The baby with one shoe

Ahhh what a week...

One day this week while picking up the girls Anna Kate decided to kick off a shoe in the school's parking lot.  I never noticed and drove happily home to discover the one shoe baby and then looked in my car for approximately 15 seconds before deciding it had been thrown to Elizabeth's side or was under a seat.  We had torrential rain that night and the next day when I brought Anna Kate to her classroom there sat the shoe.

This picture doesn't really do it justice.

A wonderful mom came to Anna Kate's classroom and told Melissa she found this and thought it belonged to a little person.  It survived the 24 hour non stop rain and had been run over more than once.  Poor shoe, it was well loved.

Current stage of the black eye. "Mickey hit me"

Anna Kate at the park going down the big kid slide without any help.  She probably would have been mad if I tried to help anyways.

 Elizabeth played hooky with Julie this Wendseday.  I wish everyone had neighbors like us.  Jamie, Julie's mom, is so much fun and has such a relaxed attitude with these munchkins.  I got one text during the day that said "but miss jamie my mom won't let me have gum, shaddup kid and put it in your mouth!" She's not afraid to tell me when I'm being a stick in the mud and I like that!  I can't wait to see the entire day of photos I know she took. 

One last picture, here is Elizabeth playing Snow White and Julie being the witch!

Check Elizabeth's shoes!

Ok, so my newest obession is maxing out my savings at various stores.  My picture of what I got for us is not very good, there is a rotisserie chicken, 6 boxes of cereal, 4 juicy juice, 3 blocks of cheese, (free) gal milk, two shrimp scampi...blah blah blah. This is easily enough food for us for more than a week and I spent roughly $57, saved $64.  The girls checking me out said, wow you have a coupon for everything!  You bet I do.  This is not by any means the best one can do, but if I never used coupons or watched the BOGO sales I would have spent way more.  I'm still really proud of my free milk, with the 4 cereals on a BOGO sale with a $1.50 coupon on that, final $1.60 per box plus free milk.

Positively one of the happiest places on earth.

Some things don't change no matter where you are. If she just didn't spend so much time climbing on top of tables I'm sure we would have been horrified she was up there.  It's become the norm.  She can even do a little jig without falling.

Elizabeth pretty much has every need attended to while we are visiting in Georgia and one of the biggest spoilers is Aunt Jan. 

While we were in Georgia being spoiled, Lewis was at home running the Florida Hospital DeLand Faith and Health 5k.  He actually came in first.... for his office!  32:09.

Anna Kate is a little rough but I didn't expect this. Somehow she ended up with a little black eye today at school.  Who knows how it happened she hit something just right that it resulted in the little shiner but with no tears. Poor baby.

Braving it with two girls

The girls and I took a quick trip up to see the Randalls this weekend and while I would like to tell you the trip was smooth it was not at all like the picture of Anna Kate.  It involved a lot of me reaching behind my head and changing out the dvd player and ripping open various snacks and throwing it at which child was making noise.
But in the big picture they were wonderful and very cooperative, especially since Anna Kate never made a dirty diaper.

How I got this picture I don't even know.  I just blindly snapped.

Elizabeth was allowed to go play on the trampoline without anyone with her which was a very big deal. 

This is a better picture to see how far away she really was from us.

Lucky is as always being pampered and loved on by Jim and anything Jim does Elizabeth is right by his side.  Jim was actually applying an epsom salts compress to Lucky's behind to try to draw out all the ick in a tumor that he has back there.   

I wish I could have taped this conversation with Cam because I heard things like "your preschool games don't work on me." Elizabeth just adores Cam and Kyle both and considers them her personal servents when they are around.

It didn't take long for Aunt Cindy to paint the baby's toes!

We made it one year, 54 days...

Before poor Anna Kate took a tumble down the stairs (Elizabeth fell approximately 45 minutes after we bought the house) but thank goodness it was just a few steps and onto the landing not all the way down to the floor.  We were getting very comfortable with her abilites and thought she would be ok.  Elizabeth reported that it was a total flip over, not just a sideways roll.  The damage was minimal as you can see.  She has a red bruise emerging on her cheek sure to be ugly tomorrow.  Now if I could only get the fork out her hand...

