I got a bookmark and two cards from Bailee PLUS 3 coupons, good for:
We also bought a self-portrait kit at Michael's yesterday while shopping for birthday presenters for the THREE upcoming b-day parties (oh my). Bailee painted it right after we got back from the store. Here's her masterpiece and a wonderful Mother's Day present.
Today is National Scrapbooking Day and I treated myself to an early Mother's Day present to myself...and I scrapbooked for a while. First time in months. Felt good.
This photo on this layout is probably close to Mother's Day 1962 where I was the baby in my mother's arms. Mom is still kicking and an amazing 86 year old who gardens for several hours a day, is on the town library committee, drives a woman my age to her chemo treatments 40 miles away every other week or so, cooks meals and desserts for those who are sick or bereaved in her church and basically is a wonderfully alive woman! How lucky am I to have her for a mom!!!
Speaking of mom's...when I was saying goodnight to Bailee just now, she told me she had a wish for me. She wished I was married, had two girls - one from my tummy and one from China. She said I would stay home and my husband would bring home dinner (how cool is that, married, stay-at-home mom and I still don't cook?!). He would make lots of money ($1000) and he would kill possums. He would go around the world killing things people didn't want. (Not sure how to take that or if she saw some exterminator show on TV). Anyway...it was a sweet thought, and I'm as likely to get this wish as she is to fulfill the mother's day coupon she gave me tonight for doing laundry for 19 days.
OK - so it was more than a week ago, but it's too good to not take note.
I didn't know the Easter bunny took requests, but Bailee apparently thought he/she did. Bailee wrote several notes for the Easter bunny and also asked Mom to make sure she had carrots so we could leave some out for him on Saturday night.
We did let Bailee know we needed to move the carrots and notes from the middle of the den floor and put them outside where the Easter bunny hides the eggs and fortunately she agreed.
Turns out I had forgotten that Bailee wanted a Puffle (some sort of stuffed animal-ish thing) in her Easter basket until I read the note late that night. Oops!
So the "Easter bunny" wrote Bailee a note and thumb-tacked it to a tree in the back yard explaining he/she wasn't giving out Puffles this year and thanking her for the carrots.
We also now refer to the Easter bunny as "she" and now officially have named the Easter bunny Ester based on Bailee's spelling on the notes.
When we got back home late Sunday night, our next door neighbor, Charles, and his wife gave Bailee a basket with Reese's peanut butter cups and this adorable brown and orange rabbit that we immediately named "Ester".
Hard to keep up with how technology changes EVERYTHING! (but then again...not quite everything) Bailee got (and wanted) an ipod Touch and also an American Girl doll. Yes...spoiled rotten, but interesting with the contrast of what kids are surrounded by these days.
My favorite things? the simple things...
Attempting to learn new photography technique - bokeh. I think this looks like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (as opposed to the lights we put on one of the trees in our front yard).
Today was a great day. Just simple pleasures.
Bailee wrote "Happy Hallowee" on the driveway and after a while I noticed she had left off the "n" on Halloween. Somehow we started laughing over "Happy Hallowee!" and then it became "Happy Halloween-ey!" Who knows what she'll say when she goes trick-or-treating tomorrow night. Hopefully just not "Give me candy!"
Lisa's favorite cartoon growing was Peanuts and one Christmas she got a set of 5 books (Great Pumpkin, He's Your Dog..., Charlie Brown Christmas...) and for some reason they've been at my house for the last few years. Anyway, Bailee and I read A Charlie Brown Christmas this weekend and then watched the TV special on Sunday...while following along in the book. Bailee then got interested in reading all the other books as well (yea!). While at Old Navy this week, I saw they had cartoon t-shirts so I got one for Bailee (Snoopy hugging the yellow bird - what's his name? - under mistletoe). Bailee LOVED it so much that after wearing it to school yesterday for her class party, she asked me last night "Is it clean enough that I can wear it again tomorrow?" So guess whose kid looks like their mom doesn't wash their clothes today? I don't care. I'm glad she likes it!
We've been Wii maniacs this week. Since she hasn't had homework we've had more time and I bought a Christmas Wii game so we've been playing it every night. Pretty fun!
Lisa has always joked with Mom about singing in church that God says "Make a joyful noise!", he didn't say "Make a beautiful noise!" and in the case of last Friday night...it was joyful! Bailee's friend Hallie asked several friends to join her in singing Christmas carols at a local nursing home next Sunday and we rehearsed at Jim and Renee's Friday night. No, I haven't practiced enough (it would take years since it's been years) on the piano...so to say it was rough was an understatement.
But it was sweet! The girls got giggly, Jim got irritated and I got nervous. The girls got loud, Renee and Jim got them organized...and I got more nervous. Oh well...there are still 6 more practice days.
