Simple Woman's Daybook

For April 30

Outside my window... It's dark but the almost full moon is illuminating the backyard; the deck slider door is open and one of my neighbors has a campfire. Smells delicious.

I am thinking... about getting a netbook or some other sort of mini computer that I can travel around with. I've got so many writing projects going on that I'd like to be more mobile with them now that the weather is FINALLY nice.

I am thankful ... that the weather is going to be gorgeous in New York for my nephew's First Communion party.

From the kitchen... Things are mostly cleaned up from dinner. We had meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green beans. The girls had yogurt for dessert, too. I don't bother telling them that it's healthy because they really like it.

I am wearing... blue shirt and hot pink pants. I am STYLIN'

I am creating... lots and lots of web content. And stories for the Eagle. And I'm working on an inventive way to give my brownies their Try Its at our Court of Honor. I'm thinking some sort of origami thing ... but I haven't gotten much further (or is it farther?) than that.

I am going ... to go to the dentist. Really I am. Maybe not next week. But soon. Or maybe not.

I am reading... Shutter Island. The movie just came out and I was reading a review that said the movie was almost as good as the book, so I figured I'd read the book. Just started it and so far I really like it.

I am hoping... that we don't have traffic tomorrow. Or Sunday. Or ever again in our lives. (But at least tomorrow!)

I am hearing... David Letterman. The dryer. Cash snore.

Around the house... Got things pretty much together although ALL of my laundry is on the dining room table. It seems as soon as I get a batch upstairs there's more there on the table. I now understand why we never had more than one or two outfits when were growing up. TOO MUCH LAUNDRY!

One of my favorite things... is the way Hannah and Lizzie play with each other these days. I don't know how it happened, but there is actually MORE playing than fighting.

A few plans for the week ahead... .We're traveling to New York state this weekend and it's SO GOOD TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!! We'll be back on Sunday and then starts a busy week with Brownies and playdates and all the normal stuff that we do every week.

A picture I am sharing... He's getting BIG, isn't he? Cash will be six months old in a couple of weeks and he weighs about 33 pounds, which is only about 10 pounds less than Hannah and Lizzie weigh.

Saving the Earth

Hannah, Lizzie and I learned a lot this weekend. We learned that trees help to stabilize the water table and put oxygen into the air. We learned that gnats are out early this year. We learned that pricker bushes do NOT make good chairs (that was my own personal lesson). And we learned that this country is VERY LUCKY INDEED that Hannah and Lizzie and I were never pioneers. I don't think we would have gotten much past the threshold of our Little House on the Prairie.
Where did we learn all this valuable information? During the Girl Scout Tree Planting Service Project. Six members of my troop (plus a parent for each of them except for my two-for-one deal) helped plant trees at Beaver Farm. Our morning group (some are pictured below) planted 300 trees. The afternoon group planted 700 trees at a different site. Our site was rocky, hot, swampy and (did I mention?) very very very buggy. The afternoon site was, we were told later, a piece of cake. If you don't believe how rough this work was (and not just for my cane-carrying, air-conditioning loving self) let me tell you that I BROKE one of our shovels trying to get the rocks out of the soil. But all's well that ends well. And like I said, it's fun to save the Earth: Here's a picture of Hannah helping my friend and fellow leader (of two troops -- she's a girl scout superstar!) Kelly tamp down the soil around a freshly planted tree. This tree was sort of small. Some of the trees were in gallon containers. Right here Hannah is HAPPY to be helping. About 35 seconds after this picture was snapped she started complaining. About everything. Here's Lizzie after the job was done. I have no idea why she's still wearing her vest as the rest of us were all sweating and huffing and puffing. She was a great tree planting assistant, though. She was runner and would run up and down this huge hill getting trees to plant (they were color-coded by species) while myself and two other adults dug the holes. Hannah had deserted us when she found a Junior Girl Scout to help her plant one or two trees, but mostly just talk about hair and make-up. Lizzie is standing in front of some of the pots that previously had held the trees. The flags were used as markers to tell the girls which type of tree went in that area. I have absolutely no idea what kinds of trees we planted. We all just knew that we did NOT want to find a pink flag because those were the gallon containers and they were HEAVY!! It was a good day, though, and we all felt very accomplished after it was done.

And here's my other big news for the week. I bought a new couch for the family room. It's very comfy. Lizzie doesn't like it. She doesn't like change at all. She wants us to keep the old couch even though it is broken, because Daddy keeps broken cars in the garage. But I told her that I DON'T KEEP BROKEN THINGS. So Lizzie is staging her own protest and has promised to chain herself to the old couch which is currently sitting on our deck until the bulk pick up day the first week of May. Let me just add here that Lizzie has actually sat on this couch about 17 times in the whole 5 or 6 years we've had it, as she has another chair she prefers. But she still doesn't want to see it go. See what I mean? She's not moving:

Dancing Girls

(This is my second update ... if you haven't been to the blog for awhile, keep scrolling down!)

