My Daddy :o)

I sent some videos out recently via email to my list of family and friends. My Daddy replied "Great video. You are a good mom to your girls." Quick, to the point, but enough to make me feel really good inside. I'm glad he thinks so. 10 years ago, you couldn't have convinced me I'd ever care what my parents think, but now, it means so much. I'm glad he thinks I'm a good mom.

===

Mark picked Chloe up a little earlier than I was expecting yesterday, which gave Cora and I the afternoon to ourselves. What do we do when we get bored? That's right, we went shopping. LOL We went to the mall looking for Christmas presents. I usually buy one Christmas/birthday gift each month but I've been slacking off since January and only had one for Chloe and two for Cora. I was feeling a bit stressed about it, but I also don't have as much time without Chloe now so it's been harder. Anyway, at Claire's they had all their clearance items clearanced even more, down to $1 each. So I bought a bunch of girly stuff for Chloe - head bands, hair ties, bracelets and rings, fun stuff. At Target I got the Disney Scene It game for $7, two computer games - one where you have a virtual kitten, the other is a kindergarten learning thing - for $9.99 each. All that was 1/2 off. And I got Cora a couple of board books, a Baby Einstein one and one called Butterfly Kisses that comes with a little butterfly finger puppet. Too cute. I'm really happy with myself. Christmas is much cheaper when you spread it out over the year. It's so hard to buy anything for Cora though, compared to Chloe who loves everything. I'm not sure what all she's getting. I really wanna get Chloe a sewing machine and a digital camera, but I think it might be one or the other. Ahhhh kids are fun!

===

Yesterday I was a busy momma. I grocery shopped, cleaned out my van, vacuumed it and washed it, finished all the laundry (in addition to normal household stuff.) The girls and I spent a couple hours at the park. Cora got a little pink - gotta start remembering to put sunscreen on her! Chloe rode her scooter around the park while we walked, and then we all camped out on a blanket for awhile and just enjoyed the pretty weather.

Today we need to go down to Main Street to pick up a gift for Andrew's mom for mother's day, and so I can see if I can find some pink and black yarn because my baby girl needs a punk rock striped soaker to match her pirate leggings. :oP Other things on the to-do list are washing diapers and sheets, cleaning my room, and hopefully arranging a play date for Chloe with one of her friends this afternoon. Poor kid hasn't had any interaction with friends lately. I'm so anti-social. :o\

===

Alright, that's enough rambling for now. I better get moving!

Pics & such

I figured it was time for more pictures. :o)

Here's what math class looks like at our house:

Yes, those are wine corks she's using to help her add. LOL



Here's Cora with her tree, and some other non-graphic placenta-planting pics. Apryl asked what the purpose of planting the placenta is. I guess it's sort of symbolic - planting a tree to symbolize new life, and not disposing of the placenta but instead appreciating it's value (it fed my baby for 9 months!) but planting it so it has a sort of permanence. It also makes great fertilizer. LOL And now we have a tree roughly the same age as the baby, which will be kind of neat as long as we live here. The whole placenta planting thing isn't for everyone for sure, but then, neither is having your baby at home in your living room. You're welcome to think I'm crazy if you'd like, many people do. You can read more about the whole placenta thing by googling 'planting the placenta'. There's lots of stuff about it.








And some pictures of the flowers around my yard. There's still some random junk sitting out that makes them look kind of icky, but I figured if I didn't take them now, I'd never take them. The empty spot on the plant stand is where my cascade petunias will go if I can find yellow and white ones.







And one quick pic of my girl and her dog. :o) They are such good friends.

Wee blogger :o)

Nothin' like starting 'em early! :o)

http://chloelizabeth.blogspot.com/

There's the link to Chloe's blog. I'm not sure how often we'll post in it, but I thought she'd enjoy it, as she loves talking about herself. LOL I'm sure she'd love comments if anyone feels like reading it. We're calling this a homeschool activity. She's dictating and I'm typing it out as best I can. Hope you enjoy it!

Planting and more planting

There are so many beautiful new plants in our yard this year!

