more awesome little friends

Even though we don't have kids of our own yet, I'm so thankful to be able to enjoy other people's kids - especially my nieces & nephews. We don't get to see everyone as much as we'd like, but it is nice to have my brother's kids fairly close by.

A few weeks ago, Grace and Caroline were looking through a costume magazine and asked me if I would help them make their Halloween costumes this year. So, the 3 of us took a trip to the fabric store and picked out patterns and fabric and all the fixin's for costumes. Grace wanted to be a "dragon ninja" - so we found a pattern for a karate uniform and went from there. Caroline was a little more complicated. She wanted to be a puppy dog and we had a hard time finding the right puppy dog costume pattern. Grace asked her at one point if she wanted to be a dalmatian, and she said: "NO, I don't want to be a dalmatian!" Later, when picking out our fabric, she looked up at me and said, "Aunt Laura, can I be a white puppy dog with black spots?" But not a dalmatian, right? :-)

Ben didn't ask me for a costume this year...maybe next time, ok, buddy? Here's Dragon Ninja Grace. She still wants a sword to complete the costume:

The girls playing in their costumes:

white-puppy-dog-with-black-spots Caroline: