Tonight, after calling to verify that it was still taking place, we bundled up and headed to Dow Gardens for their Christmas walk. I think this is an annual event, but, as with the Santa Parade, we often forget to go to or are completely unaware of these things. There are so many things going on in our town this weekend and I wish we could do them all, but alas, time and money are in short supply. We have to miss out on The Nutcracker, but we made it to the Christmas Walk.

It was really very nice. There were light displays. They had luminaries set up along the path that they wanted us to follow. Many of the trees were decorated. There was an area of "stars," luminaries in one of the open areas sponsored by the Hospice. There were choirs, standing out in the cold, performing and sax and keyboard duo performing in the conservatory (two men from our church...didn't know they were playing until we walked in! Bill is behind all the greenery). It was very, very cold, but with the barn open as a warming area, where they were selling cookies for $.50 and hot chocolate for $1, and the opportunity to listen to the music in the conservatory, it wasn't too bad.

And since it was so cold, it meant our crazy trip to the mall was well worth it. After being at Dow Gardens for over an hour, Alison was still ready (read warm enough) to come home and play outside for almost another half an hour while I got supper ready.

We were supposed to be getting a pretty bad winter storm today. Last night, we had sleet, ice, and snow. This morning it was more of the same. The forecast was calling for the sleet/ice to change over to all snow later in the morning. It was also calling for snow to accumulate an inch an hour, 2 inches in some places, with a total accumulation of up to 9 inches. Schools all over the place were closed. (Alison has got to be the only kid on the planet that's disappointed when there's a snow day.)

Well, it didn't happen.

To be fair, the roads were pretty bad this morning. I know this because I was out driving on them. The car needed a little extra oomph to make it over the pile of slush at the end of our road and I did a little fish tail as I was making the turn. Why was I out driving in that crap? Because I waited until there was actually a snow storm (or a least the threat of one) to go out and get Alison's snow clothes. The good news is that, even though I couldn't find a coat/snowpants set, I was able to find snow pants and a coat that match fairly well, so risking life and limb wasn't all for nothing. At least I didn't have to try and find boots....I bought those in October. :)

Anyway, I thought that it would be better to go early this morning since we were expecting all this snow and the roads would certainly be horrible if I waited until this afternoon.

Wrong!

Well, at least we made it to the mall and home in one piece -- which is more than I can say for the car in the ditch that we passed on the way home -- and Alison was set to play in the little bit of snow we did get,

Boy, the things you learn at preschool.

Yesterday I learned that bears do not poop when they hibernate. They do, however, poop a lot as soon as they wake up. That's how you know that the bears are awake....if you were looking you would find lots of bear poop.

I guess it's pretty apparent that yesterday was my day to co-op in Alison's class. They were talking about bears. The good news is that Alison wasn't really paying attention to that part of the discussion. :)

The Christmas season has begun.

I think I'm in pretty good shape. A third of the Christmas presents are bought, wrapped and, soon, on their way to their recipients. Another third of the Christmas presents are bought, but not wrapped or on their way yet. And the other third of the present? Well, some are bought but none are wrapped. Fortunately, they don't have to be mailed, so I'm not on as tight a deadline. :)

We weren't home to take advantage of the gorgeous weather this weekend, so Kevin is taking a day off this week, probably tomorrow, to put up the outside lights. He'll probably get the tree down and set up, too, and we'll decorate it later. I put up two wreaths yesterday. On Friday, I'll hang up the candy tree that I got from my mom over the weekend. It's a relic from my youth and Alison is old enough to enjoy it. I have to replace one of the pieces of yarn because it's still tied in a bow and is stuck that way from some old candy, but otherwise it's in pretty good shape for having been packed away in the basement for probably 20 years.....can't remember how old I was when we stopped using it.

And Christmas baking has begun. We make a lot of cookies here at Christmastime. We do about 7 different kinds and most are double batches, so there are cookies everywhere. We do send a lot of them to our neice and nephews, so that cuts down on the amount that we're actually eating here. :) Yesterday afternoon my "assistant" and I mixed up the Swiss Cookies and after supper she and daddy put them on the cookie sheets and decorated them. They turned out pretty well, and taste great (I broke one, so of course we had to eat it!). Today, Raspberry Thumbprints are on the agenda. I'm hoping to a different kind every day so that we can get them and the present in the mail by the middle of next week. We'll see how that goes.

If all goes according to plan, we will be ready for Christmas in plenty of time to enjoy the season and not be rushing around like crazy people a week before the big day.

One year ago, at 10:04 AM, you were born. Four hours and 50 minutes later, you were gone. But you will never be forgotten.


Happy Birthday Matthew.

This morning was our town's annual Santa Parade. Now, we have lived here for 12 years but, for whatever reason, we have never gone to the Santa Parade. Alison has decided that she likes parades again --as long as she is wearing her big earmuff ear protection-- so we decided that we were going to go this year. Since it was on the parade route, we decided to play it smart and park in the Kroger/Rite Aid parking lot and found a nice spot to sit right across the street. We weren't even thinking that there might be candy for the kids, so we weren't exactly prepared in that regard. If I had been thinking, I would have run into the store real quick before the parade got to us and bought something so that Alison would have had a bag for candy. It really didn't matter that much, though. We did have her backpack with us (and it's a good thing, because right after the parade started she had to go to the bathroom...so we circled up the chairs and pulled out the little potty and the crisis was averted) so she would just pick up whatever candy she could get and throw it in her backpack. Alison's friends from dance class were going to be in the parade with their preschool's float, so we were on the lookout for them. As luck would have it, they were on our side of the street so Alison ran out say hi and give hugs. There were some really creative floats, several equestrian teams, one of the high school's marching band (we have two high schools in town) and the usual police cars, fire engines and ambulances driving by with sirens blaring every now and then. And bringing up the end of the parade was Santa and his sleigh.

So we had a good time this morning. The weather was pretty good. It was cloudy, but at least it wasn't raining. And it was chilly, but at least it wasn't freezing cold or really windy. I'm glad that we went and we will definitely have go again next year. Alas, we forgot the camera, so we have no pictures. :(

There was one thing that bothered me, though. The whole candy thing just pointed out how rude and greedy some kids can be, and how oblivious their parents are, too. Alison still has enough Halloween candy to last her through Easter, so getting more candy wasn't really a big deal, but as the candy was thrown, the kids on either side would rush to get it and if they could get it all, they would, without even giving Alison, standing there in her braces and clearly having trouble picking up candy off the street, a thought. And their parents never said a word to them. We, on the other hand, are trying not to raise a greedy brat, so when a handful of candy landed in front of Alison, she would pick up a couple of pieces of candy and let the other kids get some, too. A couple of times she even went over and gave the little kid next to us some candy. She gave him her balloon, too, since she really shouldn't be playing with latex balloons

Tonight I am back at home after being gone on a girls' shopping weekend. Two of my friends from church, C -- who is also my neighbor -- and L and L's sister-in-law headed out to Birch Run early yesterday morning to hit the outlet mall there. It was Deer Widow's Weekend, so there were a lot of good deals to be had. One store was giving out coupon packets to the first 1000 people there, a couple of which had $500 vouchers in them. None of us won, but we were glad to have the coupons. We spent the day shopping and just generally having a good time. L's sis-in-law was unable too, but C, L and I were planning to stay overnight and hit the rest of the stores that we didn't have time for yesterday and then go shopping in Frankenmuth today.

We could have shopped well into the evening, and hit all the stores we wanted to last night, but instead we decided to go to a movie. So at around suppertime, we split up with L and her sis-in-law going to hit one more store and then try and get us a table at Applebees and C and I going to the movie theater to buy the tickets so we didn't have to stand in line later. We hit a bit of a snafu when C and I made it to Applebee's before L and her sis-in-law. With a 35-40 minute wait we wouldn't have been able to eat and still make the movie, so L's sis-in-law decided to go ahead and head home and the three of us went to check into our hotel and just hang out and eat some snacks. It was nice to just hang out for a little bit, and then we were off to see "Santa Clause 3." I thought it was a really cute movie....not a waste of money as some can be. There was more funny stuff than what was shown in the trailers, and that's always good. I may have to take Kevin to see it, so he doesn't have to wait until it comes out on video next year. :) After the movie, we finally made it to Applebees. Since we had all just eaten a bunch of popcorn (me less than the other since I managed to spill almost half of mine on L), we decided on appetizers and desserts, rather than a whole meal. Good choice. :)

After staying up late Saturday night, we were up early this morning so we could be one of the first x number of people at Tommy Hilfiger and get whatever coupons and stuff they were giving away. The $5 gift card voucher, which we were really interested in, ended up not being valid until next year, so we couldn't cash them in this morning. How stupid is that!! We still had a good time shopping and by lunchtime were had pretty much hit all the stores we wanted to shop in and we headed off to Frankenmuth to get a chicken dinner.

