Happy Birthday to Me :)

Sophie has been counting down to my birthday the last 2 weeks. The closer we got the more excited she became. Everytime we went to the store she would seek out the cake decorating isle. I postponed buying all the fanciful decorations because I knew once they were in the house the girls wouldn't be able to wait to start baking. This past week we stocked up and Sophie began to design the cake in her mind. She wanted to have a garden theme for my special day. To carry out the theme Sophie and Haleigh picked out a miniture rose plant for me from the floral department.

After a sweet AM2PM meeting this morning we came home with lunch, put Mackenzie down for her nap and the party started...

mixing ingredients...

always some tasting. . .

we learned how to "marble"...

The cake was baked, cooled and Mackenzie was up and ready to help decorate!!

Thanks girls for making my day so special!!

I am blessed to have such loving girls who

get excited to make me smile!!

I will always remember this beautiful cake and even more the fun we had making it!!

Did I say a PJ weekend?

Perhaps we would have been better off to stick with the PJ plan for Saturday! Instead we decided to head out to the zoo and take the chance that the misty overcast day would stay that way until we made a quick trip to visit the animals. Let's just say it didn't work out that way, but did we laugh! We acutally laughed as hard as it rained - and that my friends was hard :) (I never knew you could make a "rooster tail" with the wheel of a stroller.)

Our long time elephant friend, Joy provided us some rewarding entertianment. She responded well to us looking like we were completely crazy to any on-lookers as we stood in front of her display and yelled, "Trunk up Joy!" raising our own hands to our foreheads as if they were our trunks. Here is one of the results that always makes us cheer, laugh and frisbee crackers to our friend.

By the way, I did find my check card in the girls' hair bow box Sunday evening?! Yep, I had it cancelled on Friday :( oh well my new one will be here next week sometime.

Just the Basics

It has just been one of those weeks. Lots going on, lots on the "to do" list that isn't getting done, not sure I even cooked one dinner the week because we weren't here to eat it. SO, today we just did the basics and left it at that. A few necessary errands were run, school was completed, and not one more thing was done -- aahhh!

Let's see, what was crazy about this week? Well, Mackenzie started on enzymes that didn't agree with her, this overshadowed the full week. Sunday we had our community group at the house for the evening. Monday, we had our co-op during the day. We headed to group violin lesson where the teacher didn't make it because she had locked her keys in her car. Mark was late getting home, but for great reasons. He had been nominated to receive an award for being a compassionate doc - yeah to my man :) He didn't "win" the award at the hospital, but

he always gets the award for compassionate husband! (He did win the door prize of a free stay at a swanky hotel in Charleston:) Tuesday, ants invaded Mark's truck due to constant rain that drove them to look for higher ground. That higher ground happened to be the tire of Mark's truck and then the inside of Mark's truck. In case you were wondering, if you set off a bug bomb in a truck it won't damage the upholstery but it will kill 200- 300 ants. Another fact, car outlets don't produce enough voltage to run a shop vac. Wednesday, regular things happened like AWANA for the big girls, and Mackenie's weekly date with Daddy. Thursday, we opened our doors to about 30 folks for a CMDS meeting that needed a place to meet. It was a sweet time with students, residents and a few community docs that have a heart for serving Him as they serve their patients. (Our girls had fun with the kids that came, they also enjoyed entertaining the adults as the meeting numbers began to dwindle.) And that brings us to just basic today!!

Mackenzie is feeling better and very happy to see that our first and most important errand was to pick up her "powder" from the peds. office. Our second errand was to go by the bank and cancel my check card that has been missing all week- talk about overshadowing :( Then home for school. The girls are happily playing and I am chilling at the computer and listening to even more rain - tomorrow we start on the ark! Hopefully Mark will be done with work sooner rather than later and decide he would love to pick up his dinner on his way home. Here's to a better week next week! (and perhaps a weekend in PJs!)

Mice on Main...2

What a sweet day!!!

Mice On Main ... 1

Its seems like forever ago, but I still want to get our memories of such a sweet day put together. In late July, we made an after church trip to Barnes and Noble. I saw the book Mice on Main. I knew of the scavenger hunt of mice throughout Greenville's Main Street, but had never taken time to make an occasion of it and hunt them all.
Daddy read the story of how the mice "picked their chosen spots" and the girls learned the personalities of each little mouse in the story. Monday morning came and we headed to Main Street to hunt our mice. Sophie was in charge of the book, Haleigh was in charge of the stickers to mark which mice we had spotted, and Mackenzie was in charge of eating her peas and staying happy. Here is what the day looked like:

those things you should write down...

After an AM2PM meeting, we had all made some new friends. Two new little friends wanted to show Sophie and Haleigh their new baby brother. Of coarse, as they were looking at the baby they had to see his toes. That led to this comment by none other than my Sophie,

"His toe is no bigger than a pinto bean!"

(Do I need to add that we did a science experiment lately with pinto beans?!)

Our Sophie's latest love is reading American Girl books. Once she realized that there were dolls to go along with these grand adventures she began banking all her money and looking for ways to fatten her piggy bank (or sheep bank in her case.) That being said, when bed time arrives for Mackenzie and I can't find "Lovie" (her blanket/stuffed animal that is a must before we start the bedtime routine) I get a great response when I yell, "Who ever finds Lovie gets a quarter!" The other night I was really needing it and I upped the reward to $1. Lovie arrived quickly, a dollar headed to a piggy bank and bedtime was a success.
The following day Sophie announced that she only needed one more dollar to reach her goal to order her first (6 in) American Girl doll. Then a twinkle appeared in her eye as she said, "I bet you'll need help finding Lovie tonight." I told her I remembered putting Lovie on my bed, maybe I would need her help the next night. She snickered and said, "I think you'll need me tonight." You know where this is going...
Sophie began to get nervous that she had let the cat out of the bag a little too far. I asked if she hid Lovie. She asked if she would be in trouble if she did. Then followed up the question with I'll still get a dollar when you need it right?! Let's just say Lovie was hiding in her underwear drawer ("because I knew you would never look there!") And Sophie had to wait until she had completed all her chores for the next day before her goal was met.
Kaya arrived yesterday in the mail :)

Have a fun weekend!