Just because it has been awhile...

Yes, I'm still under the evil influence of the "Villes". I see a New Year's Resolution looming in my future.

But in the meantime:

Elizabeth amuses me these days because she doesn't understand what a joke is yet. Pretend you say to her "Elizabeth, what is a goblin's favorite food?" She will say "What?" You say "I-scream." She will laugh like you've just said the funniest thing ever. Then she will say to you "What is a ghost's favorite food?" You will not really know what to expect, but will be expecting something along the same lines, so you say "What?"

She says "S'mores".

...

huh?
...

Then she follows that up with "Why do Dinosaurs ride horses, and play with dolls and sing songs?" You say "I don't know (I can't imagine!)."

She says "Because they are playing pretend!"

And then she laughs hysterically.

Repeat this a few hundred times. She's got the tone, she's got the delivery, but she's missing the punchlines.

And I don't have the first idea how to explain that to her.

More excuses

Holiday Baking

Work Holiday Party

Decorating House in Holiday Style

Preparing House for Holiday Visit of Husband's Parents.

Holiday, Holiday, Holiday.

Someday maybe you'll see my nice pictures.

"The man who smiles to himself in times of trouble has found someone else to blame"...or something like that.

I blame my recent lack of blogging on Farmville, Fishville, Yoville, Petville and Cafe World.


Because I am playing them all.


ALL!



AAAAAAAAAAAH!

It isn't much...

Tonight, in the parking lot of the library, Lilli got in a kissy face mood. She wrapped her arms around my neck, and was squeezing tight and planting smooch after smooch on me. Then she took my cheeks in her hands, squeezed her hands together and said "Mama! I want to hug your mouth!" I thought that was pretty cute.

Sorry, I know I owe you a kajillion posts, but that's all I have for tonight. A moment of cute.

Spin Cycle: 11 Random Things I'm thankful for...

11 was not the number I was aiming for.

There are 30 days in this month, so I thought I'd share 1 for each day. Well, things came up, and I never got past 11. Granted, I could have filled up the list merely with food items I'm thankful for (ice cream! An NY strip steak medium rare! Sour Cream and Onion "Tater Skins"! Pepsi! Etc.!), and padded it with books and movies that I'm glad exist, but I decided to skip the fluff. Or at least I want to pretend that this list is the way it is on purpose, and there are 11 things for November being the 11th month. Ok? Ok.

Things I'm thankful for:

1. My husband- the most awesome, best ever husband in the world. You may think otherwise, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.

2. Elizabeth- She's serious and smart, but really, really silly sometimes. She loves to dance and sing, and ask for stories.

3. Lilli- She's my super sweet snuggle bunny, a total drama queen. Loves music, loves to talk. Favorite phrase: “Mama, I neeeeeeeeed you!”

4. Friends and Family in general- Who else can both drive me crazy and keep me sane?

5. Employment- I may not be doing my dream job, whatever that is, but food is on my table, and I’m grateful.

6. My cats- warm, furry, and snuggly. They don’t need walked or taken outside multiple times a day. What more do you need in an animal? Bailey even plays fetch.

7. My little blog- As I said in my very first entry, I type faster than I hand write. For journaling purposes, what could be better than a blog? Until the day that nuclear winter descends on us, my memories are a lot safer in the intersphere than they would be on paper or in a word file.

8. Everyone who writes my favorite blogs- Tons of semi-strangers who aren’t strangers at all, that I can laugh and cry with every day. Intimate biographies in real time.

9. Facebook- Don’t laugh. It has let me re-connect with people that I care about and lost touch with. I’m really bad about keeping in contact, and I can do Facebook. I can “like” someone’s status update or photo album, and hopefully I’m conveying what I think I’m conveying, which is that I see what they’re up to, and I care about it.

10. Digital photography- I’m not good at taking photos or anything, and I don’t have a fancy camera, but it gives me the freedom to click away like a mad woman and capture every second of my little girls’ lives. I love that.