Yesterday we planted trees. We planted Cora's placenta with a red maple in the back yard. I took pictures, but decided they might gross some of you out, so I won't post them. :o) I'm so glad we did it though, I know girls who have placentas in their freezer from their last 3 kids with the intention of planting them, and never get around to it. We also planted a peach tree and an apple tree. The peach tree has about 4 little peaches on it, hopefully they ripen and turn out well, and survive the transplant.

In the perennial bed I planted a meadow sage, pinks, Shasta daisies and English daisies, plus 10 gladiolus bulbs and three dahlia bulbs.

In my pots I have yellow Gerbera daisies and snapdragons, vanilla marigolds and white verbena. I want to get some yellow and white cascade petunias to put in one more pot with the others near the porch. I also put some petunias in a big bowl near the corner of the yard.

In the veggie garden we have radishes, spinach, lettuce, peas, green beans, beets, tomatoes, bell peppers, corn, and I'm going to plant some cucumbers this week.

I'm rather pleased with everything. Hopefully I can brave the bugs this summer to keep it all alive and weeded. :oP That's the worst part of gardening. It's great this time of year, when there aren't so many bugs, but by June the wasps will be out thick, and I'm scared of them!

Andrew did a ton around the house yesterday and Friday. I love how ambitious he is. He's off turkey hunting again today, this time with my dad. Cora and I are going to my mom's for breakfast and then we have a bunch to do before we go to a birthday party at one. Chloe spent last night at Mark's so I have to pick her up on the way there. Hopefully she's not all cranky and miserable.

Well, I guess that's all for now. I need to take pictures of my yard and post them sometime soon.

We're off to see the wizard....

We had such a fun time last night! At the last minute we decided to see if we could get decent seats at the local dinner theater, The Cabaret. Wizard of Oz is playing, and we hold season tickets and wanted to take Chloe. We worked it all out - had my mom watch Cora, got permission from Mark to keep Chloe last night, and went, and had a splendid time. I love watching Chloe when she sees plays, she really enjoys them. Poor thing was so tired by the end though, it went until 10:00 and she'd already had a long day. She especially liked the tornado, and thankfully wasn't scared of the witch. It was amazing how well Dorothy and the witch did sounding just like the original actresses in the movie. It really was a good show. I enjoy seeing those - it's something fun to do and I don't feel too guilty asking my mom to baby sit for that, because they usually go too. I hope they do another kid-friendly one sometime soon, because taking Chloe makes it that much more fun.

==

Mark was sort of weird when I talked to him yesterday afternoon. He was supposed to have Chloe around 1:00 but didn't call, so I kind of assumed maybe he wasn't taking her at all. I called around 3:00 and he just said he was sorry, he didn't know he'd be so busy. When I called I asked if I could keep her last night so we could see the play, and then on Sunday if I could have her around noon (he's scheduled to have her all day) because her friend's birthday party is that day. He agreed to both, but sounded... sad? I dont' know. Not mad. I definitely know what mad sounds like when it's coming from Mark. He just got quiet and sounded really.... sad. It was strange. I agreed to let him have her Tuesday afternoon, as he won't be off early next Thursday. Good enough for me. I don't see any reason to let him have her a whole bunch anyway - he can't pay child support, he can't keep the schedule we have set up. I'm not there to be at his beck and call whenever he feels like seeing his daughter. She's such a happy kid right now, I'm dreading him seeing her tonight and screwing it all up. :o\

==

Andrew decided to take a break from turkey hunting today. Yay! He's not going tomorrow either. Two whole days spent with my man. :o) I have a million things for him to do. LOL I really want to plant today, we have a bunch of things to do both outside and in, and I want to go for a walk/scooter ride at the park, and, and, and. Always so much to do! I'm glad he's home. I miss him when he's not around much.

About Geocaching

The girls and I have discovered one very important fact about geocaching: this is definitely not an activity that is appropriate for anyone with an irrational fear of bugs.

It's a known fact that I am terrified of bugs. Flying, crawling, squirming, I don't care, I don't like them. I know most of them can't hurt me. I don't care. I don't want to be anywhere near a bug, thankyouverymuch. Over the past few years Chloe has developed a similar sentiment. In fact, she has perfected my signature move, which involves shrieking, flapping one's hands with arms half extended and running in any direction. Unfortunately, this fear does not help in facilitating the finding of hidden caches, which are usually in bug-friendly areas people like us should generally just avoid.