Julie and Elizabeth made cakes today with Jamie, Julie's mom.  They are our wonderful next door neighbors.    Aren't they so sweet.  She has so much more patience than I do.  I would be sweeping up the floor every 8 seconds.
While we do not "celebrate" Valentines Day, Lew always does something special.  Take a peak at this surf and turf dinner.   He even made tarragon butter, So delicious!  Note that in the earlier picture Anna Kate quite enjoys some asparagus herself but it sure does make some stinky wet diapers.

The Valentine Wish

Today the girls had their Valentine's Day parties at school.  I'm not sure Anna Kate was aware at all but Elizabeth was pretty amped up.  Anna Kate's dear teacher, Melissa puts up daily with her shenanigans such as witnessed below when she thought she could climb even higher onto the slide.  If she could ride the top I'm sure she would.

Anna Kate's fancy headgear as made during her day at CCA.

Elizabeth was super excited even though it was a wet dreary day and lets be honest when you walk into a room and you see this lined up...sa weet baby.  I can tell you that these bags were stuffed to the gills when I picked her up.  Now my job is to hand out the candy slowly....not that I'll eat any.  That candy bracelet is looking mighty tasty.

What a super fun classroom.  I'm not kidding this really is a fun class.

Must end the night with fancy headgear again.  We went out to eat only becuase our power was off and a very nice lady was walking around making balloon creations for the kids, Elizabeth waited so patiently to get her princess crown only to have Anna Kate steal it.  So Elizabeth stole the heart hat, you can see she didn't really care she just wanted justice.  Sweet Justice.

Spider baby, spider baby does whatever a spider baby does

Ok so if anyone thinks that Anna Kate is not one very determined little girl take a look at the little thing I documented today.  My fault for not turning the baby gate around so as to not provide the ledge to let these things happen.  I should note of course this was the second time she did it.  I had to run upstairs for a quick minute and as I turned the corner to come back down she met me half way up.  I wanted to see how she accomplished it.

Step 1Step 2Step 3Step 4Step 5Step 6

All this because Elizabeth was upstairs she had to be included.

Ahead of the game

I am actually ahead of the game for once.  I made all of Elizabeth's valentines for her class this last weekend.  I don't think they need something huge just a sucker tied to a little valentine.  Ok, well for 10 of them I actually made paper petals so they looked like flowers.  I'm totally into the little birds and jumped on these free downloads.  Gotta love a free valentine.

I made some simple little valentines for my sweet neices, I hope they enjoy them.  Now I need to get on the ball and actually get them in the mail tomorrow.  Nothing would be so horrible as to spend all the time creating and then not following through with sending them.

Hopefully I will have some pictures of the pajama party at school Friday.  I know Elizabeth is really looking forward to it.  I know she looks sweet but be very careful...

The visit to Mountain Dora

White Grandma (my mom) and I went to Mount Dora this weekend for the 35th Annual Art Show.  Once upon a time I lived there for a semester interning at the Mount Dora Center for the Arts.  Not very exciting but it was a sweet little town to live in for four months.  Working there taught me more about how to deal with large egos than about  working in a non profit business.  I guess it was probably a better lesson in the end.

Elizabeth was all about the hot dogs and popcorn but I was on a mission to pick up some pretty pictures for our walls.  The sunflower is a print from Larry Smith (http://www.artistlarrysmith.com/) and the dogwood is Karin Connolly (http://www.kcphotography.com/). Both were incredibly nice artists and extremely talented.  Mom thought that Elizabeth behaved wonderfully while I thought there were some hiccups, but she pointed out her persepective was belt buckles and purses, not exactly exciting stuff to a three year old.
Lewis prepared a wonderful dinner that night, a modified Giada recipe.  Did I mention it was a spaghetti recipe?  Anna Kate loves some spaghetti.