Quotes of the day

"Mom! I finally met a friend who likes pandas and penguins!" -- Winnie

Lizzie during parents viewing of gymnastics class. She does a flip on the pommel, lands on her back on the big cushy mat, looks over to the bleachers at me and says, "You forgot to pack snacks today."

Frances wants to know what we are doing with her snack tray

Snack tray, aka -- our kitchen floor, and not just the food which gets dropped there, but the actual flooring seemed to appeal to our dear dog.

A common scene in our home:

Rich: "What does the dog have in her mouth?"
Me -- peeling back the lips and prying open the dangerous jaws of the beast -- "The kitchen floor."

It was time, my friends -- time.

Naturally, once we began the flooring project and all was going swimmingly -- Rich went in the laundry room for something and noticed a bunch of water on the floor.

...Upon investigation, it was the air conditioning unit and water was everywhere, including having seeped into the closet on the other side of the wall (I knew I was smelling funkiness!). The closet is carpeted, so everything had to come out. The room with the exploded mess was in-law clean just a couple hours prior to that shot.

Luckily, we found the issue -- it was ants blocking the overflow tube. That project took precious flooring time away, but we made up for it the next day before we left for our anniversary weekend. I was happy to sacrifice the play time -- actually, putting in flooring is playtime for me -- with each board lain, less and less of that ugly, stained, crappy one could be seen. Sometimes beauty=happy.

happy

Note to TTQ -- that vacuum cleaner is pink! It's the breast cancer edition and I feel just like I'm playing with a grown up Barbie toy when I use it (hey, I take all the thrills I can get -- fuckin housework).

A decade of madness and bliss

Saturday was our 10 year anniversary. Even though all I wanted for Valentine's day was a divorce, we have made it another year!

I can honestly say that I'm glad we did, and not just for the kids.

I wish we were filthy stinkin' rich and could go to a spa getaway at least once a month. Once again I say, we play so well together when there are no outside distractions -- it's very easy to see why we fell in love and why we work. Date nights aren't bad, but give us an entire night and day away from it all and, you know -- niiiiiice.

For our anniversary we went to Kohler Wisconsin, where sinks, baths and every kind of fine water fixture are made. This, my friends, is a destination for preppies. I really felt I was on the set of John Hues film (there was even a Ferrari getting valet parked -- perfect). There were people with accents and they were not even faking, dahling. One really got the sense that somewhere close by some girl from the wrong side of the tracks was being dry humped in some condescending fashion by some over privileged rich kid who never learned his manners.

There was more than a little bit of money floating around this place and even though we showed up grossly under dressed, we were treated like a million bucks at every encounter. We had the anniversary package that included a regular room, but we were upgraded to one of the 9 Governor's suites ($855 a night if we had not gotten the free upgrade based on availability with the anniversary package). The suite was a mid grade room -- fancy, yes, but for more shine, less historic, one would need to stay at the carriage house.

As for the history, once upon a time the place was built to provide housing for migrant workers. It was built by someone who cared, thus it is very nice and the grounds are to die for. The little card in the desk explained that it was built in Tudor style and I instantly thought of Kay and how she would love that little factoid.

Random: I posted two pictures of the bed -- one is as we arrived and the next is how it looked after turn down service where they turn your bed down, put on relaxing music and leave the chocolates for you, mmmmm. I love how they stood the pillows up like that -- so happy. We actually missed turn down service because we forgot to take the do not disturb sign off the door when we went to dinner. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was when Rich read the 'sorry we missed you' card and how he needed to have that turn down service. It was a little thing that I never would have thought twice about missing, but Rich called housekeeping and got his service -- I'm not sure why, but I found it incredibly endearing.

As for me and my man, it is Tuesday and we are both still very very soft from our day at the spa where we were massaged, exfoliated and lotioned up. I took a very nice nap in the waterfall area where I drifted in and out of sleep and had all kinds of wonderful audio hallucinations -- I'd be almost asleep and trumpeting mariachi's would bring me back to full consciousness -- where upon I would think, that was kind of strange and delightful -- then the whole thing would happen all over again. I don't particularly like mariachi bands, but these were sans guitar and quite good.

We ate well, window shopped, walked the gardens and packed a whole lot of fun and relaxation into a day and a half and I'm not even including the full weekend we put in before we left on Saturday (more on that next post).

What a great weekend.

Here's to another year -- love you Richy.

This is not as fun as you said it would be

She's into Indiana Jones

Winnie (and Lizzie) have connected with their brother via the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. Anytime it's a movie night, discussion between them revolves around which episode and/or behind the scenes do they want to watch.

It's to the point where Winnie will see some stranger in public and say, "Oh, he looks just like so and so." I will say, "Who is so and so?"

"He's the guy who wrote and conducted the score for episode five (V)."

"Oh."

On such movie nights, the kids usually fall asleep while watching and I'll come down some time in the night to shut everything down (usually not before hours worth of theme song sound bites have burned into their sleeping brains).

Last night was a movie night and it was no surprise that they were all watching one of the Indiana Jones movies while Rich and I were upstairs watching the last disc for season one of Scrubs. When I checked on the kids Frankie and Lizzie had fallen out, but Winnie was awake and the movie was over, I saw her putting it away and searching for what to watch next. Well, when I went down later guess what she had picked?

Care Bears Bedtime!

When you consider the fact that time will not obey my commands to slow down and my new born baby just turned 9 this June...I wanted to surround her with stuffed animals and curl up next to her indefinitely.

...That's right baby, you watch those soft little, rainbow riding Care Bears till your 90 if you want.