We gave up on our first cache attempt, at least for now. I found coordinates for another one in a park so we thought we'd give it a try. We packed a picnic lunch and headed out. We actually had a very nice time, aside from not finding our hidden treasure. It was really windy out, so I folded down the back seats in the van and we had a little 'indoor' picnic. Chloe thought that was cool. Then we set out with our GPS, a bag of useful stuff and trade items, and some crackers for the ducks. We found point 0 very easily, that was no problem. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of a wooded area that involved climbing around on rocks. I can't do that very well with a baby in the sling (my excuse for being too chicken to brave the bugs!) and Chloe had no problem telling me in no uncertain terms that she was NOT going up there by herself. So we sat there, looked around, saw nothing (not surprising) and gave up. We're sissies. We decided we'll take Andrew back with us. He's much tougher than we are. ;o)

So we walked back in the direction of the ducks and tossed them some crackers, all the while dodging random flies, bees, gnats and such. Oh! not to mention this:

Yes, that is a snake. I almost stepped on it. Ew. Upon seeing the snake, Chloe informed me that she would like one as a pet. Lovely.

We walked along the path, over a bridge, through a tunnel, looking at things along the way and randomly shrieking and flinging our arms about as needed to scare away any bugs. It's sort of like a tiny bit of nature right in the middle of town, which was neat. When we got back to the parking area I let Chloe play on the little play things while Cora sat on the grass and let the wind blow in her face, something she really enjoys. Silly girl.




All in all, it was a nice little afternoon activity. Andrew's home now, I think we'll drag him out with us and see if he can help us find it!

pics

I figured it was time to upload some pictures - I've been such a slacker about that lately. We've been busy around here, just doing stuff, nothing terribly important. Yesterday we cleaned house for awhile, then packed up and went to the dinosaur museum for a couple of hours. Chloe loves it there so much. :o) She got this egg thing from the gift shop, it's made of plaster and inside it is a toy dinosaur. You have to use a little wooden chisel and brush that come with it to chip away at the plaster to get the dino out. It entertained her for a long time yesterday, and then she brought it with us when we went to visit the in-laws and had one of her aunts help her. There's still plenty of plaster left. Cute project though.

There's a video of her here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kohFI516wcY

The other night, we were talking about what she wants to be when she grows up. She'd like to be a zoo-keeper, paleontologist, ballerina, cheerleader, surfer, and a teacher. Ambitious little thing, isn't she? :o)

Today we just have more cleaning to do (I'm sort of in spring cleaning mode) and I'd like to go buy some plants at the store, but that may not happen til tomorrow. We'll see. When Andrew gets home from turkey hunting we're going to go find the geocache we started to find the other day but never did. We're very close to finding it, I'm excited.

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Cora playing with the cat's toy. (I'm working on uploading a video of this too.)



I can't convince my computer to turn these few images. I'm irritated with it, so you'll just have to deal with it. :-) This is the apron top I knitted the other week.


Our tie dye hanging out to dry.

Another un-turned pic - my bulbs. Aren't they pretty? :o)

The dino egg

Planting peas. :o) She's quite a helper!

Her favorite display at the museum. Ew!

Happy baby in the bath



This is what we do nearly every evening now. It's wonderful.

Picture perfect

Spring always sparks a bit of inspiration in me that carries through to everything I do. I clean just a little bit better - I think having the windows open helps with that. I sew and knit with bright colors, probably inspired by the flowers starting to bloom outside. I cook and bake - all kinds of yummy treats, warm weather foods, recipes I'd put away for the winter.

My whole house is so nice and straightened right now. Little messes here and there from playing or creating, but nothing overwhelming. A quick run through and it'll be right back where it belongs. The floors will be swept, mopped and vacuumed this afternoon, and windows washed next week. I have clothes hanging on the line that I hand washed this morning - delicates and hand knits. There are chocolate chip walnut cookies in the oven along side a loaf of banana bread that will be turned into teething biscuits for Cora. Fried chicken for dinner tonight - to heck with the healthy stuff for one night!

Chloe's outside playing with the dog, Cora's banging on a bowl with a wooden spoon. The wind is blowing just a little bit, and with the windows open, it just *smells like spring in here.