11. Podcasts- another thing that keeps me sane. I’m blessed to have a job that lets me listen to my iPod all day long.

Of course I'm thankful for more things than these (Black Friday Shopping Marathons! My comfy couch! Back rubs!), but these are high up on my list.

This is the first year we are going to talk about what it means to be Thankful with the girls. We're even going to attempt to make a Thanks chain along with our hand turkeys. It should be interesting to see what they come up with. I suspect that Elizabeth is really thankful for My Little Pony and Cinderella, and Lilli is thankful for Dora. But it's a start.

What are you thankful for?

Over the river and through the woods. Or more like through the air and over a bunch of hills...

This is my grandpa:

Handsome for 95 and three quarters, isn't he?

We took Elizabeth to meet him last fall, and this fall, even though Lilli is younger than Elizabeth was, it was her turn. When you're dealing with someone of this age, you don't wait around!

So we flew up to Pennsylvania the weekend before last.

We have discovered that Lilli doesn't like to fly very much ("I can't! I can't fly!", she sobs), but I don't know where she comes up with stuff. I looked over at her before we took off, and (I am not making this up) she had out the flight safety information and was carefully perusing the pictures. She really seemed to be preparing for some sort of disaster. I had listened to the How Stuff Works How to Survive an Airplane Crash podcast episode (what I always do before a flight), so I was feeling pretty comfortable, but I guess she was not. I tried to get a picture of her reading the pamphlet, but she got shy on me, so all you get is this:

We arrived in Pittsburgh, to find it chilly enough that Lilli got to wear her winter coat and hat and mittens to Denny's for dinner. She was thrilled. I thought the coat was pretty cute, but we ate at Denny's three times on the trip, and that is 2 and a half times too many. Of course it was better than the liver and onions I had to eat (that or look picky. And also starve) at my grandpa's assisted living facility. I still shudder when I think of that.

The next morning, when we needed to drive two hours north (after another trip to Denny's, so who can blame her) Lilli was not in a cheery mood, but she passed right out in the car.

And woke up all smiles in time to have some pizza for lunch:

When we finally got to my grandpa's room, Lilli took to him right away, and I think it was mutual. Here she is singing for him:

Based on where her hands are, I suspect it was yet another rendition of 3 Little Monkeys.

We talked to David and Elizabeth a lot, because the girls really missed each other. Elizabeth refused to talk to me for the entire 4 days, but I got several calls from David saying "Elizabeth wants to talk to Lilli.":

There isn't that much a 95 year old man and a 2 year old can do together, so there was a lot of book reading, and Lilli was perfectly happy with that. His eyes aren't so great any more, so my mom is spotting him on the fuzzy words in this picture:

I do feel that need to point out that I doubt that when I'm 95 I will be riding an exercise bike. But he does this for short spurts multiple times a day:

He also works out with exercise bands. He actually has frighteningly large biceps now, and took great delight in showing them off. Apparently he was told to get strong by one of the nurses at the facility since he's had the flu followed by pneumonia two springs in a row, and he was pretty weak back in April. Not any more, I can tell you!

Just like we did for Elizabeth last year, we took Lilli to the little park next door to where my grandparents used to live. It's one I grew up playing in. She took an especial shine to the dandelions since she'd never seen them before.

I have an entertaining (but too long to post) video of her beating the dandelions against the ground when the fluffy parts wouldn't blow away fast enough.

She also thought the swings were wonderful. Probably since this one was about a foot off the ground:

When I was little, I LOVED these suckers:

They are older than me, and probably older than my mom, since before they came to this park they lived at her elementary school.

I thought they were wonderful, especially the turtle, but Lilli refused to get on them.

As a child, my mom loved the duck, and that apparently has not changed. See?

