Enjoying the park.

Today's adventure's include the Children's Museum.

Fun Picture from the mall

In order: Emma, Sabrina, Fiona. They were, indeed, having that good of a time. This was at the-park-previously-known-as Camp Snoopy, until they unexpectedly lost the licensing rights. They are now "The Park at Mall of America", and the girls really don't care either way. Mary got to go on the trucks and drive around a circle, as well as the carousel. She thought that was very cool. Emma and Fiona went to everything they could get to, and Sabrina climbed to the top of the rock wall. Wow! They were a bunch of energetic children, even when we got home.

Vagabond Life

Well, here we are in Minnesota, visitng close friends. The adventure is trying to get 4 girls (5 1/2, 3 1/2, 3 and not quite 2) to sleep in the same room. It is "nap time" right now, which just means the adults take turns going in and looking menacing. Little Mary is out cold, but the rest of the girls cannot keep themselves quiet enough for one of them to try to sleep. It is humorous, if only it didn't mean the lack of napping. We went to lunch at a great little Mexican restaurant, where the waiter chatted away with me and Jim in Spanish. Sometimes, I would like to not speak Spanish so that I could just sit there quietly and not have to think. But the food was incredible and Mary ate EVERY bite, which is highly unusual. Diane and I escaped for a pedicure this morning and now the guys are headed out to do something manly without the kids around. Later we are going to go wrok out (the kids get to play at a cool kid's area), then take all 4 girls to the open pool thing. We'll see how that goes, since they are ging to be pretty tired and most likely very grumpy. The best laid plans and all of that....

The most excitement happened yesterday at the Zoo, when I thought I lost my phone. We back tracked and spent a lot of time looking on the ground, only to go home disappointed. Later I found that it had fallen out of my coat and was living on the floor under my seat in the car. That was a happy ending.

In Minnesota

Just for Derek

I had to make these ultra cute bunnies today for no reason except that I am procrastinating hundreds of other things. This pattern is at the Wee Wonderfuls site that is linked on the side. They would be cuter if I tied a ribbon around their necks, but the girls will just tear it off. Since Derek posted earlier in what can only be described as abject fear of small cute things such as these, I was thinking of making a dozen to send him for Easter. In the mean time, the girls are loving their new toys.

Martha Called

Well, Danielle called from Martha's office. Unfortunately, Martha will not be able to attend my event, since she will be in Europe for the month of June. She did, however, see my invitation (according to Danielle) and there was a note that she liked the color scheme. A letter will follow, on MARTHA letterhead and all, saying how she cannot attend.

I have to tell you, my heart was racing. The possibilities that towered in my head when I saw the caller ID (NEW YORK CALL) were staggering. I didn't imagine for a moment it was Martha, but beyond that it could have been anything. I could have been asked to be on the phone during her show or it may have been them telling me a restraining order was being sought for overly ambitious fans. On the outside, they could have been calling to make sure we could have some sort of security in place for Martha's visit. The potentials were all there on the caller ID. About 10 minutes later the excitement was over. Martha is not coming. But I invited her and she saw the invitation I made with my own hands. I really grilled Danielle about that. She said, "Martha personally sees ALL of her invitations, this is not just an automatic thing. And I have a note that she liked the color scheme." So I will choose to believe her. Then I will take the letter, politely declining my invitation, and keep it in my Martha Stewart Cookbook for Entertaining. The irony is too much to pass up.

Just Delivered

According to the post office, the official invite was delivered on Monday, April 3rd. Here is the letter (more or less) that I wrote out and sent to Martha:

Dear Ms. Stewart,

Please accept an invitation for yourself and a guest to join my dinner club in a celebration of C--H-- Village and Martha Stewart.

C-- H-- Village was once one of Henry Ford's 19 "Village Industries", fitted with a factory to provide small scale industrial production in a rural setting to help part time farmers. Before that, it was a small crossroads town with a church, a cemetery, a hotel, and a school, established in 1834. Our neighborhood has taken it's strengths from the past and built upon itself into a better and stronger community. The remains of the Ford Village were expanded on and added to with a blanket of Victorian era homes swathing an entire community, complete with a town square, shops, a general store and a theater. The history of this village mirrors your own evolution. You share the indefatigable and paradigmatic spirit that the very town embodies. Your visit to our community will give you an exclusive opportunity to experience these unique values C-- H-- Village holds within itself. You will also be able to glimpse what your own Twin Lakes community will be like when they take up the sodality of Martha Stewart.

