Shopping with the cat

Today at school was "Dress like your favorite character from a book" day. Parker was totally thrilled to be able to wear a tale and ears to school for the whole day. She LOVES wearing this tale for some reason. It gives her a little extra pep in her step and a little extra attitude. She was Boris from Mama Cat Has Three Kittens. After school we had to do a little shopping and even though she came home first, she chose to keep the costume on....although she switched out her shoes for boots.

Quick pic

The costume is cute...but the non-stop meowing is getting old.

Pic for Paula

Here's my prototype. Are you SURE your shirts are 100% cotton? All I can find at HobbyLobby is 50/50.

Fashion quick pic

Parker's outfit choice today:  her soccer uniform from when she was 3, and suede boots.

Garden grows

"a caterpillar! Another caterpillar! They must like blackberries!"

I don't have much time for writing, but I want to get this picture posted quickly before it changes again. My squash and zucchini plants seem to double in size every day. I love the beginning of spring when everything in the garden grows and grows.....before heat or bugs or multi-day rains happen.

I have 4 tomato plants, swiss chard, asparagus, blackberries, eggplant, radishes, 2 varieties of squash, a zucchini, a jalapeno and 3 each of experimental varieties of beans and cucumbers. Way more than we can consume, but I be shocked if it all makes it. I also have about 1,000 serrano plants that reseeded themselves from last year. i'm hoping the beans and cukes like growing up the bamboo teepees, but if not I just enjoy seeing them out there.

And in other neighborhood news, we got this email yesterday:

FYI----a full-grown bobcat was in our backyard Thursday morning from 7AM until
crows scared him off.

I expect that sort of thing in this area, but not from 3 doors down!

Quick pic

9 is enough

About a week ago, Parker decided that instead of dragging around 1 or 2 stuffed animals, she'd pick 9 of her favorites to carry with her to bed and back. It was quite a production, getting all nine arranged in her arms without dropping anyone...so I found her a bag to help her situation. I really though she'd get over it in a couple days, but no, a week later she was still hauling these guys up and down the stairs every morning and evening. The roll call was really impressive. She'd wake up in the morning and realize that someone was missing....and sure enough, Bunny was stretched out on the couch, enjoying some alone time. I chose the hard road of not helping her with her packing and hauling, no matter what the degree of drama she produced (Bob may have been more of an enabler). I kept thinking that Octomom's mom had this similar situation at one point and wimped out and helped. Well, I'm happy to report that this morning, since she wasn't going to get any of my assistance, she'd culled the herd to a reasonable manageable 5 favorites. Maybe in a week we'll be back down to two.

Homework before gymnastics

mobile blogging

Yay! I've figure out how to send pictures and short blog posts from my phone! Now I don't have to drag my camera around everywhere and maybe I can keep you guys a little more up to date on stuff we're doing. Maybe I won't get any more snarky comments about my blogging slowness. And no Emily, even though Parker can read and write now, she does not have her own blog. As far as I know. :-)

Testing photo

Parker doing cartwheels at the arts festival.

Testing phone

Testing phone

testing email

testing 123
hello world

quick catchup

Nothing new to report really. We are still keeping very busy it seems. Parker is spending more time upside down than right side up. Her cartwheels have gotten very good also, I'll try to get some pics of those up soon.

New kitchen planning is moving right along. I've mapped out where everything will go in the new cabinets. We're still finalizing quotes and materials, etc and will probably start for real in a month or so. That will hopefully give me time to brush up on my crockpot skills.

Egg dying - quick pics

Just some quick egg dying pictures. I'm way behind on blogging, we had a very busy week....the dreaded kitchen remodel is set to begin soon, so we're doing lot of shopping and picking out and measuring and researching and calculating and comparing and making spreadsheets and mock ups.
In addition to that, Parker had a grumpy week, followed by a sleepy weekend. I checked today and she's grown 1/8th of an inch. Tall, not around of course.

Good Friday totally snuck up on me. No school that day...Parker had a friend over for egg dying. It's such a big build-up and lengthy setup, but the actual egg dying is very short lived.



Final product.

Snow Pictures

Before I do anything else, let me TIME/DATE STAMP this blog entry.
3/21/10 9:40 PM
Nothing like putting away your tank tops for a day and dragging all your snow gear back out. The snow we got back in February was very fun, but from what I could tell from the lack of people out playing in it, everyone is over snow and ready for spring.

Here's Parker, showing the snow depth:

Bob wins the Parent of the Day award for sledding and snowman building:

Spring Snow

Last night when we went to bed, there were some nice little snow flakes falling. I expected to wake up with just a dusting. Instead, I see this when I look out the window. Notice how the snow is all piled up on the SIDE of the tree trunk because of the wind. I'll give you one guess what Parker wants to do.

Breaking news

Parker can ride her bike with no training wheels!!!

Favorite low-tech toy

Last weekend, after 3 weeks of illness and antibiotics and droopiness, Parker was finally cheerful and full of energy. She channeled all that energy into learning to jump rope. She's tried and tried before, and finally it clicked and she had a great time seeing how many times in a row she could jump before getting tangled up.
The audio to this is:
"WATCH ME, WATCH MOM, WATCH. WATCH! WATCH!"
*THWACK* "ONE!",

*THWACK* "TWO!",
*THWACK* "THREE!",
*THWACK* "FOUR!",
*THWACK* "FIVE!",
*THWACK* "SIX!",
"SIX! I DID SIX IN A ROW. DID YOU SEE ME?! WATCH!"
(repeat for 12 hours).
On monday, her legs were so sore she was walking like Fred Sanford.

Matching PJs

I haven't updated the blog recently because I've been busy doing stuff like this - making matching pajamas for Parker and Elizabeth. There are 3 pairs total....2 regular cotton and 1 flannel. Hopefully Parker will be over dressing alike by the time she grows out of these pj pants.

50's Dress up day

Today is 50's dress up day at Parker's school, and this is the outfit that we threw together at the last minute. The leggings underneath the skirt were her addition, and she will only keep the glasses and the scarf on for the picture. Given her usual morning freak-outs over her clothing not looking/feeling/fitting right, it is a miracle that we pulled this off with minimal drama this morning. Don't miss the fake saddle shoes. Black duct tape over tennis shoes.