What a beautiful sight!

Rain! Beautiful, beautiful rain! And lots of it! A thunderstorm rolled through our area this afternoon... hopefully enough to put out the Oak Glen III fire (I think the Yucaipa one has been extinguished).. and hopefully it rained a lot on the Station Fire as well... keep your fingers crossed!

And here's another peek into the mind of a preschooler. The shoe store was out of flip flops (are we the only family to wear them year-round?), so Marika chose these blingy silver shoes instead (her previous pair had been glittery pink). They're so shiny! I can tell that when she wears them, she's noticeably happier. Ah, the wonders of pretty shoes!

Isn't this duck cute? You wouldn't believe the hassle it was to get him! Mika's school already began its fundraising and each family had 2+ weeks to return the forms. Every day, Mika would ask, "When are you going to turn in the order form?" Of course this got to be annoying and finally I asked, "Why? Why do you care so much?" Apparently, once you turned in your order form, you got at least one duck on a lanyard - the more you sold, the more ducks you got to wear. To further entice students to guilt their parents into selling more, the principal would randomly select people (wearing their ducks) for more prizes.

Well, last week I finally turned in the order form, sealing everything inside the given packet. And then, we waited. And waited. And waited some more. But... no duck! When I asked Mika, she said she no longer cared about the duck (?!) and then she'd say, "Oh, I'm sure I'll get it tomorrow." Well, after almost a week and no duck, I finally asked the teacher, who said she had sent the entire packet (with the duck coupon) up to the office. So, we trudged on to the office, where all the PTA people had already left. The office people were very kind, though, and instructed me to write a note explaining my woes. So, I did.

I looked up when I heard the secretary gently reprimanding somebody for standing up - and there was Miss Mika, standing on the bench inside the office! I was so embarrassed! Then (even though I was writing as quickly as I could), the girls disappeared from sight. Totally. Utterfly. Completely. Just gone. Although... I could hear some giggling and knew they were somewhere nearby. Then I heard a bystander say, "oh, you're hiding from your mother?" Yup, my children were hiding in the office, while I was doing my best to get her that silly duck! Talk about being ungrateful - and bad!

Anyway... all is well that ends well. When we picked Mika up this afternoon, she sauntered out happily, swinging her duck lanyard. Never mind that she later madly swung it around and let it go so it whacked onto the pavement. Never mind that she put it on the doorknob and accidentally slammed the duck with the door. *sigh*

And oh yeah, did I mention that Mika was supposed to take the duck coupon and turn it in during recess for her duck? And that she KNEW that? But didn't do it? Or tell me that that was protocol?

*sigh* Well, at least it's a cute duck...but this school stuff is making me tired. Yesterday, the teacher told me Mika had cried during class... because she said she missed her little sister! I was sure something bad must have happened earlier during the day to make her more sensitive, but nope - Mika insisted that she had had a good day and just missed Marika. Well, that's sweet, but... *sigh*