There it is.

For weeks I paced this house looking for my camera's memory disk. I knew it had some good pics, not that I could remember what those pics were, but dammit I needed to find the disk. I considered blogging without the pics but I know how short y'alls attention span is and honestly sometimes I scan your blogs just for pictures too. So nothing happened here. For weeks. And life was busy, and there's not much time for creative juices to flow.

Until last night. I got an urge to do a project. This project, specifically. The spraying of the metal stars I have. they're a motley crew of colors now and I want them to coordinate with the light blue/silver/red/pink playroom. Sexy how I wear running shoes with my work clothes, no?

As I was preparing to spray and I commented that I really wondered where that disk could have gone, the oldest member of my audience said "oh, yeah, you know, there's a camera disk laying on my desk". OOOH. OH REEEAAAALLY. Really. Well, thanks for piping up, even if its 4 weeks later. When not holding onto important pieces of information, the audience participated in shaking the spray paint can.

Tonight, we spray more stars. Good times. Now I'll get busy organizing pics.

Hello, Bedtime.

I had good intentions of blogging and being clever, but damn, sometimes our kids are wild (i had to really stop and reconsider the word "wretched" there) and it takes all my strength to make it to bedtime.

Instead some pictures.

WILD, I tell you.

Suppose I really should say something. These pics were from late June, when the boys left our former daycare because we were moving.I had my frustrations with the former place, but in retrospect I am so very happy the boys were at Z's little over a year. She taught kindness and love for everyone, and I'm now so grateful they were under her care during an important part of their lives. I do like our current daycare, but I've had to be a vocal pain in the ass to get a few issues resolved. And there are things I'd really like to do, like grab a little boy by his shirt and tell him, listen, Little Punkass, stop using bad words and dont even thing about shoving one of these two. But anyways, we're learning we can't control the rest of the world's bad behaving children, we can just try to guide our own. In these pics, we're making them a prettier version of dirt/worm  pudding. Good times, and man, I miss that kitchen. The new one is OK, but it's all formal and serious and stuff. I loved that green kitchen. It just made me happy.

Oh. And guess who had a birthday? Rhett-man is now 6. This pic is when he was 4, I think, but it makes me chuckle. He was a shy-ish, attached to his mom, easy-going kid. And he's pretty much still the same, but he's spreading his wings, and had a conversation with me that lasted long enough for me to learn that he had a white cake with vanilla icing. Happy 6th birthday yesterday, Rhett!

PS. Maybe next year Aunt Trudi will get the card in the mail on time. Likely not, though.

And there was this guy, too...

Let's back up to our first visitors, my boy Aidan. I think I shared these pictures on FB, but not here. Love me this baby.

Damn shame he lives so far away and his mother doesn't bring him to see his favorite Auntie more often...<sigh>...

The boys each picked a book for Baby A, and then decorated the cover.

 I picked something out for him, too, but had to amend it. It would be self-indulgent if it weren't true.

 

 Baby A was very inquisitive, and looked about and pulled hair, as babies are oft to do.

 Love saw this and backed away a little.

 He has his momma's eyes and expressions. But cuter with chubby cheeks.

  And fat baby thighs. He's crawling and standing and moving about, so I bet he loses some of the chub by the time we see him again. Too bad. That's good stuff.

The babies got sat.

Behold, our first real babysitters! Amanda and Alex from Camp Keller took on these two for a few hours that same Saturday while we went to see a movie. And it sounds like it all went really well, until bedtime. Then these two seemingly sweet and cooperative boys turn into a think tank of excuses not to sleep, and they have Camp Keller kids a run for their money. I was afraid of this, and this is why we bolted from that movie theatre to race home. But they are willing to come back and sit again, so it couldn't have been that bad, right? ;-)

Here's More Stuff

The day of overwhelming fun at Costco also had a very lunch at a Hibatchi type place. You know, the dude cooks and flips stuff and entertains you while he cooks your food?

But when we got there, the damn place didn't open till noon. PEOPLE. Don't they know our kids nap at around 1pm and we need to get home around then, and therefor they should open earlier? I hate when stores and restaurants don't plan around our nap times. So we thought hard for a minute and decided to kill the next 30 minutes at the mall merry go round.

And when we returned, we met a stampede of people going into the restaurant, but luckily the giant fish tank distracted us while we waited. And it was so neat that even once we sat down we kept turning our heads to stare at the fish.

 One of us stared. The other got a lecture from his dad that I'm pretty sure can be paraphrased into I'm paying a lot for your lunch, you better eat the food. 

 G agreed that he would indeed, eat the food.

Then our chef arrived and we were mesmerized. And, it turns out, we are afraid of the fire. It is pretty big and it was unexpected, and we said we'd go again, especially if our waitress brings us cocktail umbrellas again.

 And if we got to use the "chompers" to eat.

 

Not a bad way to spend a lunch hour.