a killer among us

We are in the midst of a crime wave at Chez Slacker. Much like the reign of terror that gripped us two years ago, victims are falling left and right. It's a gruesome scene.

 

Three bodies. Two heads. I don't even know what to say.

the goodbye kiss

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaddeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" E yelled this morning as the garage closed. When I went to ask her what was wrong, she said, "Daddy left for work, but I didn't get a kiss goodbye." We walked out on the front porch only to see him driving out of the cul de sac.

Luckily, I was able to catch him on his cell phone, and he was able to turn around and give the girls one last kiss goodbye. Luckily, I was able to grab my camera iPhone and capture the sweetness of it all.

 

where the magic happens

E gave me a rock she had painted at Girl Scout camp last week for me to bring to work. I told her that I'd put it on my desk. She asked me to take a picture so she could see it. Suspicious much, E?

Anyway, I took a picture...and thought you'd like to see where I spend 40+ hours of my week.

1. I have a bunch of "artwork" from the girls hung up. Some pictures they did hang on my walls. I also have a post-it that E wrote "Mommy" and drew a picture of me hanging from the monitor, and the newly painted rock on the monitor stand.


2. I have a bunch of pictures up, too. Last year during Rock Star week, the girls got their pictures taken with funny wigs and guitars and decorated frames. There's also a picture of us from the beach 3 years ago, and a print out of 2009 at-a-glance. When I get my pictures from this year, I'll definitely be framing one for the desk.


3. Apparently, I have a drinking problem at work. That's my coffee mug, a Diet Coke standing at the ready, and my leopard-print Tervis Tumbler for water.


4. In the office, I employ a 2-screen system. This allows me to look productive on right-hand screen (for peeps walking by), while blogging, etc. on the left-hand screen. Technology FTW!


5. I still kick it old school with a paper day planner. I try to write to-do lists every day. I took a Franklin Covey course for my old job, and old habits of highly effective people die hard.


6. I have at least one conference call a day. I love my headset, since I can continue to surf the web type while on these calls.

And, there you have it. The 30 second tour of my cube!

juxtaposition

My girls are definitely girlie girls.

 

But that doesn't mean that they haven't inherited a love of sport (and UT) from their daddy.

happy camper

Today is E's last day of Girl Scout Camp. We had gotten a flyer in her school take home folder, and signed her up. We figured it would be a good way for her to figure out whether or not she wants to do Girl Scouts, and was something a little different to do. Also? It was 1/5th of the cost of a week at the hoity-toity daycare summer program. Cheap daycare, FTW!

 

E has had a blast. She's made new friend (and kept the old, I assure you!). She's played games. She's made crafts. She even brought home a God's Eye!

But, perhaps the craziest thing is that she wore shorts every day this week! Okay, yesterday she caved and wore a skirt with shorts underneath...but still! I can't remember the last time she was dress-free for 5 straight days!

This Girl Scout thing is really expanding her horizons!

au naturel

Over the last few months, my hair was getting harder and harder to style. I was beginning to consider the effort needed to blow-dry it straight commensurate with a workout. It started requiring the use of a flat iron every day (unless I was going for the frizzy/poufy look). So finally, I said "to hell with it", and embraced the curl in my hair. I got a haircut that helped the curls and started using the correct products.

Overall, I've been happy with how it looked. But I wondered if I was rockin' an out-of-date style. There aren't too many wavy/curly girls to look up to, you know.

Well, lo and behold, my hair idol, Katie Holmes, must have sensed my doubts. 'Cause guess who's rocking a curly-with-bangs style right now?

Hell yeah. Though, let the record show that for once, she totally copied me!

picture perfect

As part of the Camp Grandmom 2010 festivities, Grandmom set up a photo session with a local photographer, Ashley Quinn. In addition to being an awesome photographer and really really nice, she is the mom to FOUR kids, including TRIPLETS! Whoa.

We got the proofs back this week, and they were awesome! Here are some of my favorites:





John and I even got in on the action, and we got two really great family shots.


Hope y'all have a good weekend!

lessons of complacency

This is what happens when you think you are a bike rider extraordinaire, and end up going too fast and turning too much:
You crash, and end up with two scrapes on your nose, one on your chin, one on your knee, two on your foot, and one on your big toe.

This is what happens when you are so confident in your daughter's bladder-holding capabilities that you neglect the schools gentle reminders to update her stash of back-up clothes.
Size 3T corduroy pants and t-shirt that *might* have fit sometime when she was 2 last Fall. Belly baring, high waters, and given her existing crack problems, you don't even want to see her back side.

back in the saddle

After being MIA for a while...I'm back! Well, I think am! Things have been totally out of sorts the last few weeks...and this week seems to be the first "normal" one in a while. At least that's what I'm hoping.

So, what's been going on?

• The girls have returned from a week at Camp Grandmom! John and I dropped them off in KY last week, and then Grandmom and Grandad drove them back this weekend. The girls had a blast, and judging by their tans and their new swimming skills, I think they spent the majority of the time in the pool!


• John and I spent a few days at his work retreat. Again, I was treated to good food and spa treatments (mani...pedi...facial...massage). Unfortunately, my pedi has fallen victim to the Broad Street Run. After turning black following the race, on Saturday, my toenail fell off. So now I have 9 perfectly painted toes, and one mutant unpainted toe. Lovely.


• Speaking of injury, I have a pain in my ass. No really. I've been in PT for a few weeks, and took some weeks off from exercising to let it heal. It's still not 100%, but this morning, I finally got back on the elliptical. Hopefully, I'll be running soon, too.