In some ways it was heartbreaking too, because I could see Bailee looking at the sheet music and words for the songs she didn't know and she couldn't follow along. This must be how school feels to her every day. So...we'll practice the songs so she knows them all by memory. And we'll just keep working on her reading.
As to other holiday updates...
I've forgotten to move Cornelius for 3 days in a row now. Bad mommy! He's currently sitting on the mantle on top of the wooden snowman Bailee made me in 1st grade.
We had our end of semester Chinese class party yesterday. (Yea! discovered that Bailee likes dumplings!) And everyone loved the sugar cookies that Bailee and I made. "Made" being a relative term...store-bought dough and frosting - but we roll them out, cut them out, bake them and decorate them with lots and lots of sprinkles.
Bailee says she doesn't want to take class again in the spring; however I'd really like us to and know part of it is again due to the feeling of "school" and learning. Her pronunciation is very good and her memory of phrases is good...so she's better than she realizes. hopefully she'll change her mind before it's time to sign up again.
Well, Cornelius, our very own "Elf on the Shelf" is back for the 3rd year. Bailee loves our little elf and we re-read the story as she continuously asked why 1) he couldn't talk to us and 2) we couldn't touch him (FYI - it takes away his magic). So every night when Bailee goes to bed I need to remember to move him to a new location for her to find in the morning so she knows he flew to the North Pole each night to give Santa a report on her behavior. Let's hope I remember...
Oh, and she told Cornelius to tell Santa that she wants a skateboard for Christmas. (oh boy...)
We had a great Thanksgiving in Monahans. The Colorado relatives came down for 4 days and we had about 20+ more family members over on Friday (for Mexican - not leftovers). We even did chores for Mom...raking leaves, picking up pecans and putting up her outside Christmas lights. And in keeping with one of our family traditions...we watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and laughed hysterically. So many great lines/ Like the nephew who works in a carnival and is hoping for a promotion "guessing weight or barking for the yak woman" or "we're going to have the hap, hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Danny !@#$% Kay and Bing Crosby..." (enough said). We even went outside before we started the movie, did our own drum roll and turned on Mom's Christmas lights. The only difference being we're not as elaborate as we used to be and Aunt Alma hadn't messed with things until we blew a fuse. Like the movie, we credit Dad with teaching us everything we know about "exterior illumination".
I don't know if we created any new traditions, but Bailee learned to blow bubbles with gum this year and she had a "bubble-off" with anyone who would participate. She and Katie even tried to teach my 93 year old Uncle Dusty, who has never blown a bubble before, how.
It will be a miracle if we don't end up with a dog at some point. Bailee just adores Peanut, Katie's dog. She walked it, tried to teach it to heel and sit, gave it a bath and generally just loved it.
Last night Bailee asked me some questions related to Thanksgiving for a project they are doing at school today.
Questions:
I wrote a blog post for our work blog the other day because I've gotten annoyed over how all the stores and radio stations skip over Thanksgiving and go straight from Halloween to Christmas. I like Thanksgiving...better than Christmas really. So, here's the link to that blog.
http://experiente4blog.com/2009/11/23/footprints-left-behind-our-conferences/#more-1376
Headed to Monahans this afternoon, running errands now. Ready to see the Colorado relatives at Mom's. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Here are a few Thanksgiving photos from over the years (many years).
The annual after-Christmas trek for bargains depended on where we had Christmas each year. If Monahans, then we'd head to Odessa and hit Hobby Lobby, Ace, Lowe's and Walgreens. The first 3 of these were for Christmas yard lights. If they weren't at least 75% off...no deal. Walgreens was for Old Spice and English Leather cologne for Dad. He didn't want us to buy the gift sets for him as a Christmas present since he would get them at 50-75% off the day after. He was hard enough to buy for and he wouldn't let us even get him this for Christmas! Hopefully Walgreens even had a few Brach's marshmellow Santas around for Mom. When Christmas was here in Austin or Dallas, the hunt would expand to other stores...but always included Walgreens.
Dad loved bargains...even more than Mom, I think. He would love to just take off by himself and hit up several Walgreens or Hobby Lobby's. He'd come back with all sorts of bargains (?) holiday mugs filled with candy, decorated wreaths, decorative candles. The year my adoption paperwork had gone through to China but I was a year off from getting Bailee, among the other treasures he brought home, he also brought me a snowman night light. Honestly it's just a cheap, rather cheesy little night light but I held on to it...losing track of it over the next few years. But Bailee now likes to sleep with a night light and even though I had bought a cute pink flower light that matched her room...we both like Papa's snowman night light best.
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