Exhaustapooped

May totally kicked my ba-dunk-a-dunk.

Hooray for June and... two more days of school! Hip! Hip! Hooray!

We had a preschool graduation.

Last day of preschool pajama day.

First grade open house.

Yearbooks!

A first grade field trip to the farm.

 

 

Then Momma kicked up her heels and let it all groove out with some black eyed peas gals...

 

 

 

The morning after my girls night out... I woke up with a cuddle bug. Life is good. I am so grateful.

 

This was just half of my last week... how was your May? 

Cheers!

Two more days of school!!! Yahoo!

Pros and Cons

Well...

This Friday will be two weeks since we got Hailey, the dog.

We've had some surprises.

1. 6YO who I got the dog for... is fairly ambivalent.
2. 4YO who I thought would be ambivalent - is all over Hailey...all the time...poor dog.
3. Hubby who wanted nothing to do with Hailey...is the nicest and most willing to cuddle and touch her animal-ness... and Hailey is terrified of him.
4. I spend a lot of my time washing my hands... so now they are cracked... and dry. She follows me around everywhere... just me. All the time. Sometimes I run really fast so she can't find me so I can have some blessed time alone.


Pros:
1. Cute
2. Quiet
3. Low-maintenance
4. Small
5. Trained
6. 4YO loves her
7. Sleeps a lot
8. Loves to cuddle


Cons:
1. She's a dog, not a baby.
2. Follows me around everywhere... also resulting in guilt on my part for not showering her with more attention.
3. No one to dog sit when we need to get going places. I don't trust kennels... read really bad reviews. So am now paranoid. Also... don't want to spend the cash on them.
4. Doggy breath.
5. 6YO is uninterested... probably because the dog is only interested in me.
6. Dog germs vs. human germs - I know it's all in my head... but my head is attached to my body.
7. Poop scooping duty.
8. Hubby is non-committal due to her consistent fear of him, no matter how nice he is to her.
9. 4YO so desperately wants to play with her and the dog so desperately wants to escape to me.
10. She's not a baby. I think I just want a baby...in the future. Relax everyone. (yep, there goes my husband, running away to hide his sperm from my baby-craving womb)

Orange is the new Black

Three weeks after getting pushed of the round-spinny monkey bars, my now 6YO Avant Garde Gal is out of a splint and into an awesome orange cast. She picked it out herself...and secretly, that's the color I'd have picked too. (I guess...not so secret anymore)


Worst part of getting the cast: when she screamed bloody murder in fear of the rotating saw that had to cut off some of the casting they did for the splint.

Best part of getting the cast: when they cleaned her dead skin cells off her poor arm with alcohol... yes, it had been driving me crazy that for three weeks we haven't been able to clean it since the accident.




How to celebrate growing bones and a brilliant orange cast?

Why... a good dinner of course.

Fresh strawberries from Trader Joe's.

Adorable baby heirloom tomatoes a la Trader Joe's.


Seriously... aren't they so pretty?



A tomato, basil, black and kidney bean salad.



Giant, tender artichokes.


Nighty, night.

Wilderness Foiled

Photo taken the morning of Daddy's birthday...

It's a Daddy/Daughter camp out with our Church this weekend.

I'm excited for a few reasons.

1. My almost 6YO has been working on falling asleep without sucking her thumb. She's been doing well. My beautiful friend had mentioned that she had her daughter pick her own rewards for each day she didn't, for when she reached a week, a month. So we had our daughter pick her own rewards. Five skittles for each day, a camp out for a week and a party for a month.

Yep. A camp out. As soon as she said that I was quickly trying to figure out how we could get out of that one. However, since we had promised she could pick out her own rewards, we were bound by a vocal contract.

It just so happened that we found out this weekend is a camp out! It's the first week of her completion. YAY!

2. I don't have to go camping. I'm not a daddy or a daughter. Wheeeee! (although if I'm honest, I'd admit to feeling a bit bummed I won't be there for their first camping experience - which means the hubby better do some serious photo-taking and Flip vid recording ....OR ELSE!)

3. I get to make foil packet dinners for them. I have never made one before, but remember vaguely enjoying them as a kid.

Check it out!

Queen Scarlett's foil packet dinner

ingredients:
Organic ground beef
Garlic flavored olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
Onions, diced
Carrots, sliced
Celery, sliced
Potatoes, sliced
Tomatoes, diced
Cream of mushroom
Worcestershire sauce
Packet of Lipton onion
Sour cream

Mix one can of cream of mushroom soup with about one tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce (I just swish the bottle in a circle for measurement sake), and one packet of the Lipton onion. Stir well. Set aside.

