bullet points

Somehow time has gotten the best of me and suddenly it's been a week since I last posted. So I have a lot to talk about but am too lazy to type it all out but too little time to post each individual thing. So, here's a bullet list:

• Social Butterfly. I have been all about the socializing of late. Last Thursday, I met up with "The Girls" for dinner. Kiki, Uncle Steve and AJ were in town all weekend. On Friday, my friend Susie and her fam (minus the twins) stopped by for lunch. We met up with our old college roommates (lovingly referred to as The Ditch) to go to the UVA game on Saturday. Though, it was really rainy and we actually never got around to going into the game, preferring to tailgate the entire time. I swear, I've talked to more people who are not immediate family members in the last week than I did the entire month of September!
  
• Birthday. Today's my birthday (and Kiki's, too)! I'm 35, which means that I'm now eligible to be President. This one has been a harder pill to swallow than ones in years past...since from here on out I'm closer to 40 than 30. However, I still consider myself to be 27, so I'm taking it all in stride.
  
• Halloween. The girls are getting excited for Halloween. We're making their costumes this year, which has *disaster* written all over it. Even though they are going as cats, and by definition all you need are ears and a tail so how hard can it be? Also worrisome? A insists that she's going to be Tinkerbell, and I fear she doesn't mean Tinkerbell the Cat. I'm sure hilarity will ensue regarding this in the next few days.
  

And, that's all I really got for you now. We're headed out to dinner tonight for my birthday. And then we're making cat ears and tails. Yep. I'm ringing 35 in with a bang!

the nerd and the realist

E's class goes to the library once ever so often. Library, along with PE, computer lab, music and art, are scheduled on some sort of rotating basis that requires a PhD to understand. It involves Red Days and Blue Days and there are numbers. Okay, I'm sure it's not that hard to figure out...however, I find it much easier to ask E, "What did you do for your Encore class today, E?"

Where was I? Oh, right. The Library. So, when E goes to the Library, she's allowed to check out a book (provided that her mother is awesome and totally remembers to put the previous selection in her backpack so it's not overdue). So yesterday, when I picked her up from school, E pulled out her new book from the library. And, what wildly exciting book that was sure to inspire love of reading had she selected?

Poland. E had checked out a book on Poland.

Apparently, they pick from a group of pre-selected books, and since another fundraiser just trying to shake us down for more money the International Fair is coming up, the theme of the books was "Countries." And the girl on the cover of Poland had some sort of flower headband on.

So, last night at bedtime, she picked her Poland book for her story. I opened it up and, sure enough, it read like an encyclopedia entry about Poland. It started off talking about the geography of Poland, such as, Poland is the size of New Mexico and the majority of the land was covered with a central plain.

E was fascinated. A was not impressed.

"I no like dis book," A said.
"What?!?! This is a great book!" E replied.
I continued reading, "Poland has over seven thousand lakes."
"Wow! That's a LOT of lakes! Did you hear that A?" E prompted.
"Dis book is bad. I read my Dora book."

So while I finished telling E about pirogies and the school system of Poland, A patiently thumbed through her Dora book.

It was such a fitting way, to end the evening with my girls. E definitely has a more serious side to her, compared to my fun-loving, life-of-the-party A. And, while I definitely have my nerd-ish tendencies, I'm going to have to side with A on this one.

And I've marked on my calendar when that book needs to be sent back to the library.

dirty laundry

With a month and a half under our belts in the new school year, I think it's safe to say that we've fallen into a pretty comfortable routine. I don't think much has drastically changed from before kindergarten. Since the evening is a bit more rushed because we're home a few minutes later and E has homework (even if it is "Name all the colors you can find in your room. Which one is your favorite?"), I am trying to streamline dinner by pre-prepping ingredients (like chopping veggies) beforehand.

But the bane of my existence? Laundry.

Even with the higher capacity of our fancy schmancy front-loader, we generate at least 5 freaking loads a week here. And my current method of attack is to do them all on Sunday. That way, all the laundry gets DONE -- washed, dried, folded and put away. The downside to this is that I'm basically doing laundry all day long. Which kind of sucks.

