"Hoppy Burt-day Pumpkin! Hoppy Burt-day Do Do!"
I voted on the way home from my Dr appointment this morning. Let me just say, early voting is the greatest invention ever! I walked in, handed them my license and voted. It took 5 minutes total. It would have taken 2 minutes if I was a straight ticket kind of girl, but my votes don't fall along party lines. If you have the option to early vote, DO IT!
If you have the distinct honor of knowing my sweet girl, this picture needs no explanation. J does not enjoy being the center of attention. The tears started falling as I walked her to her class this morning and abruptly ended as soon as she was "off the spot" and back at her seat. She just cried. No talking, no question answering. I held her and answered all of the questions. Her classmates clapped for her anyway.
B&J and I made these cupcakes on Friday. We got the instructions out of Family Fun magazine. Also on Friday, the little peas and I attended a playgroup, and on Friday night, we all went to a fun church activity. It's the most socializing I've done in recent memory, and it was exhausting. I think Daniel broke my social bone. His introverted ways are rubbing off on me after 13 years of exposure. My goals for this week involve a laundry mountain, last minute Halloween stuff, and work.
L has recently developed a passion for pretend play. She takes over all of B's elaborate scenes while she is at school. Here you can see she is putting Dora down for a nap inside the greenhouse. She will make up stories and talk the whole time, including creating dialogue for the characters. There is always a dad in the stories, even if a random object has to play the role of dad.
L got her first haircut yesterday. This is the first step in growing out the natural mullet that my daughters sport for the first 2 years of their lives. The worst part of the first haircut is how old they look afterward.
We have a very nice retired couple that live next door. They are very sweet to us, and love our kids. They like to bring them little gifts and comment on how they are the best behaved children ever. What's not to love about neighbors like that? The icing on the neighborly cake was when they got a generator after the hurricane and invited us to plug our refrigerator and tv into it until our power came back on. They are lovely people. My mom caught the husband secretly watering my sago palm tree in the front yard after I transplanted it because he was afraid it was going to die and knew we were busy with the new baby.
This little punk stole and smuggled a package of Swarovski beads into the bike trailer yesterday morning, opened them, and lost quite a few. When I figured out that the package was missing, I spent 20 minutes trying to understand where she put them. She kept saying what sounded like "drawer" (I checked all the drawers). Finally, she pointed at the garage door and said "drawer" which I eventually figured out was actually supposed to be "trailer".
This is one of the sets of hair clips that I've made. They're cuter in real life...I need to figure out how to photograph/light this sort of thing. The girls are completely obsessed and ask every morning and after school each day, "Have you had a chance to make us anymore hair clips Mama?" Because, you know I've got nothing more important to do than spend 24 hours a day making them hair clips. They love them so much that B took hers out and put it in her desk so that she wouldn't lose it at recess (so out of character for her). Also, J's little kindergarten friend told her that she liked her clip and she was going to take it from her, so she took it out and hid it in her lunchbox. I told J not to worry so much, and if that friend takes her hair clip she can always tell her teacher, or I can make her another one. Such drama!
B&J rode home from school without me yesterday. Riding home from school involves coming down about 500 yards of sidewalk with a large pack of kids and turning into our circle (no street crossing required). It's not really a big deal, except according to Daniel...I'm overprotective. It took exactly 6 minutes from the time they exited the building until they were in our driveway. I of course was standing there taking pictures like an idiot. It went well, and it looks like I will now not have to wake the babies up from their naps every day to get the big girls. I was telling my mom...I can tolerate the 5-10 minutes of nervousness waiting for them to come down the sidewalk in the afternoon, but I need to ride with them every morning so that I can watch them enter the building and know that they are safely there. I can't imagine spending all day wondering if they made it to school without incident. That will probably always be beyond my comfort level...I'm a worrier.
I'm on a soup and salad kick. I have a strong tendency toward food fixations. For months it has been granola. I could NOT get enough granola. Now, that's fading to a few times each week. For meals lately though, I've had a taste for nothing except soup and salad. After I ate the above pictured lunch for the 5th day in a row last week, I snapped a photo...for posterity, and slow blog days. I guess you could call this a slow blog day, since the 6 loads of laundry I just folded while watching License to Wed (stupid movie) did not provide me with any enthralling writing material.
Who took it? Fess up! September just started...like 5 minutes ago, and now it is October. I want to know who is responsible for this travesty of justice. Ike was it you? One moment I'm a free wheeling, youthful 29 year old with plenty of time before the holiday season...then...BAM! October. sheesh.