Sometimes life just feels so picture perfect. I know it's not really, but it's okay to pretend once in awhile, no?

:o)

Happy spring days like this one are good for the soul.

Nothing to say

I haven't blogged in awhile. I haven't been feeling very good either, but mostly, it's just because I really don't have anything to say. :::gasp::: who ever would have thought that would happen? :o)

So the whole bronchitis thing really kicked my butt. I'm just now starting to feel back to normal. That is, I'm sneezing and my eyes are all itchy again, so the allergies have taken back over. Ugh. I love spring usually, but I'm starting to hate it!

On Wednesday I took Chloe to Coldstone Creamery for a treat in honor of her finishing all of the pink books in the Reader Rabbit series we're doing. The books, which come with a computer game, were my little brother's. The game is designed to work on Windows 3.1, but we made it work on our computer. She's doing so well! Now we're into the yellow books which focus a lot more on punctuation - apostrophes for possessive nouns, quotation marks and commas, along with the usual periods, question marks, and exclamation points. She's a little intimidated by all those weird marks on the page, but she's doing well so far. and she mostly loves it. Math usually consists of a bunch of jelly beans (or m&ms, sunflower seeds, beads, corks, or whatever else) and a sheet with 5-10 addition problems. She uses the objects to actually show the numbers, counts them together and gets her answer. She likes doing it, so we keep doing it. When she's really comfortable with that, we'll do subtraction. Aside from those things, school isn't anything structured, we just do what we feel like doing and I try to find a way to teach her something from it. Homeschooling is proving to be very entertaining and a great workout for my brain (and patience!)

In the crafty area - haven't done much of anything, really. I made a cloth bag yesterday, but haven't finished it yet. Just more scraps of fabric patched together. I love shopping with cloth. And I love how many people are doing it now! And knitting - I have a soaker almost finished, but not quite. Need to do the ribbing around the legs which is my least favorite part, and I'm procrastinating. As soon as I finish this one, I need to make another. My baby girl is growing fast! I kind of want to spend the afternoon tie dying. I have lots of diapers that could use some color, and Chloe likes doing it. We'll see though... not sure what I'll be up to yet.

So I've been reading Katey's blog and all about her family's adventures with geocaching. And I think I'm finally convinced that we need to try it. It sounds like lots of fun. Andrew had never heard of it, so I told him about it, and he agreed that it could be fun and said we can try it a bit. We don't have a handheld GPS, but my dad does and said we could borrow it. So Chloe and I might decided to spend the afternoon geocaching instead of tie dying. :o) I think there's one at a nearby park that might make a good starting point for us to learn how this all works. Anyone else do this?

Well, I suppose that's all I'll write for today. I have a lot to do this morning if we're going to have the afternoon free to do something fun.

Argh....

My silly little baby is still up, and it's after 10:00. I hate her new schedule. :o(

It's my turn to be sick now, I guess. I have a 101 degree fever, I'm freezing cold and am wearing more than enough clothing that I shouldn't be, I'm exhausted, my body aches, and my lungs hurt. Definitely bronchitis, as I suspected with Chloe. Cora's still sick, but appears to be getting better slowly. She's just got the icky cough that comes with bronchitis. I picked up a couple of homeopathics for her, and the cough one especially seems to be helping. Poor baby, she coughs and coughs and finally vomits. And let me tell you, for such a teeny tiny little girl, that belly of hers can hold a LOT of milk! I'm fascinated with how much she produces each time she throws up.

I hate being sick. I don't feel like doing anything at all except laying on the bed whimpering and sleeping. I am a sissy when I'm sick, and I know it. Unfortunately I have a HUGE pile of laundry (the result of lots of baby vomit) that needs to be tackled tomorrow, and the kitchen floor needs to be mopped where she has now puked twice. I did wipe it up with towels and wipe it down with Clorox wipes after, but it definitely needs to be mopped. Unfortunately, I used the last of the mopping soap earlier in the week, so I'll need to go to the store to get more. I haven't straightened up much, or washed dishes, so things are starting to pile up. And Chloe will be home in the morning, adding to the "I need to do stuff" feeling. She's not sick anymore, and doesn't understand what it means for me to be sick. She'll want to play, go outside, go for a walk, do school, etc. and I won't feel like it and then she'll pout and I'll feel bad.

