This Little Missy Went to Preschool...

...and her Mama got to stay home!

Can I tell you what a wonderful day I had?

I think today was the most jealous I have ever been of my SaHM friends.

Of course I realize the life of a stay at home mom is not all sunshine and lollipops, especially when the kids are really little. I just don't get to do it very often, so I have always adored every second. Just usually I am off work for a reason that is causing me to run all over town all day long. But that was not the case today, and you would not believe the things I got done! Do you know what a joy it is to vacuum and steam mop the house on a weekday in the daylight? It is WONDERFUL. I get really tired of cramming my housekeeping into the hours after 8pm and the weekends. We clean the bathrooms every weekend, but today I polished the fixtures! They are so shiny! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

I got to do this of course, because Miss Lilli went to preschool today for the first time ever.

She was so happy to have a lunchbox of her very own:
And yes, it had Buddy Fruit in it.

This picture is kind of an inside joke with myself, only it isn't really that funny and I'm telling you about it so that kills the inside thing:
When we got to preschool the maintenance man was in the process of putting a new door on the place. This was the door we took Elizabeth's picture in front of last year, so I figured we should get Lilli's picture in front of it too. We also took one with my mom like we did last year, we were just missing Elizabeth who we'd already dropped off at Kindergarten.

Here she is getting to play with play-doh while waiting for the rest of the kids to arrive.
She climbed OVER the table to get to the play-doh so she could grab the pink before anyone else could. Stinker. She looks a little shifty don't you think?

After I dropped her off I went home and HAD TIME TO MYSELF!!

I tidied, I organized, I cleaned extensively, I let in the guy who was here to measure our windows for hurricane shutters, I went to the grocery store, I made myself a nice chicken salad for lunch, I even played Frontierville, and that was all between 9 and 1:15. I love productivity.

Then I picked Lilli up. She had a wonderful day too, her two complaints were that she couldn't remember the name of her new friend, although it might be Corina, and that she didn't have time to eat her cookie at lunch. That second one is a valid complaint if you ask me, because it was a chocolate chip cookie, and I made it, and I, if nothing else in my life, can bake.

Then we headed over to the elementary to pick up Elizabeth. We got there shortly after 1:30. We were the 17th car in line, and school doesn't get out until 2:15. It still took until 2:32 to get her into the car. My mom is a saint and a martyr to deal with that Parent Pick Up line every day. It was hideously boring. I ran out of things to do after the first 20 minutes. And I had brought both girls school handbooks to read through to make sure I knew everything I needed to know, plus I had Lilli's entire preschool folder to go through. By the way, after the gate opened at 1:45, we were able to pull up around the circle all the way to here:
That means nothing to you, but it means we did our waiting on the front end. The later you get into the line, the later it is before you can pick up your kid. So yeah, it took an hour, but our hour was from 1:30 to 2:30, not 2-3. I like that.

When the girls got home from school we had snack, homework for both of them, and then quiet time for both of them, and I HAD MORE TIME TO MYSELF. More gloriously productive minutes.

Of course all the relaxation and joyousness degenerated into my usual Tuesday night madness of violin lesson (35 minutes away), dinner, and visiting a lady from my church, all packed into a very short space of time, but I STILL HAD A COMPLETELY AWESOME DAY. Ahhhhhhh.

And of course more importantly, so did Lilli!