Elfie (our Elf on the Shelf) reappeared on Thanksgiving evening much to everyone’s delight. (Mommy was excited to find him at the last possible moment.)

But he was not the only elf to be working hard around our place this weekend…

Can’t you almost see their pointy little ears?

Yeah. They might not have been a ton of help, but thankfully they are really cute!
(And no…I did not put them up to wearing the Santa hats. They found them in the Christmas boxes
and decided they must go on.)

Just a few little notes from our crazy couple of weeks around here:

Waiting is always the hardest part. I am currently waiting for the other (little girl sized-13) shoe to drop and for Em to catch the plague that Addie has had for the past 24 hours. It is going to hit Em on Thursday morning, isn’t it?

We are doing a totally non-traditional Thanksgiving this year. J. starts his job at Disney (!!) next week and to celebrate, we are going to spend our Thanksgiving day (and dinner) with the Mouse. I’m excited to be at the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’ since I’m feeling a little blue about not being in Michigan this week.

Not only are we missing Thanksgiving with our extended family, we are missing a FIRST birthday for Mr. Maverick. I simply cannot believe that he is already one.

Ah. Yeah. THAT was the other errand we really needed to do today, but were sidetracked by sickness. Mav’s actual birthday is tomorrow! His present will clearly not be there by his real birthday. (Since part of it is still in the store.) We should shoot for maybe it making it to his birthday party this weekend, I think.

It is weird to not have to be shopping for Thanksgiving dinner this week, although I had to help make turkey and all the fixin’s last week. The kinder classes had a combined feast on Friday – 60 kindergartners. We catered it in from Boston Market. Note for anyone planning a feast of this magnitude – simply chopping the serving number in half is not enough when dealing with 5 year olds. We planned, bought, and reheated enough food for 30, and still had enough leftovers to feed pretty much all of the teachers at school, too. Another note – the kindergartners will not eat potatoes, stuffing, or even very much turkey. However, buy about twice as much mac & cheese and corn as you think you’ll need. They will eat that.

(My pilgrim – it was also pajama day.)

And finally, no matter how early you agree to do a craft boutique (months and months ahead in our case) – somehow it still will sneak up on you and catch you completely by surprise. Oh, hello Dec. 3 & 4 – there you are, just next week. And here I am, with nothing done.

Back to the machine.

Daddy is on his last work trip for awhile. (Since he will be taking a new job in a few weeks with…less travel – we think. We hope!) So we are just hangin’ on til he makes his way back home to us.
Come home soon, Daddy.

I know. I feel that neglected vibe  every time I open up the Chaos blog, too. And I’m mad because I use this blog as my “baby books” for the girls and surely they have done something amazing all these many weeks that I should have documented? But it just isn’t taking precedence around here. We are too busy schooling, working, entertaining, training, playing and becoming Chess Masters…

We’ll be back after a brief interlude to Catalina Island this weekend for the race and I promise many photos and updates next week. Yes. Or soon thereafter.

Have a great weekend.

Sometimes on Sunday afternoon I get that little pang of regret that our weekend is coming to an end, that “boo, tomorrow will be MONDAY, feeling.” But this week I am embracing Monday and giving it a big old kiss on the lips. Hello, new week!

Of course I adore my sweet family – you must know that.  But even with a fantastic, very low-key, yet somewhat productive weekend behind us, I was so very happy to send them all on their merry ways to school and work this morning.

Now it is time to get some stuff done without all those pesky distractions like soccer games (Em’s team tied 1-1 and J. and my team won 2-1 – not that we are keeping score), putting up Halloween decorations, finishing (er…starting) Halloween costumes.

Instead I will be running to soccer practice, doing the ballet carpool cha-cha-cha, organizing the Carnival stuff for this weekend, baking for bake sale/cake-walk, finishing (well, they are started!) Halloween costumes, preparing for Nena and Bill’s arrival, slamming in some last-minute triathlon training, and maybe finally catching up on some photo editing and blog reading.

Yes. Hello, Monday. But at least I have all week ahead of me…

So where in the world have we been? I know I’ve been kinda phoning the Crafty Tuesdays and Team Up Thursdays in, and it isn’t as if we don’t have all kinds of stuff going on…but I thought September was a crazy busy month? I think October is at least three times as busy.

I just dumped my camera and uploaded a mere fraction of the photos from October and realized I gotta lot of explaining to do.

We’ve been soaking up our autumn and getting into the groove of school, ballet, and lots and lots of soccer. Em is progressing nicely on the soccer field – at the very least she is trying very, very hard.

Mama has been playing on Sundays too, and I don’t know if I’ve been progressing or not but I got cranked in the head with a soccer ball last Sunday and dropped like a sack of potatoes, saw a few stars, and still have a tender spot on the side of my head. Not my finest moment, but I’ll be there again Sunday…clearly that ball knocked all remaining common sense out of me.

Let’s see, what else? The girls and I had a visitor last week. My cousin, whom I haven’t seen in probably 10 years came out to SoCal to visit us. We had a great time. I found that we don’t live that far from the Reagan Presidential Library, so we took a little trip up there for the day.