Now, we only live about 40 minutes away from Frankenmuth, so we could go any time we want to, really, but we never seem to get down there. I think it's fun to look through all the specialty shops down Main Street, and it's always fun to stroll through Bronner's. Frankenmuth is also famous for two restaurants and their chicken dinners (not exactly sure why, but they are) and even though I have lived here for 12 years now, the only time I have ever had a chicken dinner was when my mom and I vacationed in Michigan the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college. So I had one today. And I have to say, it was pretty good.

After lunch we hit the shops on Main Street. None of us really bought too much. In fact, I think we mostly bought little personalized trinkets to give our kids as stocking stuffers. Then we headed off to Bronners. We wandered around in there for about 2 hours. We all picked up things here and there. I got Alison a new Christmas stocking, with her name embroidered on it, since the stocking that she has is very small and with stocking stuffers come from two "Santas," it didn't really hold very much. I had already knocked off most of my shopping list at Birch Run, but I found a couple of more things here, too, leaving me with only 4 of my "have to mail the presents" family members left to buy for. And it's not even Thanksgiving yet. How great is that!!!

After checking out pretty much everything in the store, we decided that it was time to head for home. After taking L home and dropping C off at her house, I was home at about 6:30. Kevin and Alison were at church for UMYF, so I had the house to myself for a while, and that was nice. Alison came running in saying "Mommy, you're home! I missed you!" And that was nice, too.

Now, since "vacation" is over and it's back to the daily grind bright and early tomorrow morning, I'm off to bed.

In other news today....

I went shopping again today. I took Alison shopping yesterday to pick out a Christmas dress because we are getting pictures taken Friday. Then I took a quick tour through the ladies' department to find something for myself. Alison had swimming lessons, so we were running short on time, and I was only able to find a top for me....found some pants that I liked, but had grabbed what I thought were a size 14 and a size 12, only to find that I had grabbed two 14's and they were too big. I had also intended to pick up some "winter" pajamas, since it's cold now and my current pajamas are a cap sleeved top and capri length bottoms, but in my hurry to get us out of the store and on our way to the pool, I forgot about the pajamas.

So I found myself back at the store this morning, after dropping Alison off at school. I picked out some new pj's and then set off in search of the pants. It took some searching, but just when I had resigned myself to trying on a pair of size 10 and knowing they would be too small, I found a 12. That was exactly what I needed. And just to see if I was really a size 12 or if it was just the style of pants, I grabbed a pair of jeans and they fit, too! I haven't worn a size 12 since, approximately, my sophomore year of college.

Oh, I tried on the size 10 pants just for the heck of it and yes, they were too small. But they weren't way, way to small. Keeping in mind that it wasn't that long ago that I wouldn't have been able to get size 10 pants up past my knees, I was able to get the on, waist buttoned and zipper zipped. They were still too tight in the seat, but it was great encouragement to work on losing the 9 pounds I have left to make my goal weight.

Yesterday was election day, and so I took myself and my four year old down to our precinct's poll location and voted. The plan had been for me to plop her in her stroller and walk there, since it is conveniently located at the end of our block, and then she would have been confined and I wouldn't have had to worry about her wandering around (she will still sit nicely in a stroller, believe it or not!). Unfortunately, by the time Alison was up from her nap, a misty rain had started, so we drove instead and didn't use the stroller at all. I was slightly concerned about how it would go, since the parking lot was pretty full when we got there and I didn't know how long we would have to wait, but with a little bag of animal crackers in hand, Alison walked into the building and stood quietly in line until it was my turn to vote. She finished her animal crackers just as we got to the front of the line, but agreed to stand quietly with her hands in her pockets until we were done. She even got a sticker when we were all done.