Oy. I hope I kick this as fast as she did. If it runs the same course as it did for her, I'll be really sick tomorrow and Tuesday, but should feel a bit better by Wednesday minus the cough that seems to be hanging around.

Now if only I could get my baby to sleep! Argh! She can easily stay up till 10:30 or later, and I'm afraid to feed her more for fear of more vomit. I don't have many clothes left that haven't been puked on.

Blech. The joys of motherhood. I can't wait for this one to be over!

Ugh - Mark again

So Mark's work hours are evening out. For the past month or so, he's only seen Chloe twice. I've rather liked it that way. But now that his schedule is more stable, he's seeing her more. He had her yesterday afternoon and has her tonight. He'll probably have her Sunday as well.

My biggest problem with her visiting him is that she turns into a demon child upon returning from his house. I wish I knew what it was that caused it, but it's crazy. She cries at every little thing, talks back, has a stinky attitude and is just cranky. And when I finally get her all straightened out and happy again, she has to go back. Argh! It's just so frustrating.

Apparently their apartment building is being sold so they have to find a new place. Lovely - let's just keep tossing more change at the poor kid! If he could've just kept it together enough and not lost his house, we wouldn't have this problem.

And he's behind 5 months now on child support. I asked him when he intends to start paying it again, he said he wasn't sure. I'm about ready to take him back to court, but I hate causing more animosity.

I wish he'd just move to Singapore....

He's going MIA again...

Hubby got up for work at 2 am yesterday morning. He didn't get home until sometime after 11 last night - I was asleep so I have no idea when it was. He informed me a bit ago that he'll be going back in at 8:30 and they are going to Wyoming for three days. They'll be back Saturday. Sunday is opening day for turkey season so I probably shouldn't expect to see him. And then another week of work starts. :::sigh::: I hate being all on my own! And it's even worse with a sick baby, and not feeling so hot myself. Waaaaahhh.

Okay. Pity party over. :oP

===

I haven't posted any FO pics for awhile.

I finished this hat before we left for CA. It was supposed to keep me entertained on the drive, but went faster than I expected.

Pattern: Headline News from Stitch n Bitch Nation. If you're a knitter and don't own this book, go and buy it, along with its counterparts. They are fabulous.

Yarn: Lamb's Pride Superwash Bulky in colorway Autumn Leaves (a green-ish color with purple and brown bits, LOVE the color!) bought at that yard sale for $1. Used one skein and about a yard of a second skein.

Needles: size 7 & 9 circulars and size 8 dpns because it was all I had.

Absolutely thrilled with the result. I almost lost this hat on Space Mountain - had to go back and have the girl who worked there find it for me in one of the cars, I'd forgotten it. So glad I got it back!

Finally finished these socks. Terrible picture, sorry, I took it in the van on our way back home.

Pattern: None, I just made it up. Never did that with socks before, so it was an experience. They're very plain, I figured the crazy colored yarn was enough, they didn't need anything fancy in the stitchwork. casted on 68 sts and went from there.

Yarn: Trekking XXL 186 (?) I think.... A yard sale skein for $1. Still have quite a bit left. I see matching socks for Cora in my future.

Needles: size 1 dpn's.

I don't love them, but I don't hate them. This yarn is really tacky. I haven't worn them yet and am considering adding them to my gift stash for some unsuspecting birthday victim. We'll see.


I casted this on the other day when I needed something simple to work on. It was going to be striped. Then I decided that, hey, I've never tried any colorwork before, why not start now? This is my first attempt, not using a pattern, and having never seen how faire isle or intarsia is really done. I'm not sure which this is - faire isle or intarsia. I have since ripped this out and restarted it due to some silly mistakes here and there, but it looks basically the same, just the spots are centered better and knitted a bit looser. I'm loving the colorwork knitting - I want to do more now! The plan is to make this an apron top for Cora - I have two balls of the turquoise and one of the purple, it's Bernat Cott'n Soft, 50c each at that yard sale. Chloe and I decided that the top, with its spots, reminds us of Sully from Monsters Inc. :-)

I also casted on for the Zetor scarf while we were on our way back from California. It's working up beautifully in Euroflax Sport, a lilac color, but it's WAY too complicated to work on while little girls are awake. I have to watch every single stitch and it's all done from a chart, which I'm not terribly good at. It's a challenge though, and fun. I'm considering the possibility of gifting this as well, but after it's finished, with all the work it's taking, I may not be able to part with it! It'll be a long time before this one is finished due to not being able to work on it very much.

