Late to the Party

again.

We went Geocaching for the first time today. Sarah's had a GPS unit for over a year and we've always planned on using it to go. (She won it during a review quiz on a field trip. It pays to pay attention!)

I went online today and not only discovered a fun site that listed several hundred thousand caches, I found there were two within walking distance of our house. www.geocaching.com will even download the coordinates directly to Sarah's Garmin GPS.

I've already downloaded 11 more cache sites in the area and that will be our Labor Day activity with the kids. I'm excited about it.

I think this time I'll remember to take the camera.

It's Not Exactly Reverent

My husband has a game he plays with the kids at church. They get bored and start begging dad to "make my hand white." This means he has them put their hand in a fist and then Steve proceeds to rub the blood out of the hand, pushing back through to the wrist.

This has the disturbing effect of making their hands look just like a corpse. Right there in church. It's startling and something about the whole game just seems so irreverent. They of course love it.

I just try very hard not to look. It's unsettling to know what my child's hand would look like if there were no blood running through it anymore. It's like he's taken my deepest fears and sat them down next to me in a place where I should be safe from fears.

To the kids it's just a game. They have no associations with death and corpses. they just think it looks cool. Dad just thinks it looks cool.

Mom just thinks she should probably not read so many murder mysteries.

It always has to be big

My kids' play. When they do stuff it's much more often some big imaginative play. They don't just sit and build with blocks or Polly Pockets. They have to build with Lego and then create a Lego museum and everyone is going to come to the Lego museum and they can charge admission and then . . . . see? Big. Poor Barbies. Left out in the cold.

Rilla decided yesterday that she was going to be a magician. She practiced her disappearing acts and her switching tricks. She wore a costume. She then declared that she was going to put on a show. This means she'll need tickets. She spent 15 minutes this morning hand writing those out.

She's crazy. Although maybe not quite as crazy as Libby who chooses to wear the same play dress every single day.

First Day of School

yup, school time is back. Thank goodness. I'm glad to get my routine back. My house hasn't been this clean all summer long. Mostly because I'm the one cleaning it this time. there was no way I was cleaning up their messes this summer. They had to do that and they tend to miss corners and skip the vacuuming. ;)

Here's our back to school pic. Aren't they cute? I do it in front of the same tree every year so I get a visual record of how they've grown. Sigh. I still remember the first back to school picture with Sarah in her braid getting off her first ride on the school bus, barely five years old.

As Promised

Sarah's hair:


Cute huh? I'm used to it now.

My Husband is very different from me

Today Steve locked his keys in the car, luckily we have roadside assistance for him (and luckily he was in town and not at work.) He called from home because his cell was in the car and then went out to the car about 15 minutes before the tow truck was going to be there.

The tow truck that took two hours and a couple of phone calls from my end to get it to actually show up. After this time I was spitting nails for Steve's sake. That kind of wait was completely unacceptable. 30-45 minutes for the on call guy to wrap things up and drive five minutes to the car? you bet. no problem. 2 hours? no. not even close.

The boss finally shows up completely apologetic. Steve's fine. Don't worry about it he says. No big deal. Hey, he finished two songs! It was productive time!

Good thing he was the one waiting for the tow truck.

He may also have been fine with the wait because he got out of helping clean the bedroom.

I love my neighbors!

I have found someone who can help me modify patterns! whoohoo! She's going to help me do two blouses Monday. She also is in the process of opening a fabric store here in town. I told her if she had a class to teach pattern modification, I would totally sign up. Oh and one on pattern making. wouldn't that be cool?

Good Luck

So I'm babysitting full time now. Just one two year old, which gives me my two year old fix (I love kids that age, so adorable) and some money at the same time. Between gas prices and my husband's appendix, we had to do something. Oh and my amazing lack of practical skill with money. We should have more than we do because I know all the theories about how to handle money. It's like the stuff melts.

We're attending a couple's dinner for church this evening. I'm supposed to bring a dessert, so I made a cheesecake. Rasberry chcolate swirl cheesecake. Yeah, I'm a show off. I can't help myself. I love baking and making lovely desserts and I have this itty bitty little vanity problem. Just a little one. really. I like to picture people telling me how delicious my dessert is and asking for the recipe and telling me how awesome I am. Just a little vanity, perfectly normal I'm sure.

I've also got the day off today and all I've done is bake a cheesecake. I need to get my hair cut (no idea how) go to JoAnn, sew buttons on a shirt, and start on other sewing projects. But hey, I learned how to make custom Flair on Facebook. That's good right?