A couple days later, after a very nice and too short visit, we drove back to Pittsburgh, and after another night there (and the last trip to Denny's, it was right next door to the hotel), we went to the airport. It's a nice airport, since it has a kids play area looking out onto the field so you can watch the planes, and pretend to drive one:

And also has a Qdobo. Which I had never had before, and even though it didn't give my beloved Chipotle too much competition, it was definitely better than Moe's, which is all I can get around here in the burrito-as-big-as-you-head department.

Lilli loved her quesadilla. See?

When we finally made it back to Southwest Florida, my dad picked us up. Bringing Elizabeth in full princess regalia, and hair that had not been brushed once in my absence.

I thought we were going to have to cut out some of the bigger tangles. David and my dad are lucky I did not have to!

Next up: Living history guy- talking to my grandpa about way back then.

Picnic Weekend

Continuing my recap, on Saturday we went to a 3rd birthday celebration for the lovely Sprite. We arrived uncharacteristically early, managing to get there a full 15 minutes before the scheduled time.

I could be completely truthful and say that the reason for this is because we were going to try and get Lilli and David both haircuts that morning, but we were running too late for that, but I won't.

Lilli especially really needed a trim, poor shaggy little thing. Her daddy always wants to get a haircut, but in reality he always keeps it too short for my tastes. Elizabeth gets her curly hair from SOMEWHERE you know.



See Lilli with that juice pouch? She can suck one of those down in seconds. I have no idea how she does it. On more than one occasion I have been unable to resist chanting "Chug it!....chug it!...." I really should get on video tape the sight of her cute little inquiring head tilt as she asks "Chug it? What chug it, mama?"

Anyway, although the girls were full of the simple joy of going to a party for one of their favorite people, there was the added joy of a bounce house. They bounced themselves silly.

Lilli especially bounced herself into some middle of the night vomiting. It was bright pink, very in keeping with the theme of the day, and that's enough said about that. Although I should add that she didn't mind the episode one bit, and we actually were not aware that she'd had the episode until the next morning. When it was mostly dried up. Annnnnnd enough.

Bouncing!


Pausing in bouncing to contemplate a shockingly beautiful day.

And speaking of beautiful, look at that cake!

I couldn't add my good picture of the cake since upon closer inspection I discovered that it revealed Sprite's true name. And we couldn't have that, since I'm pretty sure, as is the case for all faerie princesses, that revealing her true name would cause her to go *poof* in a shower of glitter!

At any rate, it was a beautiful and tasty cake, which I sort of caused to come into being (a very convoluted story, that one. I did not help bake it though. Like the Little Red Hen's friends, I just wanted to help eat it).

The cupcakes (which I may or may not have had a hand in the creation of) were also tasty. At least it appears that some sort of critique of them is taking place in the below picture. And then the one in the photo mysteriously disappeared.

The girls had a blast though, John proved he can work a grill, and here's the lovely host herself!

Thanks for inviting us, Jen! It was a great party!

And Happy Birthday Sprite! I can't believe how big you've gotten in just the year I've known you in person, let alone in the time I've been reading about you!

P.S. The girls are looking forward to their next play date!

On Sunday, even though we were a little bit iffy about whether we should or not, due to Lilli's vomiting thing, and Elizabeth developing issues at the other end of herself (also bright pink), we went to David's Work Picnic, which happened to be at the same park. We had originally thought it was taking place at the same time as the birthday party and we were trying to figure out how were going to work being in two places at the same time. Fortunately we didn't have to.

The food was amazing, but the shelter was absolutely as far away from either a playground or a bathroom (a risky thing even when one's children are 100 and 99% potty trained) as it could get, but the girls had a ton of fun with Daddy doing this:

I stayed in the shade. It was a lovely thing.

And nobody got bit by a fire ant. Also a lovely thing!

And I had been told that while Lilli and I were in Pennsylvania, Elizabeth decided that she is now a Big Girl who is Too Old For Baby Swings. I finally got to see it.

She even knows how to pump her legs. It must be some sort of genetic memory in little girls.

Overall, it was a good weekend (as most are, admittedly, just by virtue of being a weekend). And Grandpa stories are still on their way!