Clueless

Todd's been up late the last few nights working on his thesis paper, and has been falling asleep on the couch for the couple hours of sleep he actually gets. So upon waking up, I was not alarmed when he was not in bed. As the next hour passed, I was busy waking up girls, making lunches, refereeing fights, wiping noses, repairing a skirt, getting Claire breakfast and sending three out of four out the door to school. When I finally had a moment of quiet (with the exception of Claire's incessant cry of "Mommy, I NEED you!!!" -meaning she wants me to hold her and look directly at her without distraction while she tells me something I already knew or something I didn't want to know.) I sat down to check my email when the phone rang. Answering it, I was surprised to hear Todd's voice on the other end! What!? I asked where he was and he told me he was at work already. I had to admit, I'd thought he was here somewhere the whole time. "When I noticed you weren't on the couch I figured you were in the bathroom." I wonder how long it would've taken me to figure out he wasn't in the bathroom.

Easter 2009

I was worried about the weather ruining any chance at Easter pictures and an Easter egg hunt outdoors, but we were fortunate enough to find a semi-clear time of the day to squeeze it all in.

Little Little Women

As part of Activity Days, we had the girls work on developing their talents in the area of acting. They had four practices to learn a mini version of the play "Little Women". They all did such a marvelous job! We were very proud :)


I posted the whole thing (about 16minutes) for those who wished they could've been there. The sound may need adjusting, as some of the girls were really softspoken.

This is Why I Love Spring!

Sophie's Fabulous Fashion Fun Birthday Party

Sophie's birthday party was today, so here is a peek at her birthday party fun. She wanted a fashion theme, so her cake is a stack of hatboxes. I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

Invitation:

The cake:

The games: first we played a matching game where the kids had to guess which fashions went with which years.
Then we did a "not-so-fashionable relay"


As the final activity, we had the girls partner up and make dresses on each other using only tissue paper and tape. Then they modeled the outfits and the lone boy of the party got to be the judge (thanks, Ethan, for putting up with all these girls!)

And the winner was:

And the fabulous prize was:

With such a great kid, it's hard not to spoil her. Here are a few of her gifts:

Rollerblades (or "rolling boots" as Claire called them)

A sapphire ring and amethyst necklace from Grandpa.

Happy Birthday my lovely little lady!!

"One" - Not So Lonely If You're Janelle

Janelle told me at dinner today all the things she can do if she's in a time-out in her room all by herself. She's quite adept at entertaining herself, I've found. Our conversation went something like this:

Janelle: I can still have fun in my room, Mom, even when I'm in time out. I'm very good at entertaining myself.
Mom: The only thing you're allowed to do is read though. So what else can you do?
J: Sometimes I run laps around my room for excercise. Or I pretend I'm racing someone.
M: You find that fun, do you?
J: Yeah! Also sometimes I turn around in a circle to get myself dizzy and pretend the room is spinning around me.
M: Oooh, fun!
J: And I can play hide and seek with myself.
M: Ummm...how?
J: Well, I hide somewhere until I fall asleep and forget where I am, then when I wake up, I have to figure it out.
M: Alright, what else do you do?
J: I have races with myself.
M: Who wins?
J: Well, I'll pick a starting place and a finishing place and walk, and whichever leg gets to the finishing place first wins.
M: Wow! You're more fun than a barrell of monkeys!
J: [blank stare]......I don't get it.

Green Day

For St. Patrick's Day today, the girls wanted to make their hair green. They had a grand plan to not wear any green at all (which Janelle obviously changed her mind about) and to wear a large raincoat with the hood up. Then when some unwitting fool came up to pinch them, they would whip off the hood and say "Ah Ha!" exposing their green hair underneath and delivering a well-deserved double pinch to the fool who fell in their trap. Thus the pincher becomes the pinchee...

So this was as green as we could get it, using green hairspray and green facepaint left over from our Shrek themed Halloween (in which Todd -aka Shrek -was mistaken more than once for the Incredible Hulk).