But if I try and spread it out over the week, things go amok. First of all, the fancy schmancy front loader takes for-evah for a cycle. To wash and dry a load of clothes can take 2 hours. Since I get up early to exercise, I try to make it to bed by 10. So I kind of get bitter if I'm up waiting for our clothes to dry when I could be sleeping. Also? The laundry then just ends up sitting on top of our dryer for a week since I can't really put away the kids' stuff, seeing as their rooms are dark and I don't want to wake them.

So, tell me folks. How do you handle your laundry? And how much does your family generate? Any tips or tricks you'd like to share?

rain, rain ... thank god you're here!

This, my friends, is our forecast for the next few days:

Now, usually, I would be all,

"Rain?!?!? You have *got* to be kidding me?!?!?! I hate the rain. We'll be stuck in the house...with nothing to do!!!!!!"

But, in all honesty, John and I have been excitedly checking the forecast over the last few days making sure that it would be raining all.weekend.long. At one point he was on the Weather Channel and screamed,

"Ack! They have just clouds on Sunday. JUST CLOUDS!"

So we had to switch it to NBC's HD Weather which still promised us rain. Thank goodness!

So what's up with the love of the rain? Well, the fact of the matter is that I'm tired. Really really tired. You see, John has been out of town 4 of the last 5 weekends (you know, since Labor Day). Three of the four weekends was just me and the girls. The fourth one (last weekend), I'm still hungover recovering from. The one weekend he was home? Well, that was Sweet Baby A's birthday so it wasn't what you could call "quiet."

Since I'm so freaking worn down from these last few weeks that I'm relishing a quiet weekend stuck at home. There's talk of movie (and, of course, football) watching. Maybe making some chili. Maybe even baking some cookies. There might even be an attempt to make the girls' Halloween costumes. But other than that we're plan-free.

And, right now, that's the way I like it.

(almost) wordless wednesday -- wedding recap

We got dressed up...

despite the cold...

...and witnessed a wedding in which a Flower Baby was pulled down the aisle on a bouncy seat strapped to a boogie board!

We danced and had fun...

...despite the obstacles in our path...

...it was great to share some good times with some great friends!

reunited

John and I are headed out to a wedding this weekend. It should be a fun wedding...the groom is a fraternity brother of John's and the bride is a sorority sister of mine, so we pretty much know the entire non-family guest list. Also, we'll be staying at a beach house with 3 other couples. I'm sure it will be *just* like Beach Week...except now we have 9(!) kids between us. My guess is the phrase, "I just can't [drink/dance/party/stay up late] like I used to" will be thrown around a lot.

In other exciting news, I got my hair cut yesterday. My hair had been looking *atrocious* lately and I've decided that layers and I needed to break up for a while. And since it's fall, we put a little red in my color which, holy hell, did I need desperately because I'm very, very gray. So, lo and behold, this is what I came home with...

 

Kind of reminds me of a cut I got almost exactly two years ago.

Katie Holmes, I just can't quit you!

party in the u-mess-a

I don't know what I love more about this little video...how cute A looks when she's moobin' her hips like yeah, or how completely unphased E is that her sister is singing, dancing and otherwise hamming it up for the camera. It happens a lot around these parts.

putting those newly found reading skills to good use

On Saturday, the girls and I spent a good deal of the day in the car. We hit Target, dropped E off at a classmate's birthday party, and then headed in to meet Nonna and Pop-pop for dinner. While in the car, I spent the majority of my time flipping through the XM radio to find a song that E and A would like.

At one point I stopped on a station just as a song was ending and a new song was beginning. E thought I had moved on to a new station and wanted to hear what had just ended.

"Mama! Put it back! That was Katy Perry's Waking Up in Vegas! I love that song!"
I was a little more than shocked. "How did you know what song was on, E?" I asked.
She pointed to the radio display that showed the Artist and Title.
"Because the name said K and then P. Katy Perry is a K and a P."

So, I don't know what I'm more in trouble for...the fact that she'll probably know when I try to zip past Miley Cirus or other annoying artist from now on, or the fact that my 5-year-old counts Katy Perry as part of her go-to hits.