Chop, dice, slice all the veggies.


Brush garlic olive oil over foil. Add freshly ground black pepper then organic ground beef.


Top the beef with onions.


Then add potatoes, carrots, celery and tomatoes.


Then top with the cream of mushroom mixture, with a dollop of sour cream, and little more ground pepper.


Wrap the packets, label and wait with bated breath to find out how it all turns out. I think they'll need to cook it on hot coals for 20-30 min.... or whenever they are cooked.

Blair Witch for the Under 6 crowd

I found this little gem of a video on our Flip camera a month ago... it was a genuine surprise. Since then I've found little surprise videos. It seems my offspring enjoy time in front of and behind the camera too.

I've never seen the Blair Witch project. I imagine that if it was done by say, two precocious sisters under the age of six... this might be how it would turn out.

... they make me smile... my sneaky little girls who not only were able to sneak downstairs to procure the camera, they kept their naturally loud voices down to create a little magic.

Reminders

Of why I'm grateful.

For a husband who takes a completely chaotic kitchen and turns it into this.



For learning how to make my first apple pie...even if the apples turned to applesauce.


For forts, scary stories, games, and imaginative play...on a rainy, rainy day.






For tea and honey.


For brief, sunny park days, and skittles before the storm.

Cotton Candy

It's been one of those weeks.

One I'd rather just have Topher put me in the chair and erase. But that would make me a doll and that would be worse.

Sunday I spent all day enjoying a pressure filled migraine. I did notice though, that as I taught my little lesson during Young Women - I didn't feel the pain. I've always noticed that when the Lord needs me to serve, He finds a way to help me do it.

Monday morning brought my poor AGG down with a horrible cold. She was constantly having problems breathing due to a stuffy nose. She was melodramatically annoyed. My husband would say she gets that from me. Unfortunately, I can't find anyone to blame for this personality flaw.

Monday also brought a package from my sister. God bless my sister. She gave the girls their own laundry hampers. And you thought they were just for clothes. They were cocoons, potato sacks for racing and jumping, back packs, cages, houses...I love imaginative kids.


Tuesday my little DD came down with a cold and a fever. Her little body always seems to spike up into a a fever anytime she catches a cold. When a fever strikes... forget sleep. She also tends to milk it for all it's worth. Which is both adorable, intelligent, and unproductive. I get absolutely nothing done when she's sick. But she's so darn cuddly.

Meanwhile... I also have a migraine...and did I forget to mention, Sunday brought evil Aunt Flow. (blah, blah tmi... deal with it)

And... the weather... have I mentioned we've had more than 2 weeks of gloomy, foggy... gloom, doom, GLOOM? There's also been rain, and clouds...and in a rare moment today the sun broke through for a mere moment. It was a moment I tried to grasp and cling to. I miss my sun. I need warmth. This boring grey is driving me crazy!

So I am Grumpy Dwarf... the gift that keeps giving - my poor, poor husband. Men really put up with so much... in my case, he has to put up with me. (queue Godzilla) I am a total grumpasaurous when I am not feeling well, the weather is awful, etc, etc...

Last, but not least... I was supposed to teach my daughter's kindergarten class about Chagall today - we were also going to create these fun, fantasy pictures with pastels. I made cupcakes last night... to go with the lesson. I ended up postponing due to my 3-year-old, portable furnace. So what to do with the double batch of cupcakes? Since cupcakes stay fresh for only three-days - I figured I'd better get them out of my house before I consumed them all. These fluffy, moist applesauce spice cupcakes (minus frosting) are so easy to consume. So the kids all got a treat today.

With sick kids, a miserable excuse for a Mommy, and getting ready for school - I still had my cupcakes to decorate... This morning I didn't have the time, nor the energy to make my cream cheese frosting from scratch. It physically hurt as I spread the pre-packaged cream cheese frosting on the homemade applesauce spice cupcakes... it hurt... but sleep-deprived, migraine, flow woman had already thrown up the white flag in desperation.

I was so glad adding the cotton candy was easy. I loved how whimsical they made the cupcakes. (side note, the cotton candy dissolves quickly...so add them right as you're going to serve, or add a giant glob...because there will be shrinkage - heh) Chagall was imaginative, used bright, bold, fun colors... so I thought little clouds of happy fluff would work well - and today, when I needed it most, they made me happy.

ps. My little DD is currently sitting on my lap as I post this, playing on the iPhone because the motrin kicked in and she is feeling happy herself.