We used a new voting system this year. In the past we had used punch cards, but in the wake of hanging chads, we now have a large paper ballot where you connect the two parts of the arrow of the candidate or issue that you are voting for. Then the ballot gets fed into a scanner and read that way. At least there is a paper trail in case there is any question about tampering or whatnot.

I'm happy to say that in the statewide races, I voted for the winning candidates, and 3 out of the 5 issues went the way I voted, too. However, most of the rest of the people I voted for didn't win, unless they were running unopposed. That's not really all that surprising, seeing as we live in Republicanville and I'm not a Republican. But at least I voted!

How does a 4 year old putt-putt golf?

If you're my 4 year old, it goes something like this: put the ball down where mommy says, hold the putter so the head is upside down and then take a whack at the ball. The ball will then go about 2 feet down the green. Grab the ball, walk up to the cup and put the ball down next to it. Try to hit the ball into the cup. If it makes it, GREAT! If not, try one more time. If it doesn't make it that time, pick the ball up and drop it in the cup.

Repeat at the next hole.

That's pretty much how she played the whole course last night (except for the hole where I helped her get a hole-in-one, but was unable to get a hole-in-one myself @@). I laughed every time.

In my opinion, when the phone rings before 9:00 in the morning, it's not going to be good news. That definitely proved to be the case when the phone rang at my house at 7:30 this morning. Before I picked up the phone, I thought that maybe it was just my neighbor calling to let me know that she was on her way over to pick up the cookie dough that she'd sold for us at her office, but when I looked at the Caller ID I saw that it was not her number but the number of the grandparents of one of Alison's classmates. Oh joy! There are only two reasons for calling that early on a school day. One is that the school is closed for weather related reasons, and cold and cloudy is not going to close the school. The other is that they need someone to co-op for them.

Now, if they had called yesterday, I could have just pretended that I wasn't home, let the machine pick up, and hope that they found someone else before I "got the message." But that's not something I could really do at 7:30 in the morning. So I answered the phone, and yes, Classmate was sick and they needed someone to co-op. I had just gone on the field trip on Monday and worked my scheduled co-op day on Wednesday, and I really didn't want to work again today, but, since I didn't have anything else planned -- other than finishing up the newsletter -- I felt guilty about saying no. So I went to school again this morning.

The good news is that the kids weren't quite as crazy as the were on Wednesday. But it was still an eventful day. One little girl cried when her mom left and wanted no part of getting her picture taken (it was picture day today). Then in the middle of our "work" period, the fire alarm went off. We had just been told in our class meeting Tuesday night that they were going to have another fire drill soon, but this wasn't it. A couple of ladies from the church office came out to see if we needed any help, since no one knew what was going on and they had to evacuate, too. You know it's not good when even the head maintenance guy doesn't know what's going on. It turns out that everything was fine...there's some construction going on in the church and one of the workers somehow accidentally set the alarm off.

I'm so glad that tomorrow is Saturday. Kevin will be home and I am planning to abdicate my authority to him for the day so I can take care of the things I need to do. I'm not dealing with anything that doesn't involve blood or serious bodily injury.

Thank goodness today is Wednesday. That means it will soon be Saturday. And although Saturday is a day that we tend to catch up on things around the house, at least I don't have to worry about getting my child up and out the door for whatever activity we have for the day. And Saturday is the day that I can sleep in!

Today was a school day. And it was a crazy school day. It was my co-op day, and generally I like being in the classroom. Today started out bad and stayed bad. I got to church and there were no parking spaces available in the church parking lot or on the streets surrounding the church. Fortunately there were a couple of non-permit spaces in the city lot, so I quickly took one of those. The reason for the lack of parking spaces? A rummage sale at church. Also on the agenda today, pictures for our 3 year old class and, to make things nice and confusing, it was fundraiser pick-up day. There were people all over the place. There were fundraising committee members in and out of the classroom, talking to the teacher, talking to me. It was quite chaotic.

And the kids must have been picking up on the chaos, because they were crazy! The teacher said it was like the first week of school all over again. They were having a lot of trouble following directions. They were having a hard time being quiet when it was time to be quiet. They were having a hard time listening. They were having a hard time sitting still. It made for an exhausting morning. Hopefully everything will calm down on Friday otherwise picture day is going to be quite exasperating for the photographer.

