pictures and video

I have uploaded new pictures to our Shutterfly site. It's updated through September. I can't believe it's almost October! Can you tell I like to take pictures? You'd think I'd have a fancier camera.

Here is a link to the "Made out of Gold show" on YouTube that Sydney loves. Now she can watch it over and over and I have discovered that she and Mollie both are proficient in my laptop mouse now!

weekend

Sydney's had quite a weekend! Friday night she went to our neighbor Emily's house for her 6th birthday party and didn't get home until 9:30, haha. Emily's mom Wendy is the one who watched Sydney for me when I was working part time. So Sydney and Emily played every day then even though Sydney was pretty small at the time. Emily's I guess a year and a few months older than her, but they love to play together. She's in first grade now so they play in the evenings or when Emily is in tracked out (year round school).

Our newest neighbor Debbie's brother's family is moving down from Boston so they have been staying with her for a few days until their apartment is ready. Debbie has a 5 year old neice and she had told her about Sydney. So after lunch yesterday they invited her over to play. We left for the football game about 3:30 and mom and dad said that Sydney didn't come until about 5:30! Emily had been looking for Sydney to play again so after supper she played over here until 8 when Sydney and Mollie HAD to get a bath and go to bed after all the excitement!

Today Debbie called back and said that her neice wanted to play with Sydney again so she's over there now:) I think Christina will come play over here after dinner for a little while. And then the napper Mollie will get to share in some of the excitement. Wow! Sydney's never been so popular, but she's loving it! And it's weird sending her to play without me, but I'm loving that too!

Last night kind of stunk because it rained so hard during the football game and they got stomped by the University of S. Florida. My friend Billy from high school came up for the game and he and his friend Jeremy came with us. We gave him tickets last year and this year. He works at Disney and is getting our whole family in free all week when we are there in January! So we owe him big! Plus he's just awesome and fun to hang out with, great to see him again!

Nancy and Travis brought Chase over and we all rode together while Gramma and Grandpa had all the kids. So then we all got to ride together and use one of our spots for tailgating, much more room. Nancy and Travis spent the night since we got home so late. 7:30 games are fun, but tiring! We left when the pouring started and went back to the parking lot under our EZ-up tent to stay dry and listened to the crappy game.

So today we had a cookout for lunch since they were here and Phil's brother David was in town with his family. They have the 4 seats in front of us, but this is the first game they all came to this season. The girls didn't get to see their cousins Olivia and Emma yesterday so we hung out for a while before they had to go back home. And we talked a lot about our Disney trip in January. We are all going together and it is going to be so fun! Sydney and Mollie will be interested in some other things that Olivia and Emma might not care about and vice versa so we won't spend the whole time together, but we're in the same hotel and will do most meals together. I'm so excited!

This is random, but I just loaded some pics from the ECU football game a few weeks ago and look at this super cute picture of Mollie in her princess glasses:

made of gold show

You know that Embarq commercial where the girl is made out of gold and dents the table and they sing "they don't her Queen Tut for nothing".
HAHAHA,
Sydney's favorite thing on TV. She is so hilarious. She asks to watch it.
(these children are way too spoiled by the DVR)
If she wants to go downstairs to Gramma's room she says, "will you come get me if the made out of gold show comes on?" She loves it and it cracks me up.

She has been such a good girl today:) She's been using awesome manners! (something I do have to credit to her teachers. They do provide really good structure even though they're not on my A list yet. I'll work on being so bitchy about that.)

Tonight she helped me cook cornbread with dinner. Yes, I'm feeling fine, I cook good meals sometimes. Then tonight they were a little stir crazy and in an effort to keep them away from the TV and computer we made some cookie dough. They love to cook. I looked in my cook book to see what cookies required ingredients I actually had at home. Snickerdoodles it was! They happen to be my Dad's favorite and he is coming in town tomorrow or Saturday. We think. Turns out you had to chill the dough so we'll finish making them tomorrow!

Tomorrow Sydney has preschool so Mollie and I get to have some togetherness. She cracks me up when she and I can have a conversation one on one.

Wonderful Wednesday

Why is it wonderful?
Because I got so much done again while the girls were at preschool.
Including a nice lunch at Panera with Jennifer and Chris before we picked up all of our kids from school! Well, I got all of my must-do's done, but not my extras because I spent too much time in AC Moore:)
Tonight we are having dinner with my cousin Laura and Zach and Chloe who we haven't seen in a few months! And she just lives in Cary, haha. So we're looking forward to that.

But back to the girls who this is really suppose to be about:
The other day Mollie told me that she was a butterfly, she was pretending to fly around. Then she looked back at me and said all knowingly, "and I just came out of my cocoon". And she kept on going like, duh, leave me alone.
Sydney picked out a cute ballerina style dress at Kid to Kid yesterday for Halloween. Mollie is going to be Cinderella ballerina (a costume I found on ebay), so now they'll sort of coordinate. And Sydney's dress is a little big so it will make a wonderful dress up outfit for years to come!

