Sunday, February 14, 2010

Deep Thoughts For Valentine's Day

Megan is done with napping, but to preserve adult sanity and to allow for my weekend nap, Megan is still required to spend some "Quiet Time" in her room each afternoon. Mostly she reads. Last week she busted out the blocks and went crazy building a castle. But for Valentine's Day today, Megan contemplated love on the dry erase board on her door:

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Avoiding The Mid-Life Crisis??

Monday was Mac's birthday. I celebrated by getting a crown. No, not a party crown (or a tiara for the bedroom with nothing else on, like the kinky moms in Megan's dance class suggested!). Nope, I was getting a shiny new crown for my cracked back molar. The dentist office said they would e-mail me the photo of the tooth, so I could show off my misfortune to the blog world, but they didn't come through.

Anyway, with a new tooth, we figured the best thing to do would be to go out to eat! So we went to a local bakery/eatery where Mac indulged in a SALAD, while the kids had blueberry pancakes (for dinner) with mounds of whip cream. That counts as a nutritious meal, right?

Mac had told me NO CAKE, but I came up with the perfect compromise: a mini cup cake from Bakery D'Amour, which Mac agreed was the perfect size. But even with five of those little suckers, it was a challenge getting 36 candles on there! (they are normally $1 each, but they had a special 5 for $3.95. I was willing to sacrifice and eat another one to save a nickel).

If the food choices didn't clue you in, let me just say Mac is a changed man! He has truly embraced the Get Fit Slowly Lifestyle. He's starting his 36th year lighter than our wedding day and he's taken to running. Not just a little - a lot. He's got his first marathon scheduled for early May! He's got less than 5 pounds to go to get to his goal weight. This is really exciting for me, because it will be skinnier than I have ever seen him. But more importantly, he grew the beard so that he could shave it off, a la Biggest Loser style transformation and I am ready to see the end of that ridiculous thing!

Happy Birthday, Mac! You're looking good, old man!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Monday, February 1, 2010

Hey, Turkey!

There's a wild turkey that's been wandering around down by the Creekside golf course the last few weeks. But this is no ordinary birdbrain; he had the smarts to show up right after Thanksgiving and Christmas were over!

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Birthday Bash

Megan's party was a mass of screaming girls in fancy dresses...just what Megan wanted.

Megan wanted to wear her fancy dress from Auntie Al, but we convinced her she didn't have to have a princess party to do this - so we had a My Little Pony Party, with a request in the invitation to "Wear a Party Dress!" My general rule has been one invite per year of age, but I learned that social politics start early and not wanting to ostracize anyone, we sent out seven invites and all RSVP'd yes.

The party started calmly with some coloring. Then we moved on to pin the tail on the donkey (which is kind of like a pony, right?), where I awarded the prize to a girl who cheated because I didn't know the right way to deal with the incident involving somebody else's kid in a roomful of their peers - more of that 5 year old politics stuff!The calm before the storm

Then the girls all got to decorate their own mini-cupcakes. This activity is a big hit, plus I didn't have to spend any time decorating a cake with horseshoes and pink unicorns and other Pony things.Then, to make sure the girls were good and sugared up we had the Pony Pinata! This was a special safety pinata where everyone pulls a string and the pinata breaks open, thus removing the danger of some kid getting bashed in the head from another blindfolded youngster who is wildly swinging a big stick (ask my sister about the chick she took out at her party with a metal baseball bat one year!). Well, guess what? Some kid got bashed in the head! Ok, maybe not quite that serious, but one girl made a dive for the first piece of candy when all the rest of the candy fell on her head - very traumatic to a five year old!
Beware of the Pony in the rafters!
Blissfully unaware of impending tragedy.
Then on to the gifts, where all the girls fought over having Megan open their gift first. What is the deal with that, anyway?
So it was a full agenda of activities...except...Uh, oh! Crap - all of the planned activities were done and we still had 35 minutes to kill before pick-up time when we could be done with Pink Pony's for the day. So it was back downstairs for some "free play" and another round of pin the tail on the donkey. Yeay!

At one point, I went up to the bathroom. I didn't really need to go, but it seemed like the best way to get away for a couple of minutes. The clock in my room said 4:15 as I left. I walked slowly back down the hall and the thermostat clock said 4:13. Oh, my God - time was literally moving backwards! But I made it through the last 15 minutes just fine and all the Moms were on time, which is good because if they had been late their kid would have been off the list for next year - politics be damned! ;)

Ok, yes, it was a lot of chaos, but it was fun, too especially because I don't get to be involved in a lot of these multi-kid events with my job. And Megan got some great gifts. In fact, I was inspired to get a haircut the next day, because I was a little embarrassed that Polly Pocket had a much cuter 'do than me.You better watch it, Polly. You may have stylish clothes, perky boobs, and cute hair, but this is still my house, and I can ship you off to Goodwill anytime I've had enough of your fashionista ways!

Happy Birthday, Megita.
Love,
Your Un-stylish Mom

Friday, January 22, 2010

Meg-o Turns Five!

Today was a big day: Megan turned five! She was super excited all day long but that may have been because she was totally hopped up on sugar, as we started the day with M&M pancakes (with whipped cream, of course), then there was birthday cupcakes and a pinata and after dinner there was an encore of cake and more candy.

At bed time, I gave my special BIG girl an extra hug and she was still brimming with excitement.

"Hey, Mom, you wanna know something cool?" she asked me. And of course, I did.

"Only 52 more weeks until I turn six!"

Sunday, January 17, 2010

The New Year

We were fortunate to have babysitters (Mac's parent's) staying with us on New Year's Eve, sowe got to go out and be adults. We had dinner with some friend's for a 9 o'clock reservation and I don't think any of us had intentions of making it to midnight, but after several courses we were winding up our meal just after 11:30 and we figured we were too close to call it quits. Plus the restaurant started handed out free champagne, so why would we leave?? We've celebrated at our house or other people's houses and stayed up till midnight on New Year's, but I can't remember the last time I was actually out on the town for the big night. Yeah, I guess we are pretty lame, but look at us turning over a new leaf for 2010!

That Sunday after New Year's (Jan. 3), I decided to find out if we could go to Zoo Lights over MLK weekend. Good thing I checked, because that was the last day! So we bundled up the kids and headed to the zoo after nap. We got there around three and pretty much saw everything in the zoo before the lights came on at 5.
Liam made friends with a penguin (you can kind of see it in Liam's reflection). Liam wanted to talk to him and the penguin was very attentive, but mostly because he wanted to eat Liam's fingers!

We also checked out the new lion exhibit. Not sure if you can tell, but Mac is growing a bit of a mane himself. Just call him Captain Red Beard, Arrgh!


And of course, we didn't leave without riding the train.
Happy 2010!