Hannah and Lizzie are taking ballet again this year. And this year they're actually improving. The recital is in about two months so there's lots of time to learn the dance (thank heaven!) but I was able to get some photos of a recent dance class.
Here's Lizzie watching the teacher demonstrate one of the steps (don't ask me what they are ... it's all French to me... ha ha):

Hannah's real strength is her hand placement and her understanding of the music. She's not so good at staying with the actual dance steps, though, so that's what we work on. I'm pretty sure Hannah will be taking jazz next year as she really loves to just run around and interpret the music her OWN way!

Lizzie is all about technique. She wants to do every step perfectly and she'll do them over and over and over again until she gets it right. She doesn't quite understand that she's dancing to music though ... or that other people have already moved on to the next step in the dance. She loves ballet and is already looking forward to next year.

Hannah doing some step I can't pronounce:

Here's a part of the dance they all seem to "get" already. I've seen the whole thing performed and it should be really cool once they can, you know, actually dance it.

Part two of that same part of the dance:
Hannah showing off and getting ready to practice her bow:

Lizzie, after a hard rehearsal: For those of you who can't make it to the demonstration in June, stay tuned to the blog because I'm hoping to video the dress rehearsal like I did last year.

Update! We have an update!

I am not happy with blogger and am considering moving my blog. I'm pretty sure that my four followers :) will be able to follow me to wherever I go. Blogger has made uploading photos very difficult (I can't cut and paste and I can't drag and drop which probably means nothing to any of you, but it's essential to organizing my otherwise very convoluted posts) and since I know that all of you pretty much just want to see cute pix of the kids (and dog) it can be very frustrating.
But because I'm nice and have nothing better to do while my hair dries this morning, I'm going to upload a whole bunch of pictures from our Easter weekend.
You're welcome. ;)
So here, in no particular order (because blogger wouldn't let me change the order) are pictures from our Easter Weekend:

Let me say that the Easter Bunny broke a MAJOR rule by bringing the girls bubbles in their Easter baskets. This family (and by this family I mean ME) hates bubbles. They are messy and sticky and, well, I just don't like them. Maybe it's the close association to cleaning products that I don't like. But here's happy Lizzie blowing some bubbles.

The Easter Bunny also brought the girls these finger puppets. They were a lot of fun until Cash ate them. But, as I explained to Hannah, dogs are the natural predators of bunnies.

First course of Easter dinner. I made Cream of Asparagus soup. It was very very very delicious. Especially with the garlic rounds I tossed in at the last minute. Oh, and you can also admire my Fiestaware in this picture AND my southern living at home silverware.

Here's the gang getting ready to dive into the soup. Hannah and Liz put together the little table display of Easter stuffed animals.

Oh, and here's ANOTHER thing I hate. Coloring Easter Eggs. HATE IT! It's messy and more stain gets on the kids and the floor and the table than ever adheres to the eggs so I. HATE. IT. (Because, as you know, I'm such a neatnik!) However, decorating eggs is an important part of childhood, right? So I bought a kit from Oriental Trading and this is how we decorated our eggs. I think they look pretty darn good. And all I had to do was throw away 4,1047 little pieces of adhesive wrapper.

Moving right along. We had an Easter Egg hunt in our front yard. I hid 36 eggs filled with candy and the girls went crazy looking for them. Hannah is looking for some down by the creek here.

Eventually Rob had to get in on it because I hid some of the pretty well. You have to do that or else the hunt lasts about 37 seconds and then you've just got two kids hopped up on sugar for the rest of the afternoon.

SUCCESS!! Lizzie and her eggs:

MORE SUCCESS!! Hannah digs into her eggs to see what was inside:

I think this picture was from Sunday night when we all went to the park. Cash is even bigger than this now. He's a good dog though. He totally needs to learn some manners, but right now he's getting by on his charm.

I actually think this picture is from last weekend, not Easter Weekend. But I like it, so I'm including it. We are introducing Cash to the various parks we frequent and this is the playground at the French Creek State Park. Hannah's tall enough to get up on the monkey bars all by herself and cruise across. Happy for her, sad that my babies continue to get bigger!

And magically we are back at Easter morning. Here's a picture of some of the loot. Aunt Tina's gift of baby zhou zhou pets was particularly enjoyed and actually took the girls away from all the candy for about 12 minutes. Good work, Beanie!

And here are Lizzie, Hannah and Rob right after church. Hannah said she really liked church because of the renewal of the baptism rites. Okay, what she REALLY said was, "HEY, HE SPLASHED ME WITH WATER, THAT'S COOL!!" really loud in the middle of Mass, but that's probably as close as liking Mass as I can hope for right now.

And now I'll close with one of my favorite pictures. Cash gets a little nervous in the car, so here he is his holding onto Lizzie for support. Cute, aren't they?

Happy Easter

Happy Easter from Hannah, Lizzie and Cash (and yes, he's wearing his manly Easter bonnet!!) Hope you have a great day ... ours is off to a great start. More pictures later!