Since I brought my cookie dough home after our class meeting last night, I was able to run home, get Alison out of her twisters an into her regular shoes, grab my camera and the books belonging to Alison's friend and get us on our way to Wendy's for lunch with our friends from dance class pretty much on time. From there we headed to Chippewa Nature Center for the afternoon. We had never been there, and it was a lot of fun.
We hiked to the Homstead and visited with (and fed) some pigs, chickens, and cows. We checked out the school house and the sugar house. Alison also got to experience the outhouse. We went back to the visitor center and checked out all the exhibits they had there. There's a lot of hands on stuff for the kids, and ours all had a very good time. Alison's preschool class will be going to the Nature Center for a field trip at the end of November, and I know that Alison will be looking forward to it, now.

It made for a very long day. Alison did take a nap when she got home, even though she said she was just going to rest with her eyes open. But she's still going to bed early tonight. And I think I will probably be going to bed early, too!

As of today, I have officially lost all my baby weight from last year. I've been within 5 pounds of it since April and kept gaining an losing the same 3 pounds all summer, but I finally got myself in gear and got to work and hit my goal. Now that I've done that, it's on to the next, and final goal....only 11 more pounds to go.

And in other news, it's October 12, and it's snowing to beat the band right now.
Seriously. If this keeps up, all the leaves that just started coming down last week will be buried in snow. It's not snow that's going to last past today, but still..... snow on October 12? We could be in for a long winter.

It's a good thing that my mom bought Alison a new winter coat at the end of the season last year or we would have been in trouble this morning when it was 29 degrees when it was time to leave for physical therapy.

Right now, my daughter is out in the middle of the backyard, sitting on a chair that is sitting in a wheelbarrow (daddy is standing right next to her), with a bucket containing a worm at her feet and with a stick in her hand. She's fishing. The wheelbarrow is her boat. She also has a little plastic shovel and a little plastic rake that are her oars.

This morning, we made cookies. Again, they were chocolate chocolate chip....Alison new favorite, I guess. As I was mixing in the chips, Alison was looking in the bowl and she said "that cookie dough looks like poop." Gee, isn't that an appetizing thought? The sad thing is, later on I noticed that she had something on her pant leg and since Kevin was closer to her I asked him to check it out, saying it was either cookie dough......or poop.

I had promised myself that I would try to blog more often, and yet time has gotten away from me again. It's been an adjustment to get used to the new school schedule, but we're getting there. Alison loves school. She get so excited when it's a school day. And she gets excited when it's swimming lesson day. And she gets excited when it's PT and dance class day. I guess you could say she's excited just about every day. :)

I'm getting used to having free time on school days (at least the days that I'm not co-oping). I've been trying to use that free time to exercise...either running, when the weather permits, or doing an exercise video. I was doing really well for the first few weeks and then ended up with a cold, or something, and got out of the habit for a week or so. So now I'm struggling to get back in the groove. But I'm getting there.

We've been pretty busy the last couple of weekends and I'm looking forward to a break. Two weeks ago we had a pot luck at church for our couples group. It was a huge success. It was our first meeting of the year and we doubled the size of our group. Hopefully the new couples will keep coming. We had church and UMYF the next day, and for Alison it seemed like she was at church every day that week.

Last weekend we helped out at a pancake breakfast benefit for our friend Dylan on Saturday. He's three years old and has leukemia. It was a long day, but we raised a good amount of money for him. The best news is that he was healthy enough to be there, running around and playing with the kids of the other volunteers. On Sunday, was the annual CROP Walk. We were the only middle school UMYF counselors that could be there that day, so that meant Alison had to be there, too. We decided to make it worth her while this year. We signed her up as a walker and got to work raising money -- figuring the people we knew would be more willing to donate to a (disabled) 4 year old than to either one of us -- in an effort to get enough to get her a t-shirt. Between people in the neighborhood and online contributions from out-of-town family and friends, she raised $165. That was enough for a t-shirt and a pin.

This weekend, we have nothing specific on our agenda. I am so glad. :) I'm looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning, especially since Alison hasn't been sleeping well for the last couple of nights. Wednesday night we had some really bad thunderstorms, which, of course, woke her up (but not until about half an hour after they woke me up -- I laid there awake, waiting for her to wake up and was just about back to sleep when she did end up waking up). Last night a bad dream woke her up. And when she wakes up, I wake up. She has been taking great naps, but I haven't had that luxury. I've been forcing myself to stay awake so that I won't be wide awake until all hours of the night. So I'm tired. And it doesn't help that I'm sitting here in a recliner, in the very warm sun. I guess I should get up and go do something worthwhile, or I'll be asleep before I know it!

