"thoughts arrive like butterflies..." - pearl jam

here is what has transpired over the last few days:

gram marcia (my mother-in-law) came to visit. and watch the girls at their tumbling class. aunt sue (my sister-in-law) also joined us. we had a really yummy "girlie lunch" at wheatfield's - restaurant chosen by wren with no prompting from her mother. good girl!

this is aunt sue, wren & gram!

this is gram & linnea!

then i was trying to finish up some "work stuff" (getting ready for a "day of shopping" i was doing with some friends...) and my husband's printer went all loco on me! paper kept jamming. color was all distorted. so i changed the black cartridge. did not help the color. couldn't find the color cartridge. on a whim, i thought i would look in the "hoarder's room" (aka linnea)...she likes to sneak things into her room. but i did not think that is where the cartridge would be. i was wrong.

luckily, those hp people make their product thief/tamper resistance. what i like to call "child proof". luckily that foil wrapper kept linnea from making a $32 big ole mistake!

then i baked some snacks for the "say of shopping". my yummy chocolate/butterscotch chip cookies. when linnea should have been napping, and i was probably swearing at karl's printer, threatening it with a ball bat...she sneaked her self a cookie. or maybe a few cookies. she at first denied. but when i asked what was all around her month, she copped to having tried momma's cookies. she then gave her resounding approval that i could serve them. so if you need to have any cookies "taste tested", please consider linnea for the job. she has experience.

the girls are beginning to enjoy playing games. this week's hit has been "little einstein's bingo". they l-u-v to play it with the daddy! the concept is a bit over linnea's head, as she occasionally will have an almost full, near "bingo" card and she will then stack all the pretty red coins up in a tower. she has lost every game. not that we are keeping track, okay?

other kodak moments that kodak did not capture:

• monsters! the girls informed me that they would be "the good girl super heroes" and that i was the "bad monster guy". then they proceeded to run around chasing after the monsters that i was the leader of and eradicating them from out living room and kitchen. shew! so glad they did that job for me.
• shows! the girls have put on numerous shows lately. gram got to see a song & dance show, a play and a cheer-show. i get to be the announcer and wren is usually the headliner with linnea being her side-kick. it works for us.
• songs! nothing like the "johnny appleseed" prayer/song with a jazzy, loud ending!
• park! my sister & her fiance had the girls on saturday evening and they took the girls to a really, really good park. and dinner at culver's. we arrived at 10pm to take them home and wren was in a sleep-induce coma. linnea was still firing on all cylinders. 2.5 hours past their bedtime. linnea will not sleep if there is "action". and apparently the puzzles and nba 7th round of the series game was good action to her!

one-liners:

"we are not naughty, we are curious." - wren, age 4

"our home is in our homeland and church is in churchland." - wren, age 4

"i look in da trash and da dingo game was not dare." - linnea, age "almost" 3 (she squirreled the aforementioned bingo game into wren's room and when daddy caught them in their, not napping and with a game that was not to leave the kitchen counter, he told them he was throwing the game away. wren told me that the game got thrown away. linnea however used her mad-investigation skillz to prove her, and daddy, otherwise.)

"sponge-bob's pants are more rectangular than square, so i am going to call him "sponge bob, rectangle pants." - wren, age 4 (no, they generally do not get to watch him, but karl was showering and needed 15 minutes to finish something up online...so, thank you "babysitter" sponge-bob.) sigh.

"i think i have to stop letting mr. larson play doctor on me." - me...i did something to my back earlier in the week (probably totally unrelated to hoisting mr. larson's dinosaur of a entertainment center outta the basement into the garage...) and after listening to me complain, mr. larson offered to help me try to crack my back and massage the sore area. unsure if it helped or not.