Favorite Friday Photo

A windy day at our house
August 12th, 2009

Wherein I Tell A Bold Faced Lie

Sitting at the breakfast table this morning, Bunny in hand, Abigail told me she never wanted to get rid her favorite stuffed animal. She informed me that Bunny never gets old. And anytime she did start to look old or dirty we can simply put her in the washer and she would come out looking brand new. She said Bunny was her favorite animal in the whole world. Guinness was sitting right beside her, hoping for a few scraps of her scrambled eggs. She gave him a quick pat on the head and let him know he was her second best animal. She looked back at me and said, "Mom,we're always going to have Guinness too, right?"

Guinness is getting visibly older. His muzzle is all grey, his hearing is going, his hips give out on him from time to time, he's slow to get up and he can't play fetch quite like he used too (though he's just as neurotic about it as he was the day we found him 8 years ago.) Our best guess is that he's around 13. The average life expectancy of a lab is 10-15 years. Realistically we do not have very many more years with him. I wasn't ready to explain that.

I'm not sure when the girls will be able to understand why we won't always have Guinness, but this morning I couldn't bring myself to tell them the truth. That sometime, sooner than any of us are ready to think about, Guinness will be gone. I lied and said yes, we'll have him forever.

Reality's Creeping In

We got a letter in the mail today. A letter from Destin Elementary. I took a deep breath. I know what it is. It's a letter telling me when Abigail's Kindergarten orientation is, a letter telling me her teacher's name, a letter telling me the supplies we'll need, a letter telling me the carpool and bus schedule, a letter telling me that my baby is about to go to school!

I take a few more deep breaths and try not to cry. I show the letter to Abigail. I tell her her new teacher's name. "A very nice name" she says. She's excited. She's ready. I am not.

How is she already five, when just yesterday I carried her home from the hospital? Just yesterday, when I walked through the door with a beautiful baby in my arms, and started this new life. A life where we did what we wanted when we wanted. No schedules, no getting up for work. We slept when we wanted, ate when we wanted, got out of jammies if /when we wanted. We were spoiled. We've been spoiled for the last five years. And that's all about to change.

We've gone school shopping for new clothes, picked out lunch boxes and backpacks, got all the supplies from the list. All those things have made me feel a bit anxious, but it wasn't until today when I looked at the letter that it all hit me like a ton of bricks. She's going to school. In just ten short days she's going to leave me for six and a half hours, five days a week!

She has never ONCE been away from me that long, let alone five days in row.

And yet, she's ready. She's sweet enough to tell me she's going to miss me and I know she will. But I also know how much she's going to enjoy it. She's a very bright girl who loves to learn, loves to play, loves to please.

Here's hoping the transition into this next stage of my little girl's life is a smooth one.

Where's Wall*E?

Around here, he's everywhere. We borrowed the Wall*E movie from Grandma and the girls have subsequently watched it everyday since. Besides just watching the movie, Amelia has taken to drawing him all over the place.

This is just one of the few she drew on the drive to Orlando. She drew Eve and Wall*E's little cockroach friend on his shoulder too.


She drew this one at the baseball field across the street from Karen's house.

Road Trip

With the last few weeks of summer quickly slipping away, we decided to take one last road trip. As much as we wanted to drive North to Maine, we knew we didn't have the time and so instead we headed South to Orlando.

The girls, Guinness and I decided we'd go see Karen and her fam for a few days while Will went to Biloxi for the weekend to play in a poker tournament*. As always, the girls were great on the ride there and back. I cannot say enough times what AWESOME travelers they are! I pack movies, games, toys and crayons and they hardly use any them. They just sit and play with each other, making up silly games and giggling.

We had a fun few days hanging out with friends. We went on a bike ride along a pretty trail, went to a water playground, played pirates in the pool and even slept in a tent. We never even went to Disney!

*Will won the whole tournament out of 100 players!

I Can't Multi-Task

Here's what we've been doing while my camera has been sitting on my desk collecting dust.

School shopping: I'm not ready to talk about it.

Getting rid of fleas: It's gross, I know. People tell me they are really bad around here this year. And everyone we know with a dog has had them too. I have either been in front of the vacuum or the washer/dryer most of the week. I have vacuumed a million times (i HATE carpet) and I've washed every thing that will fit and isn't nailed down into the machine. I've sprayed the house with an over the counter treatment. We took Guinness to get a flea bath (even though he already wears flea medicine!)...nothing is working. My last resort was calling the professionals. I'm sure their chemicals are terrible and awful and bad, but I CANNOT wait for them to come. I'm very sorry.

Buying a house: We are trying to buy the house we are currently living in. It's a little complicated and a lot stressful.

"Our" baby birds flew away without telling me. No pictures. :(

Building forts: I also don't have a single picture of all the forts the girls have made this week. They are fort crazy! Abigail even drew up a set of plans for one fort they built. They have constructed one in practically every room of our house (this typically involves taking all the bedding off every bed in the house). Yesterday they really wanted to make a new one, but I didn't want them putting anything on the floor (the fleas.....) so they decided to just built a fort on top of the bed with just pillows and towels. Resourceful and cute.

And that's pretty much been our week.

Favorite Friday Photo

Daddy painting Amelia's toes
July 29th, 2009

How could this not be my favorite picture? While it might not "technically" be the best picture I've ever taken, I still LOVE it.

Pretty Pink Piggies

While shopping in a store yesterday, the girls came upon a very colorful display of nail polishes. They begged me to get them a bottle. I was hesitant at first, I have never polished their toes before. Normally this is their friend Kassidi's job. They did pick out a cute summer color and I thought maybe I would even paint my nails, so I bought it. Last night after the girls bath we decided to have a little nail polish party. We all did each others toes. William painted Amelia's toes, which is just about the sweetest thing ever to me, (what little girl wouldn't love her daddy to paint her toes) and I painted Abigail's. Then both girls took a turn doing my toes. I think more got on my skin then my nails, but the girls were having so much fun I didn't mind.