For the past two years I have been involved in a dinner club in my neighborhood. Every month we take turns hosting the event. The hosts provide all of the recipes for the meal, along with the main course. Every meal is based on a theme, such as an Italian Night or A Summer Barbeque. I will be hosting our club in June and I am planning a celebration of strength of character and perseverance to commemorate our community- a "Martha Stewart Night". The spirit of the night will be drawn from our own community. The inspiration for the meal will be from your cookbooks. Your presence there will complete the fellowship.

Please find the enclosed invitation that I have made and sent to you. We have not set the exact date for our dinner club meeting yet, so I am able to offer you a choice of dates. Please RSVP, if you would be so kind, as to which date you would be able to attend, June 17th or June 24th. For planning purposes I ask that you respond no later than May 27th.

Not that I expect anything, but in the most odd event that something does come of it, I should paint some additional rooms of the house.

Martha

Well, I did it. I mailed an invitation to Martha Stewart to come to dinner at my house sometime in June - whatever date is convenient for her. I am not sure where this all began, apart from one night when I was half asleep I had convinced myself that she would come if I just asked her. I was even planning where she would fly in and what to make for dessert. So I told a friend. She dared me to do it. I think she even double-dog dared me. So I tossed the idea around. I told another friend. She thinks I am certifiably crazy but is nice enough to not say it out loud. I told my dinner club. Oh! That was then end of it. They said I should invite her to the dinner club that I am hosting. One of my neighbors really jumped on the bandwagon and started giving me ideas on how I could sell it to Martha - I think that particular neighbor is in marketing, to be honest. Then I got FOLLOW UP EMAILS on the subject. So I wrote a letter. It was a sad and feeble letter - something along the lines of: "Martha, you are awesome, you are so great, you are really incredible how do you DO it??? And please come over for dinner. " Then Jim helped me hammer some nice things into it and I sent it to the marketing genius for input. Them I made an invitation. I really liked it and made an envelope to match. So I wrote out the letter by hand and got a nice picture of the village atmosphere and today I went to the post office and sent it off.

I'm actually a little embarrassed to admit that I've done such a bold thing, but it cannot be undone now. If nothing happens, I can whine about it here. If I get a pretty letter of regret I can crow about it here, fold the letter nicely and keep it in my Martha Stewart cookbook for entertaining - because THAT would be irony. If Martha's people call me up and issue a restraining order, I can mutter over it here, too. And if, by the REMOTEST possibility, my humble invitation is accepted, you will be able to follow my every little obsession about the planning and preparation right here with me. Now, won't that be FUN?

Lunch Observation

It just so happens, that if you go and work out late in the morning and run your little leggs off for nearly an hour, that when you come home and make lunch, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich WILL BE the best thing you have ever eaten. Even if it is leftover from your kids' lunch.

Mommy News all Around

Many things to talk about today. First, let's get the kid content in and over with. The "angels" are napping, but I am on the cusp of them waking up. Today, as the last week and a half, the girls are being more than slightly difficult. Below, in the previous post, you see what happened when Emma was told to put her underwear on. Yep, that's Dora underwear on her head. I really had to go to the bank and the grocery store. By all rights I should have let her go out like that, but rolling boil anger doesn't usually let you think that clearly. After we finally made it to the bank et al, I wanted to go work out but had left all of my workout clothes at home - in the washer. So we came back and I wanted to make some granola. The girls insist on helping any time I am in the kitchen, so after five minutes of them stirring rolled oats with large spoons, there was more of the 8 cups of Quaker oats on the counter and floor than in the bowl. So I banished them and made the granola without them. Right when I was getting out the hand vac to get the remains on the floor the phone rang. This is precisely when Mary BIT Emma hard enough on her back to break the skin. Yes, Reader, it has been a rough day in the parenting realm.

On another front, I worked out with a personal trainer yesterday. One hour of complete hell. That is what it was. This man was relentless. I wanted to be all tough and stoic, but my muscles could only do so much (we just worked on resistance training). At the end of the hour my fatigued muscles were shaking. I fell into bed when we got home and thought I had died. Unbelievable. I truly never knew a workout could feel like that. I'm not really sure I want it to feel like that again. However, I believe if I could work out that hard 4 times a week for a month, I would feel really skinny again. That was part of the frustration of not going this morning. Oh, well.

In other Mommy news, I have found the pictures that I want to include with that invite. I have to finish writing out the second half of it and should be able to send it off tomorrow. I don't really expect anything from it, but even a nice letter of regret would be fun to have. Any way, the pressure of serving a dinner like that would probably be incredible. I'll put the letter up after I send it off.

Final Mommy news that made me happier than reasonable today is in the mail. Emma got into the nursery school that I had been hoping to get her into. Not that there were tests or anything, just a waiting list. So I got the letter saying she would be going on Wednesdays and Fridays. No co-op this time around. I'm very excited about the whole thing.

