It's hard being five...

She finally wore herself out this afternoon, after all that whining and groaning. That's a punch ball on her legs... I tried to remove it but she was still hanging onto it - with a death grip!

Running their little hearts out

The fall session of Joggers' Club began this week at Mika's school. Mika ran 4 laps all by herself (no coaching required!) while Marika bawled and bawled (at first) because she was wearing the wrong shoes. Wrong shoes, you ask? Check out the blingy flip flops she's wearing in the bottom right picture. Yup, a little inappropriate for running, wouldn't you say? She finally agreed to start running, once I said I'd run with her. Much to my astonishment, Marika managed to run 3 laps! She's really improved since last year, when she would cry while running... and now she's even happier because we printed out her very own Joggers' Club running log...

So Daddy Dude has a Blackberry now, much to my dismay. His other phone died (how convenient, right?) on Saturday and due to the nature of his work, he needed a phone with certain specifics. *sigh* He was at Verizon for a LONG TIME, so the girls played at the water fountain for most of the time. One of these days, somebody is going to fall in...!

And this may be my new favorite "sleeping" picture of Marika. I told you she could sleep anywhere! Mika was busy working with her homework when I realized that Marika had grown very quiet at the kitchen table. I guess she got tired of waiting for her sister to finish...? I moved her to the sofa, it just didn't seem like a comfortable (not to mention relaxing) position!

*Yawn*

It has been a busy week - somehow, we're always a bit tired after a holiday weekend...

Yesterday Marika and I went to the library. I thought these Thing 1 and Thing 2 dolls were absolutely adorable! I tried to convince the girls they should be Thing 1 and Thing 2 for Halloween, but the idea didn't seem to stick. Too bad!

On the bright side, Marika is starting to read books on her own. She has been able to sound out words for a long time now, but didn't seem motivated to read sentences. For some reason, she now seems ready - and was very excited to be able to read short books (8 pages, with a few words on each page). She's been reading from those books every chance she gets! We'll have to go back to the library for more books sooner than later...

This was Marika's recent work from preschool... compared to the other children's work, we were very pleased to see that her car actually looks like a car! Must have been that Lightning McQueen influence... ;)

After Mika is done with her classwork, she's allow to draw on the back of her worksheet until time is called. Usually she draws pictures but today, she came home with... the lyrics to the Scooby Doo theme song! I was impressed with how much she remembered, but I hope she didn't start singing aloud in class!

And here's a recent drawing of our family (by Mika)... I guess we're three princesses with one king... =)

Supplies: patterned paper (KI Memories), cardstock (Bazzill), cardstock sticker and diecut sentiment (Making Memories), acrylic letters (KI Memories), ribbon (KI Memories), gel flowers (Heidi Swapp), rhinestones (The Paper Studio), diecut brackets (Quickutz)

And here's my layout from today's "alone" time (another Page Maps sketch - I love those!). Can you tell Marika loves ladybugs? =)

Is it really summer vacation???

I feel just as busy as I did during the school year! What's going on?!

As most of you know, I'm in the process of auctioning off the remainder of my Ebay store inventory. My goal was to finish by the end of the summer (which I still think is plausible), but in all honesty, I hadn't been prepared for how much STUFF I still had. I have about 90 auctions listed for next week (you can't see the Wednesday box behind all this!).

This economy really is a downer... but I know I should still consider myself lucky to have any buyers. My end goal is to earn enough money for one of our September California estimated tax payments... (we are doing our part to help California by sending them money every quarter!). But in all honesty - I will be SO GLAD when I can shut everything down. Not only will I have more time (which will be filled up with other activities, I know that!) but we can throw away ALL of the cardboard hoarded in our study and RECLAIM an upstairs closet. Whew!

So in a nutshell, we've been busy! Here are some scenes from an excellent Fourth of July gathering... with delicious food and wonderful company... (thanks!) =)

After storytime at the library this morning, the girls opted for a quick picnic lunch before we headed off to the dentist - again. Marika was told she had EIGHT (yes, eight!) cavities so we've been going once a week for the past FOUR weeks to the dentist (two treated at a time). She's been such an incredible trooper - she willingly skipped the laughing gas and brought Geoffrey the Polar Bear instead (we forgot Geoffrey last week and that was NOT a good appointment). Geoffrey made his final appearance at the dentist today and did a great job keeping the patient calm. He only got bounced on the floor once, but his companion Berk was not so lucky - and had his paw dipped into my cup of coffee! Good thing he was already brown but... ick!

