Hey Internet!

Are you still out there?  I've been on a self-imposed sabbatical of sorts.  Anyway, hope all is well with you.  I know many of you have experienced the first day of school already.  I've enjoyed reading those posts.  Next Tuesday will be Rachel's first day of kindergarten, so I am sure to have something to blog about!  The week after that will be Lauren's first day of pre-school!  Unbelievable!

Well, this post is going to be a short one because I have an announcement.

I'm leaving blogdrive and trying out blogger.  I'm so sick of having to delete photos practically every other time I post, so I'm moving to blogger.  Check out the new blog:

http://theredheadsblog.blogspot.com/

Stop by and say hello!

Dear Cleaning products located in my home,

I know it's been a while since I've used you and I apologize for that.  Blame it on me being tired, ill or just plain lazy.  I was just wondering if maybe you guys could gather yourselves together this week-end and surprise us all by cleaning our house while we are away for the week-end?  You know, bathrooms, windows, floors--the works.  And also, if you're feeling up to it, could you sort through the bags of handmedowns we've received, the piles of kid projects, old mail, and other various piles of God knows what and do something permanent with them?  Could you?  Please?  That would be soooooo great!

Thanks a million!

The Redhead

I'd like to present the 'Husband of the Year' to Ken today for suggesting that we cut our camping trip with his college buddies (girls go to Grandma and Papa's house) down to one night AND that we get a hotel the second night AND that we go visit my friend Laura who has 4 week old twin daughters AND that we go see a movie by ourselves AND that he will drive a portion of our trip.  I'd say that deserves honorable mention at least, wouldn't you?

I just finished putting my kids to bed.  Our latest ritual is to read books in our bed (as opposed to on the floor in either of the girls' rooms).  So, tonight we read I think five books, one of them being the title of this post, Love You Forever.  I'm sure most of you who read this are quite familiar with this book.  I can still remember when my beloved teacher of Language Arts Methods read that book to our class at Miami U.  I don't know what it was about that book, but we all loved it.  Part of it was the teacher, Mrs. Hormell (may she rest in peace), just had a way of reading to you that you wanted her to keep reading.  She was a great teacher and later was my supervisor during my student teaching.  Anyway, back to the book.  While I still think the main message is wonderful, that a mother will "love you forever, like you for always, as long as I'm living my baby you'll be", there are parts of the book that are a bit creepy.  I mean, it's one thing to go into your baby's room and pick her up while she is sleeping for an extra cuddle (which I never did because I was always paranoid of waking them up and them not getting back to sleep, plus my former boss always said, 'never wake a sleeping child', so I didn't), but your teenager?  I don't think so.  And then the part where the mother drives across town in her truck, climbs up a ladder and gets into her son's room and then rocks a grown man while he sleeps?  It's kind of difficult to read that book to my kids because of the creepiness.  Two things keep me reading it (when they request it, of course).  One, is that it reminds me of Mrs. Hormell and what a great teacher she was and that when she read it to my class, I didn't find it at all creepy.  All I heard was the beautiful message.  And the second reason?  Well, it happened tonight.  As I picked up the book from Lauren's hands and read the title aloud, she snuggled close to me, and said, "Because I love you forever."

....We're going to Se*ars!  Yes, we made it a family affair and went to Se*ars to buy a new dryer!  Aside from both girls acting like they'd been locked inside for weeks and Rachel announcing in a loud, clear voice, "Mommy, I have to poop," the purchase was quick and painless.  We even get to benefit from two different rebates, so it didn't make as big of a dent in our wallet as we might have expected.  Our new dryer will arrive on Tuesday.  AMEN to that!  Every bedroom has a mountain of dirty clothes and I think we're down to our last handful of towels.  We had stinky, wet pool towels left in the laundry room, so I had to wash them tonight to get the smell out (such a foul odor, I really thought I was going to puke).  Tomorrow I'll have to either resort to the laundromat (the kids would probably get a kick out of it) or creative hanging techniques.  We'll see...

Hope everyone had a fabulous week-end.  In addition to the fun at the dryer store, we went to church, went out for brunch, let the girls play at the mall, and made indoor s'mores!  We even went to our pool two times.  Rachel is turning into quite a fish.  I need to get an underwater camera to capture her swimming toward me, skimming the bottom of the pool with a big smile on her face.  She has an excellent backstroke and is starting to swim longer lengths.  Lauren surprised me by having a longer attention span at the pool, clinging to Daddy for once (and boy, did he love it!), and by doing a 'pencil dive'. 

It's late, so you'll have to tune in again soon when I describe my run-in with the Kir*by guy!