The other thing that makes me happy is fresh out of the oven homemade granola. Mmmmmm.

Emma's interpretive dressing game.

Having a playdough day!

Play group

Wakeful Musings

Just for the record: it is 2:39 AM and I have not slept a wink. I think it was the caffeine I had at dinner (which was WAY later than usual at 8 PM) and I am not yet tired. Of course, it is a good thing I was not sleeping, as Mary has been moaning and crying every hour that has passed. I just went up with some Tylenol, hoping that when I do finally get to sleep she will stay quiet. So I was on the computer, bumping about random blogs when I found this one. This lady is incredible. She makes these wee tiny little crafty creatures that made me want to run to the sewing machine and replicate. She is my new craft hero-ess.

Today (well, technically yesterday) we went to visit my new twin nephews. Zachary Leon and Alexander Gary are 1 week old as of Sunday. They weighed over 7 1/2 pounds EACH. My poor, HUGE sister-in-law was just unreasonably tortured, having almost 16 pounds of babies inside of her for so long. We went to their house, bearing gifts for almost everyone, as her birthday was yesterday and their daughter's 2nd birthday was today. Everyone seems to be happy and healthy. My brother, Jeff, told me that so far having twins was easy. Bully for you, Jeff. Just thinking about twins and a 2 year old is hard for me, so more power to you.

I wanted to go to the Target over by their house (they live about an hour away), since the quilts I had ordered for the girls' beds have been discontinued and I have decided to get Dora comforters and just be done with it. The Target over here is out of stock. But we went in the afternoon and then had a nice dinner with my parents at TGI Fridays, and it was too late to go to Target afterwards and the girls were full pumpkins by that time. So I am still without some sort of comforter or quilt for Emma's bed. That annoys me to quite an extreme.

We also stopped and looked at a house in our neighborhood that is up for sale. It is just another new house of one of the models I really would have loved to have purchased, but was not financially able to do when we were buying into this development. I love how Jim talks about us buying a house when we just invested a huge amount of time and money doing the landscaping as well as many indoor projects. I don't even have curtains on any windows in this house yet - just blinds - and he is talking like we are putting up a "For Sale" sign in the front yard. Personally, I never want to move again. And if I did, it would not be within the same neighborhood. It would be to a less expensive place (not smaller, which is total unreasonable) and maybe even in Minnesota. But not on Jackson Lane around the bend. I don't understand quite what gets into him sometimes. Next month he is going to Argentina for a business trip and maybe that will cool his heels a little. I think he just doesn't want to organize the garage. Moving would definitely get him out of that. I'll have to do an entirely separate post about the garage organizing.

After reading this entry, I see that I must be truly tired as there is no flow to the ideas or the narrative. That, I think, is unlike me. So I will turn off the soul-sucking computer and try to go to sleep. The caffeine should have worn off by now (I think it is a 6 hour effect, truthfully) and I might be able to get a whopping hours of sleep before my precious darlings are up. I see a long morning ahead of me.

Workout Surprise

We finally edged Emma back into Lifetime's child care area. It is actually very cool, with lots of fun, FUN things to do. But last week she went with Jim and he was there later than her bedtime. She got very upset about some vague incident where "someone was mean to her". In the mind of our delicate little 3 year old, that could mean someone did not stop walking past her when she thought she was talking to them. So, since last Wednesday she has been on absolute REFUSAL to go to the fitness center. I spent the better part of this week gently working her back in. That means I went to the fitness center 3 times this week and did not get to work out at all. Tonight it all paid off and she was her normal, happy self about it. So Jim and I were on the treadmills doing a warm up and who should be next to us but our very own next door neighbors. Yes, the ones who have 2 of 3 kids the exact same ages as ours and we hardly see or talk to. I am not sure if it our schedules or theirs that causes this oddity, but there you have it. All 4 of us were happily working out on consecutive treadmills and not speaking. I can't believe we had to go out to get that.

Honestly, though, what oddness is that? We run into so many neighbors there it is crazy. What is a little sad is that it is Friday night and we all go to the fitness center. None of us are getting together with friends or going out for fun. We are sweating off our little fat cells and ignoring the fact that we all know each other. It is an odd thing to work out right next to someone you know distantly. You feel compelled to talk, but really can not. The whole thing needs some etiquette book addressing the matter. I wonder what Emily Post would say about chance meetings during couple work out sessions. It is all just to weird for me, I'm going to bed.

A Little Something I've Been Working On

If you don't know who this is for, that will come in a later post. I just wanted to put the actual invite up to show it off. I made this little thing for a June Dinner club event I am hosting. Those initials are the recipient's. More to come!