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I guess that's all I'll post about today. I'm thinking we'll be homebound again today while I take care of the sicky baby. Mark's supposed to pick Chloe up this afternoon for an over-night visit. He hasn't seen her in almost two weeks. I love the new job he has - he hardly ever has time to get her anymore! :oX

Disney Pics

Finally! You can view the album here.

Lightbulb!

I made a cloth bag to use for groceries.


It's all made of scraps, so it didn't really cost anything. I'm hoping to make one each week till I have a dozen or so and don't ever need plastic bags anymore.

So we're at Vitamin Cottage doing our shopping, and take our cloth bag full out when we're done. Chloe asked why we did that. I told her we're trying to make it so there's not so much trash, saving the earth, yadda yadda. A good illustration of Earth Day. So she thinks for a minute and then says "Like those kids from the school picking up trash at the beach! They were saving the earth!..... This is like school!..... You're like a teacher!......... You know things, Mom!"

You could see the lightbulb over her head blinking with every new realization. I know things! I'm glad she figured that out now, and not when she's 20 like I did. LOL

===

Yesterday was not what one would call a good day. It wasn't bad, but not good either. Sneezing constantly does not help make for a good day. You know how it is - you try to be lady like with those cute, dainty little sneezes that make people smile and say "Bless you." But after 3 or 4 of those in a row, the daintiness is gone and you're heaving and coughing, eyes watering, nose running, gasping for breath between each sneeze. There's nothing cute or ladylike about it, and it makes people stare. Yeah, that's what I did most of the day, including 3 and a half hours of shopping. :::sigh::: Add to that a blowout diaper (I'm trying to use up the last few disposables - those things leak poop like crazy! Might as well not even put a diaper on her!) and a few other little glitches, and by noon I was exhausted.

After lunch, I spent the majority of the afternoon making baby food. I made apples, mangoes, broccoli and green beans. It takes a long time to do that - peel and chop the food, steam it till it's completely mushy, then blending it in the blender till it's just veggie-goop or fruit-goop. Blech! Then I put it in little ice cube trays to be stored later in zippy bags so I can just use a little bit at a time. So that took most of the afternoon.

Around 2:30, I realized I hadn't even sat down yet for the day. I'd even eaten my lunch standing up. So I took a quick break, but then had to finish the baby food. I kept going from then on till after dinner when I sat down to watch American Idol, and then got up to clean the kitchen. I didn't really stop till about 10:00 last night, and I was exhausted! I need a break!

So today we were supposed to go to the library, but Cora appears to have whatever Chloe had - she's wheezing and sniffling and coughing, sounds terrible. She's had a fever all night, but it didn't feel too high. I'll check it with a thermometer when she wakes up. I don't think we're going anywhere though- I think we may end up with the shower on hot snuggling in a steamy bathroom quite a bit today. It's raining too, and I don't like going out in the rain - I had when the hem of my pants gets wet, and since I'm a short person, they always get wet.

===

Thanks, Kim, for telling about Photobucket's resizing option. I figure that out, and have about 40 pics uploaded. I'm getting there, I promise. There are just so many flippin pictures! Hopefully I'll be done today and can share the address tomorrow morning. for now, I'm getting outta here, I need to get some stuff done before the girlies get up!

I'm allergic to the whole world.