And for those of you who still don't believe that my side of the family has a gene allowing for sleep anywhere in almost any position... apparently she got tired playing Clifford computer games and decided to take a rest... and yes, she is totally asleep!

And finally, here are my little (noisy) troublemakers. We have been trying to enforce the "one toy at a time" rule and this is what my little rugrats have been up to while I was working to update the blog!!! I sure hope they've cleaned it up by now... ;)

It's a little known fact...

...that on both sides of my family, everybody has the innate ability to fall asleep anywhere. No, we're not narcoleptic or anything, but really - we can sleep anywhere! It was a very useful trait during college, when those 15-minute power naps in the library could help you make it through a long night of studying... looks like Marika is in good shape for those overnighters!

And in other news... we harvested our first cherry tomatoes. We had almost forgotten they were out there - which is why some are a wee bit wrinkled (apparently, there is quite a bit of weeding to do - again). Originally, we had one more tomato, but I accidentally knocked it out of Mika's hands and it bounced into Daisy's cage - where it was immediately pounced on it and devoured! :)

Sleeping Children...

They always look so sweet and innocent, don't they? Marika had kind of a rough night (coughing a lot while sleeping), so I fully anticipated her taking a nap during softball practice. She looked so sweet!

And then... she woke up (it was time to leave - what could I do?).

She screamed, she kicked, she bawled. She refused to put her shoes on. Poor Mika was forced to carry more than she wanted, so I could carry Marika to the car. She ended up walking the last 20 feet to the car (I couldn't carry her comfortably).

And then we got home (do you get the sense that things didn't improve?).

When I stepped outside for 2 minutes and returned, I was puzzled as to why the girls didn't come running to see the last Berenstain episode on a DVD that I had promised them. When Mika finally showed up, I discovered (much to my horror and dismay) that she had snuck a fruit roll-up out of the pantry (I was about to make dinner!) and had a mouthful. Sensing my utter disapproval (that is an understatement), she defensively claimed, "I only ate a little! Marika gave it to me!"

Ah yes - she's one of those. If she's going down, everybody's going down with her!

Marika finally surfaced (pretending to be all innocent) and that's when I found all the snacks they had stolen from the pantry! Fruit roll-ups! Chocolate panda treats (we call them Scooby Snacks)! All (poorly) hidden behind the living room sofa!

Oh, I was not happy. I was relieved, though, that when confronted on the phone by Daddy Dude about whether or not they had been "good", each confessed to their sins. When they told Daddy Dude which privileges had been revoked and Daddy Dude says, "well, that's sounds about right," they accepted their punishment in silence.

*sigh*

Shhhhhh!

I can't even remember the last time the kids both took a nap, much less together! Don't they look so sweet? I had them watch a DVD about how a letter gets delivered (the postmaster was kind enough to lend it to me) - I really enjoyed it (truly, it's an amazing and efficient process!) but I guess the girls were pretty pooped from the day already... I think I might go take a nap myself now... *yawn*

The rest of the day...

Play ball! Today was Mika's 6th softball game... every game, she gets better and better!
In the picture on the left, she had just crossed home plate and was coming back to the bench to sit down. She also got to play catcher again and did a good job covering the plate. When she was pitcher, she actually made two outs at home plate! We were so proud of her! Go, Mika!

Somebody was tired and missed most of the excitement...

At the end of the game, we passed out cupcakes to the girls. There was enough for each team player, plus the coachs' kids. Marika (see left), didn't get a cupcake (but don't feel sorry for her - she ate one at Mika's school earlier, remember?). So I let Marika have the loose sprinkles at the bottom of the pan. She was determined to get every last bit of "stuff" in there - sprinkles and icing tidbits. I couldn't snatch the pan away from her - and I'd never seen her run so fast either, trying to keep up with me as I kept trying to pull the pan away!

Afterwards, we went to Mickey D's (Mika's choice) to celebrate her birthday (for the last time!), followed by a trip to the store to get birthday balloons (they didn't draw on them this time!), and finally - to Cold Stone Creamery.

Whew! I don't know about you, but I'm a little birthday-ed out! We made 2 batches of cupcakes yesterday for all the festivities today. I don't think I want to see another pink cupcake again for a LONG TIME...