I had a conference Monday with Sydney's teachers. Nothing major, just wanted to get in there and get to know them and the classroom routine better since I had such an uncomfortable feeling in the beginning. Well, Sydney likes them and is doing well so we'll just leave it at that. I'm going to volunteer on the 17th. I'll probably turn into that annoying parent, which I've never been before, but I think this year it will be necessary:) They just treated me like I was dumb and the things we said to each other were like 2 ships passing in the night and I am not an idiot. I understand curriculum. I am not worried about her being prepared for school. I wanted to call to their attention some issues with her staying on task that her teachers last year seemed to be so concerned about. Thought that might be helpful, and I'm glad she's fine, VERY glad. I just want Sydney to be successful and instead of appreciating that they were like, oh, she's fine, and acted like I had never had a child in an organized situation before, haha. Somewhat comical, yet annoying. I didn't bring up the fact that I taught Kindergarten and that this was her 3rd year at St. Andrews until later on, but they still didn't get why I was there I think. Or that I know how preschool works.
Guess I didn't just leave it at that, sorry:)

Anyway, I've kind of been missing working lately. Not that I want to go back right now with the girls at home. But I also go through periods where I think if I never had to work again all would be just peachy! I would make a great personal shopper for someone. But I am reassured to know that I think I'll go back to teaching. I miss it. I could tutor on the side, but I'm not THAT motivated yet:)

what if there were like...6 of them?

I can't even get a picture with 2!

a fun day!

So this morning Sydney was moving kind of slow still so we took it easy for a while. Mollie didn't, she was up at 6:10! We played around the house, I got some more cleaning done.
Then we left for our little adventure to the Farmer's Market. I knew that Sydney was not going to be 100% today, but wanted to do something to get us out of the house and not have physical contact with others quite yet:) Like kids her age.
Anyway, we went to the NC State book store to buy the much needed tatoos for the game tomorrow. The girls had a great time in that store and we got Sydney a cute new shirt. (and one for myself, shh...) Then our plan was to go to McDonalds (where we almost never go) because they have Wizard of Oz toys right now! The girls love Wizard of Oz! So we head over to the McD's on Western Blvd. close to campus. Uh, not there. Seriously, the golden arches were there...along with a large leveled lot of dirt. This is where I hung out in college and have obviously not been back on that side of town well, since I was getting my masters and went down that road twice a week. It really tripped Sydney out. She thought it was so freakin' funny that it was just simply not there. I think she thought I was crazy. They handled going to Wendy's just fine because I think they were a little stunned. And darn it if I had known McD's was not there I would have packed peanut butter sandwiches! But anyway...

We went to the Farmer's Market and had a picnic on the picnic tables there that all go downhill. Weird. It was such a beautiful day! We bought some little pumpkins and Indian corn and just kind of browsed. Sydney actually rode in the stroller and Mollie walked, haha. I found a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers for $5 so we got that. The nice man gave each of the girls a beautiful stem of stargazer lilies. Those are the flowers that my bridesmaids carried in my wedding! So I really like them, but back to that. It was their lucky day because we were almost to the car and a lady at an apple stand asked the girls if they would like an apple. She just gave them one! They did say thank you to all these people luckily and Mollie tore into hers right away. And I was glad becasue they don't usually like whole apples. She dropped it getting in the car so Sydney gave her hers like a good sister (and because she doesn't like them;) )

We went home, had naps, etc. and needed to get some groceries so we went to Super Target this afternoon. Mollie and Sydney put their new panties and undershirt tank tops (Sydney, you knew it) up on the conveyor first. The cashier was so nice and asked the girls who they belonged to and asked them if they wanted their very own bag and bagged their stuff first. They were so happy! People were so generous today it was so cool. I think they really felt special. So when we were leaving Sydney asked for an Icee so I got them one. I said, you know, it's your special day apparently. And she said please for a change.

Back to the lilies. I love the smell and think they're beautiful. And am apparently very allergic. I remember when my TA and friend Liz got this beautiful bouquet of flowers for V-Day one year and it had some in it. They were so strong. I remember getting this horrible head ache and couldn't breathe well and we had to take the whole bouquet out of the room! Poor Liz. Well this afternoon I started getting a bad head ache again (I've been working on my sinuses hard core this week with medications) and then my throat hurt and I was getting all stuffy. Phil took the flowers outside and now it's getting better hopefully. Guess we can't have those anymore!

And an update on McDonalds. Sydney was so interested that I googled it and they are building a new 4200 sq. foot McD's there this Fall. I'll have to take her back to see it when it's finished.

and then it moved onto Sydney...

Poor baby is so brave! She is just like, "I'm sick". "I can't have any milk for a few days."
In the middle of the night. Poor girl, really. She's been asleep on the couch most of the day. I guess we were up a lot of the night. I hate it when they're sick! So pitiful. Not to mention that it keeps up cooped up in the house when we're having really beautiful weather.
Saturday we have a noon home football game though and we should all be on the mend by then! It's supposed to be really nice that day also:)
And I have to say that last week when Mollie was sick and today I'm getting a lot done around the house! Maybe I should stay home more often...but what fun would that be!