Many months ago, I was telling Ken's sisters what bee-you-tiful hands Lauren has.  She has these long, slender, feminine fingers, reminiscent of my grandmother's hands.  Her nails are perfectly symmetrical, with deep nailbeds.  Overall, she truly has pretty hands.  We could even see this the day she was born.  So, just a day after bragging to my SILs about Lauren's gorgeous nails/hands, I picked up Lauren's hand in mine, and I literally gasped.  She had bitten down every single nail!  I couldn't believe my eyes!  We talked a lot about nail polish--yes, a bribe.  It worked for Rachel a while back when she was ripping her nails (not biting them, but doing some 'self trimming', if you will).  This was January when I noticed Lauren had been biting her nails.  After many months of mentioning the nail polish, reminding her to "let her nails grow", and sometimes outright yelling, "Get your fingers OUT of your mouth!"---SUCCESS!  Her nails are pretty again, so today we bought some nail polish.  If you guessed she chose PINK, you would be correct!  We actually spotted a cute little six-pack of tiny bottles of pretty colors, so we bought that.  One of the colors was purple, which we promised we'd find for Rachel, so all was good.  Here are a few pics of Lauren and her pretty nails:

In other news, my dryer decided it does not want to work anymore.  It makes a horrendous sound when you attempt to turn it on, and when you let go of the button--nothing.  We are guessing it is done for.  It stopped working the other night.  I had one load in the dryer and one in the wash, only to find later in the day that the dryer did not do its job.  Since I did nothing about it all of yesterday, I had two loads of stinky clothes in my laundry room.  I decided to rewash them and then hang clothes up to dry.  Too bad I got rid of my old drying rack from my college days.  I now have clothes in various places, attempting to dry them.  And, of course, it is a very humid day (unlike much of this summer's gorgeous weather), so it's a slow process.  I guess it would have been smarter to go to the laundromat, but I never said I was smart. 

So, I'm reliving my college days---only instead of studying, I'm trying to read book 5 of Harry Potter (I know I'm slow!  Maybe I can get it read before the movie leaves the theater!), and instead of drinking beer with my rommates, I'm having tea (water) parties with my daughters!

This week-end Ken took Lauren on an outing.  He asked her if she wanted to go to the store.  She eagerly got dressed, went potty and got shoes on so that she could go.  She knew this was a rare opportunity.  It is not often that we "divide and conquer" (a sin, I know!) , so here was a chance for alone time with Daddy, not to mention being able to go somewhere while Rachel stayed at home (has that ever happened??).  So, Ken and Lauren went to a particular bagel store.  After getting some bagels and even eating one there, they left for home.  However, while the bagel store was nice and all, Lauren did not see that as "going to the store".  She pointed this out to Ken and began asking to go to another store.  He asked her which store she would like to go to and she answered, "Kro*ger".  I would have guessed that she would have said "Tar*get", since she often asks to go there.  Anyway, they went to the Kro*ger and came back with a few things to take on Sunday's picnic, including a pack of those ready to bake cookies.  Ken said, "Look what Lauren picked out at the store."  Now, having been to Kro*ger about a brazillian times with Lauren, I know that she does not know where those cookies are located in the store.  Could she find the ice cream aisle?  Sure!  Those yogurt covered pretzels?  Absolutely!  Those sickening sweet sugar cookies with the obnoxious neon frosting and sprinkles?  You betcha.  But the ready to bake cookies?  Nah.  I'm not saying I've never bought them before or that I only do home-made cookies.   All's I'm saying is I think Daddy must have pointed them out to her.

Onto the "baking" lesson!  We missed out on having a picnic, so we had lunch at home.  After lunch, Ken decided to make the cookies.  He asked me how long they bake.  Instead of saying, "Read the directions," I said, "I don't know....about 10 minutes or so?"  I then added that he should preheat the oven.  I said that because I know Ken is often impatient and figured he would just throw the cookies in right after turning on the oven.  So, he turned on the oven and then left the kitchen.  Being nosy/meddling/pessimistic, I took a gander at the temperature he set it for: 400 degrees.  Hmmm.....I thought, "That seems kind of high.....maybe I should check the package (knowing he did not)."  Sure enough, it called for a 350 degree oven, not 400.  The bitch in me wanted to leave it as is and let Ken learn a little lesson.  Much like the "burnt soup" lesson a while back (anyone remember that post?).  BUT, the mother in me knew that would be a cruel lesson for the girls to learn.  They could not wait to have those chocolate chip cookies with the Toy St*ory sprinkles.  The chocolate lover in me just could not live with herself if she let her husband burn the chocolate chip cookies!  Knowingly ruining a batch of chocolate chip cookies?  Unheard of!  Unforgiveable!  So, I adjusted the oven to 350.  Ken finally came back to the kitchen, put the cookies on the tray and threw them in the oven......for 15 minutes.  When I saw the 15 minutes on the timer, I thought, "Wow!  That's longer than I thought.....okay.....whatever."  Figuring Ken had read the package when he was putting the cookies on the tray, I refrained from checking the package directions.  So, I went about cleaning up the lunch stuff and waited for the timer to go off.  When it did, I pulled out the cookies and thought, "Hmmm....they seem rather brown to me....I bet 15 minutes was too long."  Ken asked how they looked and I just said, "Fine," even though my inner bitch was thinking, "A touch overdone for my taste."  So, we ended up polishing off the tray of 16 cookies pretty quickly.  The girls and I had three each.....you can do the math to know Ken had a lot of cookies!  Anyway, as I was cleaning up, I decided to take a look at the package directions.