It was a first! Alison sat through an entire fireworks display, only cried a couple of times and actually enjoyed large parts of it!!

Kevin's company picnic and awards ceremony was last night. It was fun. They had a moon walk and a huge bouncy slide set up for the kids, and both were a big hit. Clowns were on hand to paint faces and make balloon animals. Alison couldn't have the balloons, though she really, really wanted them, but she did get her face painted. She usually chooses to have a cat face, but last night she picked a mask. It turned out really well, and even inspired a couple of other mask requests. She spent a little time in the moon walk and got to go down the slide several times before we ate, and then she got to do them both again after dinner. Once she got her earmuffs on (we had brought them to wear for the fireworks) so that the really loud sound system didn't bother her as much, Alison sat nicely and listened to the awards presentations with. Figuring that he wasn't going to get a Continuous Improvement award, Kevin sent Alison and I off to the bathroom so we would have that taken care of before the fireworks. We came back to find him holding his grand prize plaque. We missed it!

Then it was time for the fireworks. I had parked close to the tent so we wouldn't have too far to go in case we needed to make a quick getaway. We pulled out the chairs and sat down just as the show began. Alison whined and carried on a little, but didn't beg to go home, as she has in the past. She didn't seem to like the ones that went up high and exploded into a lot of color. But she did like the low launched ones that were more noise and flashing than anything else. During one round of that she sat up and stared, shouting out to me "I love those!" Go figure! That was what I thought was going to upset her the most! She talked about the fireworks the whole way home, telling me how much she loved them. "I've never, ever seen fireworks like that before!!" Well, that's right....you've always been too afraid to stay and watch them before.

We are definitely getting our money's worth out of those big earmuffs! So far they've been to a parade, to the movies, and to the fireworks.

Well, we finished the first full week of our new fall schedule. I think we survived! It's been a little strange for me, in some ways. In others, it's the same old stuff. I'm used to carting Alison off to swimming lessons, dance class and PT. I'm not used to dropping her off at preschool and coming home to a (blissfully?) quiet house for almost 2 hours. But I'm getting used to it fast!!

Alison is loving all her new activities. Her swimming class is just her and one other little boy, who happens to be her buddy that lives behind us. They are having a good time. PT is PT, not to much you can say about that. But she seems to have settled back into it a little better. She still has her moments where she tries to run off and do whatever happens to catch her eye, rather than what she's supposed to be doing, but she's getting a lot better a getting down to business and doing her work. Maybe that's because she gets to do a little bit of yoga if there's time left after doing all her work. As far as dance class, I think she's missing her two buddies that had been in her class since the beginning of the year. They are in school on Tuesday and Thursday, and Alison is in school on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so they're in a different class. But she's having fun.

Alison's preschool is a co-op, and I got to help out in her class today. It was fun. I had no idea what I was doing, and told the aid that I would be much better at it next time, but I think I did ok. I'm not sure how much attention to give Alison while I'm there.....is it ok for her to be sitting on my lap during the class meeting for instance? I'll have plenty of chances to get it all figured out. And it looks like Alison is going to give her teacher a run for her money this year. Wednesday she accomplished a first in the 20 years her teacher has been teaching. Alison took all the dishes and the "sink" out of the sink base in the play kithen area, climbed into the cabinet and then stuck her head up through the hole where the sink was supposed to be. That's my girl! @@ Today, as she was running across the room, her teacher asked me if she ever walks. Nope....she has two speeds -- fast and faster.

Tonight, we're off to Kevin's company picnic. It should be a fun time. They have a moonwalk and a giant slide for the kids, and face painting, too. We get some fairly good food, as catered food goes. The employees get their awards. And the night is capped off with a fireworks display. We have not been able to stay for the fireworks for the past two years. Alison has freaked out at the first shot. We're going to give it a try again tonight. She's not quite as skitish about loud noises as she has been and we're going armed with earmuffs and ear plugs, so maybe it will be ok this year. We'll see.