• Finally, it looks like (fingers knocking furiously on wood) that we should have a finished basement by the end of this week. Though people remark that it went pretty quickly, I feel like progress was at a standstill. I just want my house back. Also? The amount of dust in our house has been ridiculous! Here are our stairs from a few weeks back. The white is dust. GAH!
  
  I'll post AFTER pictures when we've gotten it set up...but we're really happy with how it looks so far. We're kicking it old school with some IKEA furniture...and now I'm sporting two huge blisters on the palm of my hand from the assembly process. HELPFUL HINT: If you have gigantic blisters on your hand, don't absentmindedly use hand sanitizer because whoa nelly is it painful!

There you have it...the last few weeks in a nutshell. Hopefully, the next few will be calmer (and less injury prone, to boot)!

not a keeper

Last weekend, I headed down to The River (Rappahanock, for those in the know) for my friend, Molly's wedding. Molly was one of my 4th year roommates in a house we lovingly called The Ditch. The girls we lived with were all Kiki's suitemates from 1st year who adopted me as their own since the majority of my suitemates were batshit crazy. They are super nice like that.

Molly is the last of our group to get hitched and everyone was looking forward to the wedding. Jenn sent an e-mail with pictures from weddings past.



For a welcome gift, Molly had framed old photos for each of us. We were looking forward to getting a group shot.

I only took two measly photos (with my iPhone of course), though one was a cute one of me and John.

So, I was begging for pictures from everyone else. Jenn obliged this morning. I have to say, this one was my favorite.

I mean, what are the chances that you can take a photo of seven...ahem...young and beautiful women and not one of them looks good. Classic!

in your face

Baby AJ and her parents are in town this week. We're headed to a wedding this weekend for a college friend, and Nonna and Pop-pop will be watching all three granddaughters. I think they are a bit nervous about it.

However, after dinner last night, I think they realize that they've got it made. My girls fed Baby AJ, handed her sippy cups, and provided riveting status updates, such as "She said QUACK!" And, it looks like all three girls will be occupying the same 3 feet of space the entire weekend.

 

I sure hope AJ doesn't mind the complete invasion of personal space.

lots of celebrating going on

There was tons of celebration going on Chez Slacker this weekend. A kicked off the festivities on Thursday by presenting John with the Father's Day card she made at school. She wrote all of the words on the card by herself. She drew a picture of her and John on orange paper since orange is his favorite color.

Friday was the last day of kindergarten for E. I mean, it seems like just yesterday we were sending her off to the big, bad elementary school...and now it's over!

She had an awards ceremony at 9:40AM. Which meant that I didn't have enough time to drop A off at school before it. So I had a buddy with me.

The award that E got was Computation Queen of the Year. Oh yes...she apparently is some sort of math whiz. Here she is with the rest of the Computation Royalty. She's circled in red and waving to her loyal subjects, obviously embarassed to be in front of such a crowd.

Then the girls twisted my arm and convinced me to spring E early from school. So they both came home with me. At 11AM.

John came home and took the girls to lunch. And got E an end-of-the-year present, a new pool. Can you say Redneck Pool Party?

Saturday was relatively low-key. We had to hit Lowes AND Home Depot for stuff for the basement. We then hit the pool. After that, we hung out in the cul-de-sac for the evening.

On Sunday, we celebrated Father's Day by having a day long picnic in the cul-de-sac. We set up the water slide. For lunch we steamed a bushel of crabs. Not before we raced them.

E and A didn't seem to mind knowing that the crabs they were eating were once alive. They had named their racer crabs Ariel and Princess, respectively. At bedtime, A noted, "We ate a lot of Awiels and Pwincesses today, Mama."

And if a bushel of crabs wasn't enough, we then proceeded to grill out for dinner. Ribs and steaks and hot dogs. Plus sides. (If you are looking for a delish potato salad...Ina's version the potato salad that my mom makes** can't be beat!)

All in all, it was a great weekend.

**EDITED TO ADD: The recipe I used on Sunday was my mom's. I'm sure she came up with it all by herself. And asked Ina Garten to post it for her on the Food Network web site on her behalf. I'm sorry for any confusion that this might have caused.

meeting in the middle

On Saturday, we headed up to Baltimore to meet up with friends of ours who live in New Jersey and were in town for the Os/Mets series. Since they were hankering for some crabs, we meet for lunch at Obrycki's Crab House for a dozen or two...and a beer or two. Well, the beer was just for John, Jason and me...the kids and Stef, who's 8 months pregnant, abstained. And none of the kiddos had crabs, but man did they *love* the mallets that came to the table!

The kids were relatively well behaved...but started to get antsy toward the end. And since we had already confiscated the aformentioned mallets we let them have at it with some of the paper reserved for covering the tables.

After lunch, we walked down to Fells Point to catch the second half of the US v. England World Cup game. John assured us that it was only a 3 block walk. Not so much. More like 15 block walk. In 90 degree heat. With kids that weren't really keen on walking 15 blocks in 90 degree heat.

Nevertheless, we made it, and got a couple of tables with our own personal TVs that had the game one. The kiddos were psyched and chanted "USA! USA!" over and over and over again. And over again.

The older kids really did watch intently...they apparently like to watch sports together.

A was the first to fade. She tried to chant some more...

But she this is how she really felt.

After the game ended, we got some gelato, and then headed back the 15 blocks in the blazing heat carrying with non-walking kiddos back to the car. It was a quick visit, but tons of fun! We should really do it more often. Except for the 15 block walk in the heat, of course.