Yes. It is very gorgeous up there. And we saw a whole bunch of very cool stuff and got to go into the decommissioned Air Force One…

…and saw a replica White House (that is to scale and even the carpets and chandeliers are perfect replicas!).

It was fascinating. I’m already planning a trip back there with the girls and maybe one with my Brownie troop if they are interested.

We also took some time to run around and stretch our legs…

Addie totally “tricked” Andy into tagging him by telling him, “I just want to give you a hug,” which of course stopped him in his tracks, and as he stooped down to get his hug, she tagged him and said “I tricked you! You’re it.”

Yeah, she is a stinker.

We learned about Andy’s zoo (he works for the St. Louis Zoo).

We found a British Tearoom that serves Cornish pasties and celebrated Andy’s birthday with an afternoon tea.

(The pasties were good…but not “Aunty” good. Still, if some Yoopers come visit, we’ll gladly trek back out that way!)

It was a really fun week, and even though our time with Andy was short, the end of the week also brought home our Daddy. I can’t even tell you how happy we ALL were to see him.

So this week we are enjoying our Daddy time and I was feeling all relaxed and calm. Until today. Today I realized that even though October does indeed have five weekends, I do not have another week before Halloween, like I keep thinking I do.

Next week! Next week is Halloween! Along with Halloween parties, costumes (that I need to make!!) and trick-o-treating, we have more visitors coming next week, and a Carnival for the PTA in the middle of all of this. I think I need to stop feeling all calm and go get to work.

Last week was a very long week. I didn’t really realize how close to the breaking point I was until I snapped for the third (maybe fourth) time at Emma afterschool on Friday. Yeah, I was pretty crabby and should probably put out a public apology to my lil’ family.

And then I was going through photos of the weekend and found a whole bunch of good things that were smushed in between all of my crabbiness. Yet another reason to take lots of photos – to remind me of all the reasons I am pretty lucky.

I love that I get to help this great bunch of girls learn soccer…

I love watching Em trying so hard to push out of her comfort zone…

And even after a disappointing loss, (not that we are keeping score, right?) I love that she is developing an…appreciation…for the game. (Or at least she likes hanging with her friends and the great snack bags after the game.)

I love that on Saturday my sweet husband could sense my frustration and then he took over dealing with girlies. Just hearing him say, “No, if you need something you just ask Daddy for the rest of the day,” put a smile on my face.

And then, I got to hang out with my peeps for a blowout birthday celebration for two of our friends.  Even if it made for a very tough soccer game for me on Sunday, (and we bowed out way before the party broke up at nearly dawn!) it was so great to have an adult night out. I think we did fairly well on not talking about our kids, or work, or anything school-ish related. And what do you know? We are incredibly bright and funny women when we do not have to keep one eye on a child. (Who is inevitably going to fall off of that brick wall they are climbing on.)

These ladies are all so great and fun. They make me laugh and I just feel so very blessed that I have all of them in my life…

And finally, I love that we have beautiful endings to our days (or week) like this…

Full of promise for a good week to come.

Something about Wednesdays always makes me happy. I think it gets a bad rap because it is “only the middle of the week,” but here is the way I look at it.

Wednesday doesn’t have the craziness of the beginning of the week like Monday and Tuesday do, and it is the porthole, the first glimpse at the end of the week. I think that makes it a perfect day to take stock in all the good things going on.

A few things I am loving this Wednesday:

• A few hours of complete peace. No TV on, no girls asking for anything. Just the simultaneous hum of the dishwasher, washing machine and dryer, and the occasional rumble of a car passing by.
• Productive days. Getting stuff crossed off the never-ending list.
• A tub of cookie dough (bought by J.) which allows for spontaneous cookie making even at 8 o’clock at night. Even better when cookies are lovingly made by husband and consumed together while watching a favorite TV show.
• Madmen. The best show on TV right now. Possibly ever. If you are not watching it – go Netflix the first four seasons. NOW.
• Our new (in one and a half weeks!) Aunt JB. The girls already adored their Uncle Jeff. He pretty much walks on water in their eyes, and is second only to the #1 guy in our house, Daddy. But the fact that Uncle Jeff is marrying JB? And she gets to be “part of our family” (as Em loves to say)? And she is pretty incredibly awesome? Yeah, that pretty much sends all of us over the moon.

• That Em is so very much like me, including (see above photo) her hunt for the ever-elusive curl in her poker-straight hair. As I put the curlers in her hair, I relived all of my bad perm stories with her. Sadly, they only offered her a glimmer of hope instead of deterring her. I may have to drag out some of the photos just to reiterate how very bad an idea getting a perm is.
• How Addie looks up to Em so much that she had to have “curly things” in her hair too. They didn’t even last until bedtime though before she took them out.  I cannot imagine the Afro result if she had left them in.

• The girls doing their homework together.  Of course this only lasted for a moment before some sort of shenanigans started up. But it was sweet while it lasted and while the new kitty looked on from her new favorite perch.
• A good run that makes your legs feel a little jello-y afterward and you leaves you feeling virtuous for the rest of the day. (Could also insert swim/arms or bike/legs into this equation and still get the same love.)
• Knowing that your good run (swim/bike) means you can have one of those cookies again tonight!

Do you have anything to add to our Wednesday Love List today?