Tomorrow night, we're planning to go to the Balloon Festival -- hot air balloons, that is. We've never been before, but we've seen the balloons. They whooshed over our house one year and scared me half to death, as a matter of fact. Alison always get so excited whenever she sees a hot air balloon, so I think she'll have fun. At least I hope she will.

I ended up on the bad mommy couch this morning. I made a promise and I couldn't keep it, and I hate to do that.

Yesterday Alison wanted to have some birthday cake. Since it was pretty close to dinner time, I told her she couldn't have it right then, but she could have a piece for dessert. After dinner, she said she wanted a special dessert and I told Kevin that she was allowed to have a piece of cake. At that point, she changed her mind on the cake and said she wanted a cookie. No problem, I thought, since she still had a piece of the dancing bear cookies that we made for a birthday treat for dance class. But that was not what she wanted either. She wanted a chocolate chip cookie out of the "cooker guy" (also known as the Pillsbury Dough Boy -- we have Pillsbury Dough Boy cookie jar). Now we had a problem. There haven't been any chocolate chip cookies in the "cooker guy" for about 3 months. But she was adamant that she wanted a chocolate chip cookie. I knew that we didn't have any chocolate chips, so I promised that we would go to the store and buy some this morning and then make chocolate chocolate chip cookies.

And that's what we did.

When we got home from the store and she immediately pushed her cooking chair into the kitchen, from the dining room. We had the butter and shortening in the mixing bowl and were rounding up the rest of the ingredients when I realized that we were a lot lower on brown sugar than I realized and we didn't have enough for the cookies. We were also now very short on time, and couldn't make it to the store and back and still have time to make cookies before it was time for lunch. Alison was pretty disappointed, because she loves to help me bake.

So that's how I ended up on the bad mommy couch. But this afternoon I will be back in Alison's good graces. Since Kevin comes home for lunch every day, we called and asked him to run by the store on his way home. Alison and I went ahead and measured out most of the rest of the dry ingredients, and they are ready and waiting for us when she gets up from her nap. the "cooker guy" will be full by dinner time, and Alison will be able to have a special dessert.

And I have learned to doublecheck and make sure I have all the ingredients I need before I go to the store!

I've got a bunch of half finished blog entries just waiting to be finished and posted which I hope to do sometime before the summer is over -- I get started then get interrupted and don't get back to finishing them -- but I wanted to get this written down right away.

My daughter cannot keep a secret!!!


Yesterday was Kevin's birthday. Saturday we took him shopping so he could use up a gift card he had gotten from his mother for Father's Day. (Yes, he's 37 years old and still needs someone to help pick out his clothes!) Alison and I took a detour through the pajama department, while he went off to browse through the shirts, and picked out a pair of short sleeve/short pant pj's for a birthday present. I managed to get them purchased and home without her telling what we bought. Yesterday morning, after I reminded her, she ran off to tell Kevin happy birthday and this is what I hear: "Happy Birthday Daddy!! We bought you some pajamas!!" At that point, I decided not to even bother wrapping said pajamas and just taped the shopping bag closed and gave them to him that way.

I did not have time to make a Mississippi Mud Pie for the acutal birthday, so I planned to make one today. We went shopping for a few ingredients that I needed this morning and I told her not to tell daddy what we were doing. Kevin got home from work, and was sniffing around (hard to mask the smell of chocolate baking) and Alison pops out "we made you a cake!"

She was very upset when she realized she ruined the surprise. But she'll learn how to keep a secret one day. (I hope!)

A couple of months ago, while at Home Depot, I saw some inexpensive seed kits. They came in an aluminum bucket and had the dirt, the seeds, and a couple of small digging tools. We had the choice of sunflowers or tomatoes, and we got one of each. I thought it would be a fun "project" for Alison and I. I put them into the coat closet until it was warm enough to be able to sit the buckets out on the deck. That time came last week. We dumped in the dirt, buried the seeds and tried to keep them watered but not drowned. Today, while trying to water but not drown, I noticed that we have sunflowers!! There are at least four little plants shooting up, maybe five. Nothing's happening in the tomato bucket yet, and I'm not sure whether they are going to make it or not, but we'll keep an eye on them. Alison is pretty excited about her new flowers. Heck, so am I. :)