Well, I think I have solved the mystery of my early-rising girls. Apparently no matter how late I go to bed (and it was a very late date night last night!), I still am up ridiculously early. Today, however, the rest of the house is still sleeping and I’m going to try to get a little weekly wrap-up in here before they all stumble down the stairs.

I guess the Friday wrap-ups are just not in the cards lately, blogging kind of hasn’t been in the cards, in fact. We have just been busy. I even missed Crafty Tuesday this week! And I had some good stuff to show and a little contest to share, too. Next week for sure. Maybe I’ll start writing it NOW if I finish this one and my family is still slumbering. While I also haven’t been writing, I haven’t been reading or commenting on any blogs either. But I’ll be back, it just may take a few days.

I just realized that I don’t have a single photo to share from this week. I took some of my phone for a project I am working on with my friend Jamie, and I took my time photo for my team-up Thursday and that is the only time I picked up my camera this week. Boo. That makes me sad, I’m sure the girls have done all kinds of growing up this week and I haven’t even documented it. Seriously, it is amazing to see the seemingly small little changes taking place, yet they all make my girls seem so much older!

Addie is staring her, “how do you spell” phase. I remember when Em started doing that. The other night she was writing a “story.”  Addie asked me the other day, “Mama? How do you spell – Once upon a time there was a…” and then she put C-A-T at the end of the sentence and read it back to me, she was so proud of her little story. She also learned how to spell the word dear, so she has been leaving little scraps of paper with love notes on them for us. She left some under J’s pillow the other night and I moved my keyboard on my desk yesterday and found, “Dear Mommy Love Addie.” Yeah, it melted me.

She goes for her kindergarten screening on Monday. I think I’m a little in denial about it. I also think come August it is going to be even harder to drop my last baby off at real school than it was to drop my first baby. But then my first baby loves school so much (and is almost a second grader!!) and I know that Ad will follow in her footsteps too. That makes it a little easier. A tiny, little bit easier.

Speaking of Emma Grace, she just found her way downstairs, so I guarantee Ad is not far behind.

Em is on countdown mode. Her cousins come in 26 days and she could not be more excited. She is also in the church musical and for not wanting a speaking part, she keeps coming home from rehearsal with more and more lines. They are doing the story of Daniel in the lions den and Emmy is a tormenting lion. (Aha! See why lion heads is on my to-do list, Kimberly and Cara?) I have been tasked with sewing 18 lion heads. And I have finished…well, I have all the material now. I had to make a trip to the fabric district downtown LA for fur for the manes.  And while at my favorite fabric store, I just happened to find all kinds of other fabric for projects that I probably won’t get finished until the girls are back in school. In the fall!

We already have a very busy summer planned. We are trying to sort out some vacation stuff and I’m already having scheduling  dilemmas. So much for lying out at the pool each afternoon with B!

And here comes Addie…well, so much for my alone time. We are off to bagel Saturday and all kinds of other fun today, I’ll be back. Eventually. This wasn’t so much of a weekly wrap-up, but I threw all of my to-do lists away and I can’t even remember what we did this week. I just know that I’m happy it is the weekend.

Hope you are all doing well, have a fun weekend planned and that I get to catch up with you all soon!

Oh, like everyone isn’t insanely busy lately, right? But seriously? This was the longest, craziest, busiest week ever. I haven’t had a free moment to think and I just keep moving to-dos from one day of my calendar to the next day and hope that, well…maybe tomorrow it will get done?

In the middle of the mountains of stuff I had to do for both Em’s school and Ad’s school this past week, I started a house redesign project or two. Or three. I started to clean out the play/craft room so I could paint it. I want to do this to one of the walls. How cool is that? And I started shopping for new fabric for the living room because that room needs some serious help. And then, because I am schizophrenic and can’t stop myself, I was sitting in the bathroom while the girls were taking a bath and thought, “I wonder what this wallpaper is like to get off? I wonder if I just pull that little corner where it is coming up…”

Yeah, within 10 minutes I had all of the paper off all the way up to the bathtub. “Mama!” Emma shrieked, “Don’t peel the wallpaper over the bathtub, you’ll get us all papery!” So after they got out of the tub, I pulled off the rest of the paper. It is seriously cathartic to pull down ugly 40-year old wallpaper, let me tell you. But now tomorrow I really need to get that room painted. It would be nice to start the week with at least one project completed.

Emma said to me, “Every time Daddy comes back we have some new project to show him! I don’t think he likes it when we do that all the time.”

But I think he does like it – it means less stuff on my list for him to do!

J. was gone the whole week to New York and usually that makes for a long lonely-ish kind of week, but our week was so packed that I only had time to miss him when I was crawling up the stairs each night to climb into bed and I only then would I remember that he wouldn’t be home. Thankfully he returned yesterday safe and sound and we had a super sweet date night last night.

We celebrated J’s brother’s  engagement. Oh? Haven’t I mentioned that he proposed to JB, she said yes, and they are getting married?? THEY ARE! And we couldn’t be more excited. We adore JB, obviously love Jeff with all our hearts, and seeing the two of them together and happy is, well, it is just perfect.  So we celebrated last night. A lot. And I needed a whole bunch of coffee this morning, apparently I am too old for this partying stuff any more.

Other things that I may be too old for…Em’s little ant hill. Come to find out the ants, once they started crawling around and building their tunnels, are HUGE! And crawly…ick. The good news is they only live 2-4 weeks and I’ve already prepped Em on their eventual death.

Someone asked about their care – you feed them a popcorn-sized bit of carrot, apple or celery every 3 days or so and that is the ONLY time you open the little top (and ONLY Mommies can open the top – ha!). And the ant, um…poo? I guess it just gets swept out with the dead ants in the end.

If you want to try something with kids, I highly suggest the Butterfly habitat first. It is very easy and much more exciting. That was my favorite habitat so far. Growing the ladybugs was kind of labor intensive, with the always needing drops of water and bits of soaked raisins and such…shesh. It was too much like having 20 little kids!

Just trying to get through this post has made me so very sleepy. I think I need to get some zzzz’s while I still can. Hopefully we’ll jump into next week all nice and fresh and will have a much calmer week.