*on a little side note, the tv show on in the background is called Flip This House. :) the girls get so excited when we put it on. and hearing them ask if it's an Armando Montelongo episode (our favorite) cracks me up.

Bird Envy

Perhaps we are a bit jealous of Meg's baby chickens. And perhaps the city of Destin would frown upon raising poultry in our back yard. Perhaps we are sad the bird that flew in our house didn't stay longer. Perhaps all these things are the reason we "adopted" a family of Mockingbirds who are living in the little tree in our front yard.

We watched the mom and dad build the nest. We knew the mom laid two beautiful blue eggs. We knew the exact day the eggs hatched. And now we watch as the mom and dad go back and forth to the nest to feed the babies.

Perhaps we'll be sad when they fly away.
Perhaps we need a life.

It's Exactly The Same Thing

"Do you know that butter is just like sunscreen? You have to wait for butter to soak in your food just like you have to wait for sunscreen to soak into your body." -Amelia

We Should Have Signed Him Up For The Little Leauge Team

Silly Sisters

That's A LONG Time

"This little puppy has been married for over a hundred years. She was married before she was even sewed up and she was just fabric." -Abigail

An Emphatic NO! But Maybe Yes

My girlfriend called me the other day to let me know it was registration day for little league soccer and asked if I wanted to sign the girls up. When I asked them if they wanted to play, the response I got from them was not what I was expecting. They both said NO!! Without any hesitation a big NO!!! When I asked them why, this was their response.

"My outfit will get dirty, it's too hot and I'll get sweaty." - Abigail

"My legs will get sore from all that kicking and running." - Amelia

I tried to convince them they'd have fun and they'd really like it. I told them they knew the coaches (our friend the Archers), that their daughter was playing on the team, there would be lots of kids their age, but nothing I said worked.

When Will came home from work he talked to them about it too but they still said no! The next morning he got out the "soccer ball" (really a volleyball) and started teaching them a few things. They had such a blast playing around that they started to rethink their decision. Of course by that point, registration was over and it was too late. Too bad, because Amelia would have made an awesome goalie and Abigail was already planning her future, telling us "we could watch her play soccer on TV when she was big."

Favorite Friday Photo

Amelia and Hedgefund Bunny on playground swings
July 7th, 2009

Our (albeit briefly) New Pet

I took Guinness out to go potty this morning. Abigail came out after me and left the front door open. As we were walking back up onto the porch, a little bird was right in the door frame. Before we could shush her away she flew into the house!!!! She went into the guest bedroom and hid under the bed.

The girls thought it was wonderful, jumping up and down and shouting "we have a new pet". I got my camera out, just to take a few pictures before I could catch her and let her go. I was able to coerce her out of the bedroom and she flew out into the living, right into the tree by the front door.





She stayed there for a while and I almost had her caught, but she escaped and flew up the stairs. We found her sitting on the landing so I grabbed Amelia's blanket and threw it over her. Abigail took a few pictures and then we brought her outside.

She flew away as soon as we opened the blanket. She was a good pet.....

ps Amelia's blankie went straight into the wash. ;)

Time Flies

The boys that I used to nanny for are in town for the week. They all came over to our house today to visit. We hung out at the pool a bunch and played inside. I still have a hard time thinking about how old they all are. (It makes me feel old.) The triplets are almost 16 and Daniel is 12!! They were just 5 and 1 when I first started watching them!! The boys are so great with the girls. They played with and entertained them all afternoon.

It seems like just yesterday that I was taller than them and able to pick them up and play with them they way they played with Abigail and Amelia today.

Rock Dog

The (homemade) Music Video

(The video is a little long but her singing really picks up towards the end.)

When Abigail asked to use my camera, I had no idea this was what she was doing. She just brought the camera to me when she was done and showed me what she'd made.

I love how she thought to set the camera on the counter.

How Does Your Garden Grow? Not As Well As Mine

As you can see, the garden has grown splendidly. Be jealous Mainers! The bell peppers and tomatoes have provided quite a bounty. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny even stopped in to enjoy our squash and zucchini.

Only this pineapple plant is struggling. While the rest of our plants gave us infinity plus one veggies, we have yet to harvest any pineapples. After some months of soul searching, I've decided that waiting for real plants to produce real food is much more difficult than pretending.

Our house is large, but the produce quickly overwhelmed us. I knew it had gone too far when Gina threatened to put me on "Clean House". I tried to explain to her that I could change, but she kept reminding me of the last time I told her that about the farting. My next tact was reminding her just how annoying the voice of Niecy Nash is. She was having none of it. If I didn't love her as much as the veggies, she was gone.

I had spent the past two weeks trying to make my decision between my wife and my imaginary bell peppers when I had an epiphany. After a good number of calls, I contracted with a business that could store all of my garden's bounty. After some negotiation, the lady on the phone ended it with an abrupt, "Well...... I guess. Just don't tell my manager I said you could."

I've included a picture of the warehouse below. Now anytime I need anything, all I have to do is go there and pick it up. Everybody wins!

Upon arriving to drop of our first load, I met Ina. The woman kindly greeted me when I took the "How may I help you?" tag literally. "We're going to need a bigger cart," I explained. After a few seconds of staring blankly at me, she answered with the same refrain as her colleague, "Well...... I guess. Just don't tell my manager I said you could." I believe this could be part of the warehouse's top-notch training .

Gina and I have decided to try and work things out after my brief foray into infinite gardening. I think next year, I'm going to add an organic section. Wish me and my marriage luck.

Favorite Friday Photo(s)

Abigail on playground swings
July 7th, 2009