11-14 minutes

Sigh.

Is it just me or would you have set the timer for 11 minutes and then checked the cookies?

Who sees 11-14 and says, okay 15 minutes?

So, if I had not intervened at all, he would have baked those cookies for 15 minutes in a 400 degree oven.

Again, maybe it's just the bitch in me.

Or maybe it's the hormones.

You just don't mess with CHOCOLATE!!!!

Hello Internet!  Believe it or not, it is 4:09 pm. on a Thursday and The Redhead is blogging!  YAHOO!  I went to that store with the four letter name and I found a computer desk that I really like and it fits perfectly in the playroom.  I was able to rearrange the toys a bit and voila--perfect little nook for the computer!  I got the whole thing put together late last night and set everything up.  Rachel was beyond excited to have the computer available during the day!  Obviously, so am I.  Here's a picture of Rachel getting settled in the new computer area.

One thing I wasn't pleased about was that when I got the pull out keyboard tray set up, the metal tracks were bent and the drawer could not close all the way (that's why the keyboard is on the desktop).  So, I still need to place a call to that store to see about getting those replaced.  At some point we'll get a proper desk chair.  The girls had their eye on a pink one at one of those big office store chains.  Like I said, we'll find a suitable one later.  Other than that, I am very pleased and can't wait to start filling the shelves and using the magnetic white board.  Yes, I am easily amused!

We were invited this past Saturday to go to a neighborhood party, given by two families we have never met.  This is an annual party that we have yet to attend.  In the early days of this party, we would receive a flyer in our mailbox alerting us that part of our street would be closed for a party during whatever time (I think usually it was around 3:00 or so to maybe 10:00), so please make plans accordingly.  We always thought how lame that was that we weren't invited and yet had to deal with the inconvenience of the street being blocked off.  For a few years, we noticed our next door neighbors would attend the party.  Hmm....that's strange.  Why weren't we invited?  Now we were feeling like losers.  We got our notice about the street closure, no invitation, and now our neighbors were actually going to the party?  I think sometime after Lauren was born, we actually got invited to the darn party.  Like we'd attend after being snubbed all those years?  Well....maybe....if we didn't have plans already or if Ken wasn't sick that one year.  Anyway, this year we got invited on Wednesday for the Saturday party.  You can tell they really want us there, huh?  Ken was out of town when I got the invitation, so I kind of forgot about it until he got back on Friday.  I asked if he wanted to go and he said he wanted to sleep on it.  Not like we'd feel too bad RSVPing the day of seeing as we only got the invite 3 days before the party.  So, Saturday came and we had a lazy do nothing sleep in kind of day.  So, I asked Ken what he thought about the party.  He turned it back to me, asking what I thought.  "Well, seeing as it starts so late this year (7:30) and they're asking for $10 per family for fireworks donation (like to know where they came up with that figure?  Was it going to be one helluvashow, or was it really toward the hotdogs,  chips and soda that were 'provided'?) and Rachel is terrified of fireworks, so we wouldn't even be staying to watch them, I'd lean toward not going.  Although, it would be a chance to meet more of the neighbors..."

Ken's response to all of that?  "Meeting new people is overrated."

Ken is not the funniest guy in the world, but he can be hilarious sometimes without really intending to be.

Another excellent reason for not attending the party?  The grammar teacher inside of me just cringed when I read the first line of the invite.  I'm sure you know what it was....

Think about it....

Your Invited...

It is official.  Rachel is no longer a baby or a little girl.  She has lost part of her babyhood and is already advancing toward adulthood.  She has lost her first tooth and the adult tooth is right there behind!  She pulled it out herself after asking me to give a few tries.  I couldn't get a good grip on it, especially with my nails.  I suggested that she try my technique from when I pulled out my own teeth.  I would use my shirt to grip the tooth and then pull.  It worked for me and it worked for my daughter!  What a proud moment when she yelled, "I did it!  I pulled out my tooth!"  Here are some pictures:

There's the gaping hole and the adult tooth right behind it.

I knew this pillow would come in handy some day!!

Look how tiny it is in my hand.  Sniff, sniff.

Look who wants her tooth to be loose!