thanksgiving vacation in pictures

The Slackers packed up and headed to Kentucky for the weekend. It was a fun-filled weekend in which we....

...tried to get a Christmas card picture picture...

 

...did a little reading with Uncle Dave...

...shopped til we dropped...

...hit up the Festival of Trees and told the Jolly one our Christmas Wishes...

 

...found a new playground...

 

...headed home with a relatively quick, uneventful (if not a little too sunny) drive home.

 

Not Pictured: running a Turkey Trot, stuffing ourselves silly, the "money shot" for the Slacker Christmas card, the boys heading to Lexington for a very exciting UT/UK football game, and the other fun we had including hours spent playing with 30 year old Matchbox cars!

Hope your holidays were happy as well!

problem solvers

"Do *not* throw the ball in the house!"

I yelled at my three children husband and daughters on Friday night. Then there was silence, followed by some muffled laughs and shrieks.

 

They were having so much fun, I decided to overlook the lack of shoes and tend to the black-footed tights come laundry day. Can't be a total killjoy, you know.

win-win

Sweet Baby A is one of the most prolific poopers ever. That kid is like clockwork...every single night at 7 o'clock, she retires to the powder room to poop. The other night she yelled,

"Moooooooooommmmmmmmmmmyyyyyyy! I need a book!"

So, I did her one better. She got her own personal reading of "We Make A Snowman" by the Slacker house's newest reader.


The best thing about E reading however (other than freeing me from having to entertain A while pooping, obviously) is that she's writing us love notes. Case in point...she made this for me the other night.

Translation: I love you Mommy. Mommy you're the best.

computation queen

Last week, John and I had our first-ever parent-teacher conference. And this week, E got her first-ever official report card (well, elementary school report card...day care report cards don't count). Basically, E is doing really well at school. She's loves to go, is learning tons, and has made the transition really smoothly. John and I couldn't be happier (or more proud!).

There was a little strip of paper that was sent along in her report card saying that E was going to receive an award at the school assembly on Thursday. I took advantage of the flexibility that my job affords me and went to see it. It was the best decision I've made in a long time. E was overjoyed when she spotted me in the crowd. She waved at me throughout the ceremony. I was able to steal a kiss from her before she headed back to class. I imagine she wouldn't have been devastated if I wasn't there...but the fact that I was really made her day.

But, before I feel too much like mom of the year, let it be noted that bringing a camera totally slipped my mind. And there were parents who were video taping the ceremony (that was a bit much). But, I did remember to take a picture when we got home.

 

Please note that the award she won was for Computation Queen. She let that go to her head a bit. We took her out for a celebratory dinner (for the report card and the award) and she told the waitress "I'm the Queen of my kindergarten class!" And then later she tried to say that she was Queen of the Slacker house. Uh. No. That's all me.

And here she is posing with the Queen of the Upside-down Sunglasses.

 

John was really bummed that he couldn't make it to the ceremony. He already called dibs on the next one. I noticed that they did have one for reading and writing. And, (NOTE: SHAMELESS BRAG FORTHCOMING) based on her cheat sheet of colors that she wrote for fun last night...I wouldn't be surprised if she got one of those.

 

hand me downs

Because AJ was born in a totally different season than E and A, there hasn't been much to pass down to her. But I totally remembered to send her the awesome Ladybug outfit. And Kiki and Uncle Steve sent out their monthly pictures of AJ (how on the ball is THAT?) and had one of my cutie patootie niece in it.

So, of course I had to find one of my kids in it. This was the best I could do. E is about 8 months in this picture. No shots of A wearing it, but we knew that would happen (cough!second child has no pictures!cough!).

 

They also had a picture of my parents with their three grandkids from their recent trip! Such a cute picture...if only my kids stuck to the "only one piece of patterned clothing" rule when dressing...

tgif

Since I'm working from home today and the girls were up and dressed by 7:15 (damn you, Daylight Savings!), we had a little extra time this morning to hang out around the house (just like old times). Both girls wanted ponytails, which I obliged even though it wasn't my best hairstyling effort. I actually think I french braid better than ponytail...who knew?

While I checked my e-mail, the girls played and put together a show for me. A sang a rousing rendition of "You Belong Wif Me" while E was a background foreground dancer. It's too bad "Solid Gold" was canceled because E would tear that show up.

also on the memory card

Since I went ahead and downloaded the Halloween pictures to my computer, I also got the rest of my October pictures, too. Which aren't many. But they crack me up. So here they are.

How A drinks her chocolate milk...she's got mad chugging skills

What happens when A dresses herself
(note the abundance of patterns)

E and John hanging with Baby AJ

We got Boo'd...we boo'd back
(we also think polka dot shirts and polka dot dresses "match")

A dressed up as Fancy Nancy for her Halloween Party at School
E channelled Miley with a little peace sign action

halloween recap

For Halloween, we headed up to Philadelphia to celebrate Maggie's 4th Birthday with Queen Mommy and the Four Princesses. It was a whirlwind trip -- we headed up on Saturday morning and were there for about 24 hours. But much fun was had by all -- a birthday party, Trick-or-Treating AND a sleepover all in one!

Trick-or-treating was cut short due to the rain, but the girls managed quite a haul, inlcuding the Holy Grail of T-or-T-ing: Full-Sized Candy Bars. Oddly enough, the highlight of the evening was handing out candy to everyone else. Maura and E set up stools in the front hall and watched for Trick-or-treaters for an hour. It was too cute!

 

So, the homemade kitty ears were a gigantic FAIL on my part. It was a felt and glue disaster, but I could not get the ears to attach to the curved headbands. My mother-in-law suggested a hot glue gun...but after looking at how much cold, non-scalding glue was all over my hands, I decided against that. So I went to Wal-mart (thanks for the tip, Pigtails to Pacifiers!) and bought some. In a small victory, they both wore the tails I had "made", and E did end up wearing my homemade collar (Cat name: Princess) while A (Cat name: Tinkerbell) opted for the cheesey bow-tie. Yes, I understand that I went from homemade to the retail devil...and how I failed to make quite possibly the world's easiest Halloween costume, but oh well. Better luck next year.

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!