I think I'd actually rather have a cold than the allergies I have right now. Ugh. Between the cat returning home from his vacation to the in-laws' and all of the plants and flowers and pollen and burn season, I'm pretty much miserable. My eyes itch and they are all puffy, and my nose won't stop running and I keep sneezing about 15 times in a row. Did you know that a sneeze is the closest you can get to an orgasm without actually having one? Sadly, sneezing isn't nearly as enjoyable. :::sigh:::

Did y'all read about the New Kids on the Block getting back together? Apparently they were on the Today show (I don't watch TV much, I had no idea) and they are putting out an album. How flippin' cool! I was a NKOTB junkie when I was about 11 years old. :o)

So Chloe feels better. She's still got a cough, but other than that seems fine. I think that was the sickest she's ever been. She's never been sick enough to just sleep for hours at a time two days in a row. I'm glad it wasn't worse though - I'm not used to sick kids, and I get all worried. She got an umbrella at Disneyland, that was the souvenir she picked out. She's been asking me to get her an umbrella for two years, but I never saw any good reason to since it rains a total of about 5 days a year here, and no one ever really bothers with umbrellas. Well, she got her umbrella, one with all the Disney princesses on it. As soon as we walked out of the store, it started sprinkling. She was one happy little girl. And then yesterday it rained on and off all day, so she would go outside in her snowboots and jacket with her umbrella up, just walking around in the rain. :o) It was so cute. I'm convinced that it's always better to let kids pick their own souvenirs as soon as they are old enough. Last year she picked out a pirate sword, and that thing has been played with at least briefly almost every day since we got it. If I would've picked something, she'd probably already have forgotten about it.

Miss Cora is on the worst schedule ever right now. She's going to bed around 11, and sleeping till about 10. I need her to be in bed about three hours earlier - I NEED that nighttime quiet before I go to bed. And she didn't sleep well at all last night - I think she just wasn't all that tired. I'm gonna change her back to her old schedule as soon as humanly possible, for my own sanity's sake!

Today is grocery shopping day - we have next to nothing to eat in this house, so it's rather urgent. Tuesday used to be Michael's craft class day, but they cancelled the kid's craft class, so now I have to figure something out to do at home. I think we're going to make a picture frame for the picture of Chloe hugging Cinderella. She should like that.

I know, I know, pictures. I got them all uploaded to Walmart.com thinking I could just post a link to the album there, but it's not working. I printed something like 120 pictures to be picked up today - yikes! That's a heck of a scrapbooking project! Anyhow, that means I still need to resize and upload to photobucket to share them. What a PITA. :oP

:::yawn::: I better go start some laundry and get things going so we can leave for shopping as soon as my sleepy head girls wake up.

We're home!

Oh my goodness, we had such a great trip. Everything went wonderfully. Amazingly, we didn't forget a single thing! RideMax worked perfectly - we hardly waited in any lines, walking on to most rides with 5 minutes or less wait time. Standing in long lines at Disneyland can really suck the fun out of it, but with RideMax, it was awesome. We did every ride we wanted to, watched the parades from a great front row seat, had a perfect spot for the fireworks and had lots of free time to explore everything. It wasn't hot - we actually wore sweatshirts most of the time, and the evenings were pretty cold, but it was so much better than the 100 degree weather we've experienced at Disney before. The girls were great in the car - Cora didn't fuss nearly as much as I expected her to, and Chloe was happy and quiet the whole time, she's such a good traveler.

We also spent an afternoon at the beach and had a wonderful time - Chloe hadn't been to the beach before, so it was fun to see her exploring, playing in the surf and sand. We rounded out the trip with a stop in Vegas, which really wasn't all that fun, and then headed home. Vegas kind of sucked just because it's not easy to gamble with two little kids, there was so much walking to do and our bodies were already sore from two days at Disney, and we were ready to be home, I think. Neither one of us really cares to gamble anyway, but there's not much else to do in Vegas. My mom likes to though, so she did for a bit while we got the kids in bed Friday night.

I have a ton of pictures (between my mom and I, we took almost 600!) but I have to go through them, resize them and upload them, so I won't get them posted until later tonight or tomorrow because it's going to take forever. I'll try not to upload too many, and probably will just post the photobucket folder address instead of embedding them all here. So yeah, pictures soon. There's some good ones.

And now I have to take care of my sick little girl and wash laundry and get everything unpacked and put away. Chloe caught something yucky while we were there and by last night had a fever of 101.5. She's coughing and throwing up a little bit and her nose is really runny. She's sleeping on the couch right now with Milo, who seems quite happy to be home. Isabel didn't seem to care - I think she rather liked it at the neighbors' house where there were other dogs to play with!

I guess I'll close out for now - i have tons of catching up to do around this house. At least with Chloe sick, she sleeps alot. :oP