Bad Intern...

Bad intern at the office.
Please note the Nerf gun target set up behind her and the  bored indifference to her complete lack of productivity. 

Rosie was a little bit sick yesterday so she went to the office so that she could cough on only her dad, instead of a class of kindergarteners and their wonderful and still healthy teachers.

(Thankfully, Karl does not share an office so there was no chance of infecting coworkers) 

She was bored by her new position as the youngest architect intern and not afraid to show it. 

Rosie spent most of the morning planning where she would go to lunch and settled on Skyline, for many reasons, one of the primary ones being that Skyline hosts a gum ball machine that dispenses tattoos. 

(I know... pretty cool, right?) 

After their lovely Skyline lunch, the patient and kind architect and his the opinionated little intern walked across the street to the toy store to buy a hula hoop. 

Usually Karl's lunches don't involve tattoos and hula hoops, but taking care of Rosie often involves special features that are hard to predict. 

When I arrived home, I asked her how her day with her dad went and she said…

"I thought going to the office would be more fun, architecting is so boring. I want to go back to school."

Then she teared up and continued... "I love school, I miss my friends, I don't want to go to work anymore." 

Which is very likely, the exact same thing that I imagine a lot of other not quite as young interns are saying right now. 

While Karl was hosting Rosie at work, I was in Charlotte visiting Anna.

I bought her a gardenia for her patio on a whim and then of course made her pose in the farmers market parking lot with her pretty little tree.

In three weeks Anna will be a college graduate.

And yes the crazy fact that I will have a college graduate and a kindergartener is not lost on me, but these two bookends make it worth the insanity. 

Brand New Smile :-)

Epic day in the life of my favorite 13 year old.

After two years of braces, Lily was released from her hardware and into a brand new smile.

Here she is on this rainy Thursday before going into our favorite orthodontist…

(http://www.drgracekerr.com)

And here is Lily's big reveal!

She is celebrating at the popcorn store where she bought and inhaled a bag of M&M sprinkled kettle corn without the fear of kernels getting stuck in the brackets and bands.   

It has been years since she could fully enjoy her favorite snack and she has been planning the sequence of events that would happen on this big day.

Her first stop following the orthodontist was to go to Patty's Popcorn Store…home of the most delicious popcorn ever. 

I know that not every neighborhood hosts and then boasts of their their very own popcorn store… we are very lucky that we can, and so we do.

Patty's Popcorn Shop is really a terrific spot, right around the corner from the orthodontist and the very best place for any middle schooler to test out a new cute smile.

http://pattyspopcorn.com 

So get your choppers straight and then celebrate at Patty's!

(hmmm...perhaps the nice popcorn store owners could use a jingle writer?)

Smoothie Tuesday….its a thing.

I have learned that if you do something twice, and your family likes it… it is destined to become a thing.
I went searching for something fun and breakfasty that might get my tribe up and moving a little easier, and landed on smoothies.
On two Tuesday mornings in a row.
So now Smoothie Tuesday is a thing of vital importance that must happen or the order of the universe might be disrupted.
And because I am more proud of my Tuesday morning smoothies then I should be, I found myself artfully photographing them from several different angles at a few minutes before seven this morning.
And now I find myself writing about them to a point of pride and broadcasting it…
 to some who know me and some who don't. 

It turns out that our breakfast was much better at being artfully photographed then my kids…there was far too much morning grumpiness in the kitchen to allow for a non hostile photograph of my darlings enjoying their fabulous smoothies.
I didn't even try.
However, because Henry had cute stylish hair for the school play, he did consent to a single photo before he caught the bus.
Here is the Tuesday morning version of Henry G.
Warning…there has been some chatter of Waffle Wednesday, so there is a chance that there are more breakfast posts to come.
Have a great week.

Coming Out of Winter

Our Mary has survived her first Chicago winter.

She rode the Megabus home for spring break and was quite happy to find Cincinnati temps in the 30's and 40's. Which was a happy surprise…because she has reported that 30 has become her new 50. 

Mary loves almost everything about her new city, and she even remained positive about the tough winter weather in a brave little pioneer sort of way until about the end of February. 

Then all of the snow and sub zero temperatures caught up to her and she admitted that she was exhausted by living in the polar vortex that Chicago had become. 

I shared with my mom that Mary was getting pretty sad about life in the snowpocolypse and because she is a kind and artistic Grandma, she painted this portrait for her frozen grand girl.

