da na na na na na na na, da na na na na na na na BATGIRL!

The Adventures of BatGirl vs the Long Line of Standstillia

Last weekend was the very first Salt Lake City Comic Con. I'm a fan of Comics and all the related stuff that I know happens at the big San Diego Comic Con, but I was a little wary about attending this one. Salt Lake doesn't have a great track record for Nerdy conventions. I've been to a few in the past that were trying really hard, but had low attendance and no good exhibits or presentations. So when I heard about this event I was actually going to skip it. Then Cara mentioned that they had actually changed the venue to the Salt Palace because it was getting big. That caught my attention and I did some digging, (or rather I went to the Comic Con website). I found out that they actually had some big guests coming, Stan Lee, Shatner, Adam West, to name just a few. I figured Aven would like the superhero costumes and so I got some tickets for Saturday, Oh how I wish I had chosen Thursday or Friday.
At the time I bought the tickets they were advertising 20,000 tickets sold so far. Pretty impressive I thought this could be a a good convention and start a new tradition here in SLC. Well turns out they managed to get 70 to 80 thousand people there on Saturday. Also they apparently had stopped bothering to see if anyone had tickets at some point and the salt palace went over capacity. Aven and I showed up after lunch just in time to get in line and be told that they weren't letting anyone in. The Fire Marshall had closed the event for now until they could get a handle on the situation.
I figured we wouldn't be outside for long and I had already paid for a ticket so we stuck around in line and did some people (Super hero) watching. Aven loved all the costumes and it was really the only thing keeping her happy for what ended up being a 1 hour wait just to get into the Salt Palace. Once inside I had to get this kid, who was now getting a little cranky, a snack. Well the lines inside were not any better then the one to get in. All the concessions stands that I found had huge lines, and I knew Aven was sick of standing around not moving. I managed to find a juice bar that only had a few people in line and I got her a smoothie. That satisfied her for a bit. Now, finally for the fun part, right? Okay, so we head into the booth section of the floor and it was crowded- seriously crowded. It was a challenge maneuvering through that crowd especially while dragging along a four year old. I quickly threw her up on my shoulders so I could move around easier and let her see more, while making sure she didn't get lost in the crowd.  I was hoping to spend some time looking at toys for Aven maybe check out some comic books and some artwork, but it was too crazy in their for me so I just kept moving, trying to see it all. We managed to see most of the booths and glance at some cool art work and some vintage toys before I got a bit tired of the crowds and decided it was time to go home. I bought Aven a Batman car set so she would have something to take home and we high-tailed it out of there. Long story short, I will go back next year but not on Saturday. I'll also try to schedule it better and maybe attend a presentation or talk. Although I'm not sure how well Aven will sit though one of those.

Waiting in line, we were near a Creeper from Minecraft, or a "Green Monster" in Aven's words.

A cool Dinosaur visited the line outside for a bit. Aven didn't want to go say Hi.

There were lots of kids in costume, Aven pointed them all out. "Look it's Hulk Smash!"

Princess Peach didn't stay long enough for me to get my phone unlocked. 

Finally Inside the convention, Waiting in line for a smoothy, here's some Deadmou5 photos.
I think Aven thought they were Micky Mouse.

Zombies Scare Aven.

And there were a lot of them. 

Halloween is just around the Corner and Fear Factory (a haunted house) had a big booth.

Again, Aven didn't want to say Hi. 

Random Steam punkers in a not so crowded area of the floor.

On the way out Aven struck another super hero pose for me.

State Fair

Aven has been excited for the State Fair for the last month. "When are we gonna ride rides at the fair, Mom?" Once she finds out that Lagoon exists and that it's open several months a year we'll be in trouble. Despite the pouring rain we decided to go because next weekend Ian will be installing a sprinkler system in our yard. It was actually a nice change of pace from the high 90s we've been slugging through the last few weeks.

We started with the livestock, or "the wildlife", as Ian kept referring to them.

Cow butts.

Aven went on a pony ride. It was one of those sad contraptions where the ponies walk around in a circle all day but I'm sure that in her mind she was riding Rainbow Dash through the clouds.

C'mon everypony! Let's go for a ride!

Ian took the girls through the fun house. It looked old and sad but Aven thought it was stupendous. It's a good thing kids see things through the filter of childhood.

In the crazy-spinny-tube.

The great part of being at the fair in the rain was that we pretty much had the rides to ourselves. The down-side was that the bumper cars aren't much fun if you have them to yourself.

Aven gets her socks soaked in the bounce house.

Etta was too small to go into the bounce house, but she still had fun bouncing on the outside.

Etta and I got tired of watching Ian and Aven have all the fun on the rides so we ditched them and had ourselves some funnel cake and lemonade. We also found what is arguably the coolest place in the fairgrounds; a building full of toys and hands-on science experiments.

Look at that happy face. She REALLY needed some play time.

Ian puts Etta in a HUGE bubble.

Aven had a grand-old time playing at the Wall of Nails.

Overall we had a lot of fun. Etta was so exhausted that she didn't even wake up when we took her out of her car seat, which NEVER happens. Thank you State Fair for a fun day!

Dirndls

While in Austria Ian and I bought matching dirndls for Aven and Etta. Here is a little dirndl history courtesy of Wikipedia: The dirndl originated as a more hardy form of the costume worn today; the uniform of Austrian servants in the 19th century (Dirndlgewand means "maid's dress"). Simple forms were also worn commonly by working women in plain colors or a simple check. The Austrian upper classes adopted the dirndl as high fashion in the 1870s. Today, dirndls vary from simple styles to exquisitely crafted, very expensive models.

We originally intended to take portraits of them wearing the dresses while we were in either Austria or Switzerland, you know, with some Alps in the background. That never happened so about a month after we got home we went up Milcreek Canyon and found a nice little green spot to take these: