Longest week ever. Just thought it would be good to jot down a quick Friday Love since I haven’t done so in quite some time.

Here is what there is to Love on this lovely Friday:

• Daddy comes home. Tonight. Top of the list because it is the one thing that is getting us through this week. We have had meltdown after meltdown, puking sessions, a night of bloody noses and not enough sleep all week…but Daddy comes home tonight and that makes it all right.
• Kitchen cabinets are looking pretty awesome. Of course they still don’t have any doors or any drawers – but I love the difference it has made in our kitchen. It feels new and a little more modern and sooooo much cleaner. I picked out a pretty green-blue for the walls too. It is just a bit darker than the green outline in our tile. I’m very happy with the decision to not do the cabinets in that green now. I really do think that the neutral cabinets will let us play with the rest of the kitchen color for many years to come…and Lord knows I do not want to be painting kitchen cabinets for many years to come!
• Football season starts tomorrow. Go Blue.
  
  
• Mommy rules. I had one of the best parenting moments earlier this week. Our “rule” in the house is that you have to “read the book before you can see the movie.” I always feel like the books are better, and it is a rule I keep for myself, too. When I see a movie that looks good and it was adapted from a book I haven’t read, I will make sure to read it first. So we have been working our way through the Harry Potter books – reading each night with Daddy. Last Friday we finished the 4th book and Emma could barely control her excitement for movie night on Saturday. While we were out walking on Sunday morning she turned to me and said, “You know, Mom? I don’t think the Goblet of Fire movie is really very good. Well, it is good, but I don’t like that it doesn’t have all the good stuff in the book in it. They don’t even talk about Winky or show Dobby. I just think I like the book better.”

  Cue the clouds parting, sunbeam shining down and chorus of angels singing. Ahhhhhh. Yes. Validation. See? Sometimes Mama gets something right.

• Winter whites.
  We also had a discussion this morning about wearing white after Labor Day.
  Em: “Mama? Is it true you can’t wear anything white after Labor Day?”
  Me: “Well not ANY thing. You are not supposed to wear white pants/skirts and shoes. Although I don’t think a lot of people follow that rule any more, especially here since the seasons are not as defined. But you kind of switch out your summer wear for winter wear on Labor Day.”
  Ad: “But you can wear your white shoes on Easter!”
  Me: “Right, that is kind of the start of the spring season, so you get your white shoes back out.”
  Em: “So, no white in winter time.”
  Ad: “RIGHT! Because if you were wearing white…nobody would be able to see you!”

Yeah, took me a minute too. Especially coming from the kid who has barely spent a week in snow!

Hope your Friday is filled with love – and your whole weekend, too! See you next week.

Nothing crafty this week going on except…dum, da, dum, dum, duuuum…the great kitchen cabinet painting project of 2012.

Yes, as is customary when J. leaves us alone for a week, we find a project to keep busy. I’ve been working up the courage to tackle the cabinets for so very long and finally – this is it! Although, I have a sneaky suspicion that there is no way this job is going to be done before J. gets back on Friday. It took me all night just to get cabinet doors and drawers off. We are never going to be one of those cool kitchens with open cabinets…

In fact, I can’t believe I’m showing the whole internets our mess that is usually hidden behind our kitchen cabinets. I cleaned (good ‘ol TSP) and sanded them down today and tomorrow we will tackle priming.

And I think I may have sweet-talked a friend of ours into spraying all of the doors and drawers for us. It may take a few weeks, but that is fine since it will give me some time to clean out our cabinets! 😉

House projects? Crafty projects? Anything less messy happening at your place?

J. is leaving today for London and Tokyo. He will go literally “around the world” in the next 6 days.

Miss you already.
xo

Well, so much for starting the Harry Potter books when Em was 10 or so…and slowly working through them. Like one book per year.

We just finished #4 tonight and the MINUTE Jamie turned the last page there was great discussion about when we could start book #5…and see the fourth movie. (Mama’s rule…have to read the book before you can see the movie.)

Potter mania has overtaken our lil’ girls. Addie, too. Today she didn’t have any homework so she created her own little HP book.

Yeah, I don’t think there will be any holding them off of the last three books….

I can hardly call this “crafty,” since I borrowed the idea from Eat Drink Chic, I copied her ideas (she gives the signs away as download files – but I needed them to say something different…so yes I did model them on hers right down to the very perfect font!), and Em cut most of my signs out for me. BUT, it is the only even close to crafty thing we have done this week. So here goes.

My bestie in Texas gave me the idea for Back-to-School Sundaes and since we started on a Monday this year…we decided to make a party out of it – and so we had Sundaes Sunday.

Yep. Happy customers.

We have a 2nd grader and a 4th grader in the hou-ezz.

Great first days all around. Em is ecstatic that her BFF is in her class and she claims that “Mrs. A. is the NICEST teacher ever!” (Yeah, she DOES say that every year about her new teacher, but this year it is FOR SURE!)

She was thrilled with the little curls we were able to coax from the curlers last night. Although it was as straight as could be when I picked her up from school. Ah well…welcome to my world, kiddo.

Addie’s hair, on the other hand?! Wow…we had a little afro-curls going on.

It was like the curls she had in her toddlerhood so many years ago. She was a little frightened by them, I think. “Um, mom? Do you think we can just put it in a bun or ponytail?”

And so we did.

She had a great day, too. Her BFF is in the other class this year, but her other 2 BFFs (remember when you had 20 best, BEST friends?) are in her class so she is happy.

All in all, a success I think. They were both REALLY ready for bed at 8pm tonight and excited for tomorrow. So yeah, I’d call that a success!

Hey Mom! How many nights before the first day of school did I look like this?

I guess it is now paybacks for all the times I made you put my incredibly STRAIGHT hair into curlers overnight…only to wake up to barely a slight wave, the next day.

But she wants curls for school tomorrow, so we hauled out the sponge curlers again tonight.

And Addie, not to be outdone, requested a few curlers in her hair too…

We’ll see what we get tomorrow morning!

Tonight we celebrated 19 years of being married. The girls came with us to celebrate, and J. called it our famiversary. Nineteen years ago was the start of our family…even if we didn’t know at the time that our family would end up looking like this…

I’ve never doubted that marrying you was the best decision I have ever made. Thank you, my love, for nineteen wonderful years and for helping create the most excellent little family.

All my love – all my days.
xo,
c.

…kind of. I know I missed Crafty Tuesday today, but I’m heading out of town. By myself! Well…me and 3 of my best girlfriends. We are heading to Santa Barbara for a yoga retreat with our fantastic yoga instructor. I can hardly wait, I’m so excited. I leave tomorrow and won’t be back til Sunday. Wishing you all peace and a wonderful week – we’ll see you all soon!

Our favorite way to spend a Monday, in our favorite place, with some of our favorite people.

We were coming off of a kind of rough week, so when the beach beckoned, we just had to say yes. And, it was a really nice way to start our week. But, as you can see Em was still not quite 100%. We had tried to trek to Disney on Saturday, but ended up coming home a few hours later, and Em spent the rest of the weekend camped out on the sofa fighting a fever and fatigue. Poor thing.

And then, of course, we had the finger trauma on Addie’s end. Addie’s index finger vs. the car door. Yes, it is indeed broken and in a splint for a few weeks until we can see the pediatric ortho-surgeon to make sure it is healed properly. Thankfully, it is on her left hand, and…although this is horrible to say, thankfully it was Addie who shut the door. I felt horrible enough, I can’t imagine if I had been the one to cause it, too.

Fevers and fingers are not slowing us down over here. Hope your summer is cookin’ too!