Here is Mary, shown as a hibernating woodland creature Coming Out of Winter with a big grin. 

It's a wonderful work of art painted with great love... an awesome tribute to her first winter away from home.

Jamie's Run for Jake's Heart.

Jamie ran his own heart out yesterday in honor of Jake's awesome new heart. 

(amazing finish line photo by Leigh Taylor) 

Jamie and his buddy Kendall ran under cold and windy skies yesterday in the heart mini marathon kids run and had a most excellent time. 

Ok… while he mostly enjoyed the morning, he did require some recovery time immediately following his big sprint home finish. 

This is what you look like when you leave everything you've got, in the home stretch. 

Jamie needed his dad to guard his exhausted self from being run over as he regained his wind. 

I'm sure that he would offer the same kindness for his Pop if Karl is ever in need of a post race body guard…but lets hope that doesn't happen anytime soon.

After he regained composure, Jamie and Kendall proudly picked up their medals and posed in a freezing cold wind tunnel... aka 6th Street.  

Jamie was recognized on the course as a Thousandaire.
This means that he raised over a thousand dollars in honor of young Jake Taylor for the American Heart Association. 

Which is completely awesome and proves that his mom has super generous friends that will happily support my kid when he does something good for another kid. 

Thank you friends.  

Singin' the Tooth Fairy Blues.

Rosie is singing the No Money Under My Pillow blues.

The tooth fairy didn't show.

I think this is what happened...Rosie lost her tooth very early on Sunday morning, the very morning that we were all supposed to robustly SPRING FORWARD into daylight saving time. It was still very early on this first day of the new time, when Rosie put the tooth in a baggie and under her pillow to be whisked away and replaced. But then it was a long Sunday and a lot of stuff happened and the fairy got pretty distracted. 

And sadly, at the end of the day, the lonely tooth under the pillow was forgotten. 

While I hate to make excuses for irresponsibility, I imagine the slightly overwhelmed and maybe a little bit cranky fairy, got confused by the time difference and merely forgot to fly into Rosie's room and take her cute little tooth off to help in the building of the castles of Toothopia.

And while Rosie woke up disappointed, she will likely forgive her tomorrow morning, but only if that irresponsible fairy types a decent note of apology in teeny tiny curly Q font and also bribes her with a cool fiver.

Dear winter, GO AWAY!

Ok… it's March 3rd and we had yet another day of snow.

 We have burned through all of our snow days and have moved onto calamity days, which is super scary for parents because it means that instead of merely getting through snow days, we are asked to make sure that our kids are productive during their day away from school. 

And because the schools know that productivity on a snow day does not come easily, we are also asked to prove it by sending back evidence in the form of papers, projects and work sheets. These are called Blizzard Bags…a deceptively cute name. 

My kids have become complete snow day slackers and the thought of making them sit down and be productive sounds like the very definition of a calamity itself. 

Happily though, this morning we were blessed with a two hour delay and I joyously sent them off to school although they displayed much despair over the "total unfairness" of having to go when other schools were cancelled.

Super tragic.  

So now in hopes that winter will take the hint, I will say good bye.  

You have been here too long and worn out your welcome.
Go away now please.

You are giving my kids the wrong idea…you have become a bad friend. One that stays too long and doesn't know when to go home. 

The kids need to go to school and get smarter, but when you are here, school becomes something that may or may not happen…which just isn't cool. 

So I am posting these photos of some of our good times together as I bid farewell... I would much rather remember the good times we had together instead of the grumpy Monday snowy mornings of 2014.  

                             A fun and sunny afternoon of sledding at the gorgoeus Observatory. 

Knowing every song and lyric to the Frozen soundtrack and singing them with gusto and friends on the snowy hilltop. 

The boys taught themselves to snowboard and didn't get injured in the process.

Jamie even smiled after some monster sledding wipe outs. 

I am especially fond of this photo because Rosie is a part of it. 

She was being beligerant the entire day and would not cooperate in having her picture taken. So I was pleased and grateful to her manipulative big brothers when they told her "it's fine with us if you don't want to be in the picture, everyone will just think that you had to stay at home because you were too little and babyish to go down the big hill." 

Of course this worked… and even though she is doing her weird pirate smile, now the world will know that Rosie was big enough to sled down the big hill during this long and snowy winter. 

Ok Winter, you've heard me, now go away, take your SNOW and GO…you've been here far too long.