Another Friday, another tea party. It is Zoe's 2nd birthday. The girls had blue frosted cupcakes after she opened presents. At least they matched the dresses, so when the frosting ended up all over them it didn't really matter. Mary was just technicolor after that.

Along the Way, You're Bound to Hit a Speed Bump

We got a strange phone call last night around 7PM. It was DTE, our electric company, telling us in a suitable recorded voice that our power would be "interrupted" for approximately 4 hours on Tuesday, starting around 9 AM. So I called my neighbor, who I was supposed to have a play date with in the morning.

"Did you get a call from the electric company?"

"Um, no. Why?"

explain, explain, explain....

"I don't think so, but I have some voice mail. Let me check it and call you back."

She checked, she called back. No message. The question remained, then, was her power going to be cut off too? It wouldn't be huge except that my children have been devils with intent the last three days and the only thing that will contain them is food and TV, not in that order. So we didn't feel like hanging around if we were going to be without TV for the savages. We made alternate plans to go to the mall for the morning and even try to eat lunch out. I must tell you, Reader, that my last few attempts at going out with the children have been less than relaxing. Trica and I tried, about 5 weeks ago, to have lunch out and we decided it was easier (and substantially cheaper) to eat mac and cheese at home.

So, after getting some air in my slowly leaking front tire, we trekked over to the nearest mall. The girls all had a fabulous time in the play area. Mary very nearly skipped (as much as a 20 month old can) and Emma and Zoe discovered the slide was wide enough to hold both of them at the same time. That was nice. Encouraging, even. This was not without problems, as I only brought a single stroller and Emma decided, to the point that her toddler feet would not budge from the middle of the parking lot in the 26 degree weather, that she wanted to ride in a stroller. Not THAT stroller, which is Mary's stroller, but SOME stroller. After much coercing and coaxing I got her into the mall, where her feet made that obnoxious decision again to stick the the ground. So, Emma got a ride on my shoulders while Mary was pushed in the stroller to the place in the mall where I could rent a double stroller. All was happiness and glee at that point, as the girls decided the mall stroller was very much like a roller coaster and they began leaning precariously over the sides and exclaiming at the sheer fun of it.

We went to lunch and had the normal issues you would have if you were at lunch with three toddlers. First, there is not enough room to move all of the tantalizing table paraphernalia out of reach of all of the kids. Then comes the issue of kicking each other with their feet. And no matter what, when the food comes, they only want to eat off of other people's plates. And there was the issue of the forks returning to their cousins, the under-table-dwellers. Trica and I were exhausted after that. All in all it was not horrible, but only what we expected. Unfortunately, Emma decided we were all having so much fun that she was NOT going to go home. She is still crying about that right now, upstairs, where she should be taking a nap and not keeping Mary up with her wailing and gnashing of teeth.

As I drove home, Trica called from her cell phone to tell me her power, according to her husband, had just gone out at 1 PM. When I got home, mine was back on, with the obvious signs that it had been off at some point. At least I can do laundry and check my emails while Emma screams and protests the injustice of it all.

All in the space of a regular morning with two little kids.

Insidiousness

So after a few Moblogging days using my new camera-equipped phone, I haven't had a chance to add anything. You must know, Reader, a dear friend of mine really gave me grief for putting up so many pictures. "Come ON," she said, "Lunch from Home Depot???? Where's the picture of the clerk that sold you the mouldings?!?!?" I have to justify - of course. When I am home, my laptop is on all day on the kitchen counter. Since we have a cable modem, I receive emails as they are sent. I also check various sites through out the day and frequent blogs that are my favorites. I just assumed everyone would be doing the same. So, if you were checking in two times a day, you would be able to see the progress on the "Big Girl Room" project. If you checked it on Monday, you would only see a series of pictures that really didn't tell you anything. So I apologize. The only time I got to do anything close to blogging was when I was out getting more paint or buying mouldings. Anyhow, I thought I took a SWEET food picture - it was like an advertisement!

So we finished painting Emma's room, although Dora is till not quite done. The furniture came on Tuesday and the room is all together. We are waiting on the shades which are in transit and the valances and bedspread, which are back ordered until May. We didn't get to the closet organizer but plan to do that this weekend. I have been busy trying to catch up from no housework being done for 3 days. Remember, this is after being sick the week before and never quite getting all of that backlog done. So today it is the exciting job of cleaning toilets and dusting, along with precarious piles of laundry. Yesterday I got out the Space Bags I asked for at Christmas time and bagged up all of my miscellaneous bedding - then I sucked the air out of them and stored them like layers of a sandwich. I'm going to be buying more of those bags!

Well, my short time of napping children has ended. I think we are going to go to the gym and workout for a little while. I haven't been in forever, it feels like, and I must start going again. Maybe I'll take a picture of the place for my loyal readers.....