Strange things are going on around here

Hi everyone! I hope all of you have had a wonderful holiday. Ours was great, but so incredibly busy. It seems like everytime I sat down to start blogging about some of the fun activities we did it was time to go do something else. Things are finally starting to settle down a bit so I'm hoping to ease back into my old routine again. Fingers crossed.
Anyway, a few months ago I posted about my kids ghost hunting expedition.  I thought their little exploit was kind of funny, but I swear I'm beginning to wonder if the little monkeys may have been onto something. We've had a few odd incidents around here lately that have me scratching my head. 
First we have the missing items. We've always had things go missing around here, I think that's pretty common in most families. Lately though it's just been happening at an insane rate. I'm one of those 'a place for everything, everything in it's place' type people so it's been killing me. This has been annoying, but not too terribly freaky. 
Weird thing number two though? Yeah, it's freaky. The kids all got simple point and shoot cameras for Christmas. Like most kids they have been taking pictures of random, weird stuff. I was looking at Kylie's pictures and ran across this one:

 A picture of the kids coats, big deal right? Uh, yeah it kind of is. These are the kids coats from last year and are not the ones Kylie took a picture of. The one on the far left is Kylie's and is hanging in the back of her closet. The two smaller ones on the right are folded up on a shelf in the laundry room waiting for me to donate them. Now, how did they end up in the picture? I know the kids didn't switch them out because I was in the room when the picture was taken! This is a picture that I took of the coats that are hanging up right now:

 Obviously they are completely different. Oh, and just for the heck of it here's a picture I found on my blog of the old coats (no clue why I had a picture of them) from last year:

See how the coats are in the exact same position? These were taken months apart and with different cameras by different people. FREAKY!

And for weird happening number three. I finally got a new cell phone. Nothing fancy (I promise I'm probably still a good 5-10 years behind you guys on electronics). Last night I was sitting in bed reading a book and Sophie crawled into bed next to me, everyone else in the house was in their bed asleep. I heard a noise and Sophie turned to me and said, "mom, your phone is ringing. Before I got to it, it stopped and then started ringing again. When I got it out of my purse it had already quit ringing so I checked to see who called. Umm, the number both times was (cue twilight music) from my house! Seriously the freakiest thing ever! So there you have it. Weird things going on aplenty.

Six

Today my baby is six years old. Where on earth has the time gone?

 

The 100 workout- a small update

Back in August I posted about the 100 workout. I was wanting to get into shape and this little exercise plan seemed to come along at just the right time. In case you don't know what the 100 workout is, it's basically a calisthenics plan.

 Looks pretty easy right? Umm, not so much. I can't speak for everyone, but I have to say it kicked my butt. The first time I did it I accidentally left out the second set of 60 jumping jacks and almost cried when I realized it. I was out of breath and honestly thought I was going to die. I did change the plan up a bit. Instead of running I ride my bike. I tried running a few years ago and developed a knee inflammation that took me months to get over so I'm a little scared of running now. Hopefully if I lose some more weight I'll get up the courage to give it another go and we'll see what a difference it makes. 
 Now for the question I'm sure is on your mind, how much weight have I lost? The answer is I have no idea. Sorry. I was weighing myself diligently, but then in September I had a few medical scares and when I went to the doctor and was weighed I was very upset to find that I weighed a full ten pounds more on their scales than I did on mine.  I came home and threw mine away. However, I did weigh myself a few weeks ago and at that time I had lost about 16 pounds. I have gone down at least one size in my jeans and in all honesty I think I'm ready to go down one more size. As far as how I feel? Much, much better. I'm also trying to be careful with how I eat. As I mentioned earlier I had some medical issues come up and it kind of opened my eyes to some things. One of them being my diet. I'm not a big junk food eater, but after talking to some friends I realized that some of the foods that I ate that I thought were okay, were really not good for me. I started to read labels and was shocked at some of the things I found. Before if I happened to glance at a label it was to check the calorie content, but now I'm looking at the sodium content, carbs, and fat. I've also recently begun drinking water. I've always really, really hated water so this is a biggie for me. I'm kind of cheating a little in that I am adding some flavor to it in the form of crystal light, but hey it helps. One thing I am not doing however is dieting. Someone recently gave me a diet plan that they are using and I took one look at it and knew that it wouldn't work for me. For one all of my favorite foods were banned from it and two, I know that I might lose a lot of weight with it, but then once I'm off the diet it will all come back. 
I was thinking of adding some pictures of myself to show the difference in my weight, but I'm really not ready for it. I go back to the doctor in March and I'm thinking that when I go I'll have an accurate weight (hopefully far less than last time!) and I'll try to get some pictures to share then. Other than the change in clothing size it's been kind of hard for me to tell a difference. My husband recently snapped a few pictures of me with the girls while I wasn't aware and when he showed them to me I could really tell that I looked different. So there you have it. I'm nowhere near supermodel size and I never will be, but the plan is making a difference and I'm going to keep it up and try to update every so often. So have any of you tried the 100 workout? If so how are you coming along with it?

Let the insanity begin!

Well as you all know by now it's December which means the holiday season is officially here. In other words; chaos and insanity. This past weekend was so busy I nearly wept when I woke up and realized that today was Monday and I did not have anything I had to do or anywhere I had to be. Sure, my house needs to be cleaned and I'm sure if I thought about it (trust me, I won't) then I could think of a few errands that I need to run, but for the most part today brings pure bliss in the form of doing nothing other than recovering from a loooong (but fun) weekend.
On Friday I chaperoned a field trip with Audrey's class. We had a nice picnic at the park and then went to the theater and see the play A Christmas Carol.  The play was really nice, but I have to say I was completely exhausted by the time we got back to school. I honestly do not see how teachers can deal with the constant talking day in and day out. The kids were wonderful, but oh my goodness, can they talk a lot! Then after I picked the kids up from school they had just enough to time to change and get ready to head downtown for the North Pole Stroll. 
This was kind of a big deal for us for several reasons. One, we've never been. Two I was driving. The driving thing may not seem like a big deal to most but for me, it was a huge thing. I do not drive at night unless I absolutely have to. I don't see well and it makes me extremely nervous. I also do not drive downtown unless I have to. There are lots of one way streets and trying to find parking makes me a nervous wreck. However I was bound and determined that I was going to do this for my kids and I did. The first thing we did when we got there was write letters to santa.

Then we went to the exploreum. They've been having an exhibit on Australia so they had an Australian themed Christmas complete with a surfer santa! My kids of course refused to take pictures with 'that weirdo in a santa suit'. Audrey and Sophie did however get their face painted with an Aborigine sign. Sign of what I have no idea, but they thought it was the coolest thing ever.

 Then we were off to see the snow. That's right, snow. In south Alabama. 

 I didn't claim it was real snow. After playing in the snow we came across this gorgeous Christmas tree and I thought I would get a nice picture of the kids in front of it.

 Awesome isn't it? Something tells me it won't be making the cut for Christmas cards this year. 
 On Saturday we didn't have too much planned. We met up with my parents for a Christmas parade. It was awesome. You know how at the end of most Christmas parades the final float has Santa claus on it? This community decided to end theirs with a van from the jail pulling a flatbed of inmates on it. Sadly I didn't snap a picture to share. 
Sunday we went to the Shriners Christmas party. The kids were excited because they had a little parade and they got to see Santa Claus. This year the Shriners did things a little differently and had drawings for door prizes at the end of the party. My family never, ever wins anything so imagine our surprise when right as we were getting ready to leave we heard Sophie's name called. She won a humongous bicycle. 

It cracks me up because the thing is huge and she is so proud of it. I told her I would try to find her some pink streamers to girl it up a bit. After running home to drop off the bike we took the kids to Bellingrath Gardens to see the Christmas in lights exhibit. I'm not sure why I always insist on taking tons of pictures since they never come out well, but I do.

little drummer girl

copycat has to do everything her sisters do

All in all we had a fantastic weekend, but I have to admit I'm kind of glad to have it behind me. I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Christmas lists

Like most parents every year I ask my kids what they want for Christmas. For some kids this might seem like an awesome opportunity to list every toy they've ever seen on television and in the stores. Not mine. Trying to get a list out of them is like pulling teeth. I do good to get them to give me two, maybe three things. For example I asked Audrey what she wanted and  after much deliberation she finally told me she would like the American girl dog Sugar and her rain gear.

I asked Sophie what she wanted and surprise, surprise she told me she wanted a ginormous Hello Kitty stuffed animal.

 With Kylie I was a bit luckier I suppose. She asked for two things.  A Moshi monsters ds game and a Moshi monster Iggy plush. Please don't ask me what a moshi monster is because I have no idea. 

 

 Now most of this was easy peasy. I bought everything ages ago, but that stupid plush thing Kylie asked for has been sold out everywhere. Trust me, I mean everywhere.  I finally found out that the Moshi Monsters game originates from the U.K so I searched online stores in the U.K. No luck. Every single one was sold out of it. I tried Australia. Nope. Finally as luck would have it someone on Amazon had one and I snagged it. For twice the retail price. Because you know I'm a sucker when it comes to doing things for my kids. 
Do your kids make Christmas lists too? If so did they put anything super hard to find on it? Anything that you would really, really rather they not have?

Turkey in disguise

Every year the kindergarten classes at my childrens school have a 'turkey in disguise' project. Basically they teacher gives the kids a picture of a turkey that they have to cut out and then disguise so that no one will know it's a turkey and eat it for Thanksgiving. They hang them up along the walls throughout the school and the parents can see them when they come to school for Thanksgiving dinner. I remember one of my kids decorated their turkey as a doctor and yet another one decorated theirs as Santa Claus. When Sophie brought home hers to decorate I just knew she was going to decorate hers as Hello Kitty. I was wrong. 

 I don't think you can even begin to imagine my surprise when she told me her turkey was going as a bottle of soap. When I asked her how she came up with that idea she informed me that the turkeys neck and head reminded her of the pump on the bottle of soap. Go figure.

My how things have changed.

When I first became a mom one of the things I was most excited about was all of the clothes shopping that I had to look forward to. Shallow yes, but true. I was one of those moms that would not walk out the door unless my kids looked just so. When Kylie was young I was all about the smocked dresses, bonnets, bows, monograms and other stuff that you generally had to go to a boutique to buy.

 Then when Audrey came along we stuck with the smocked stuff for awhile, but then moved on to more casual things like Baby Lulu, Mini Boden, Gap and Gymboree.

I have to say this was actually a little bit of a relief for my husband because it was a bit cheaper. Of course I was never happy with just a dress or top, we had to have the whole enchilada. Socks, bows, purses, shoes and even underwear had to match.  Then when Sophie entered the picture it was three times the fun. I loved it because I could dress all of the girls in matching or coordinating outfits. It actually became dare I say a bit of an obsession? 

Yes, that is a cast on my two year old daughters leg.

 Recently however, I have been feeling a bit sad. The girls have long since stopped wanting to wear matching clothes and not only that they have gone and *gasp* developed their own taste in clothing! Sophie thinks that everyday should be Hello Kitty day, Audrey only wants purple, lavender or lilac, and Kylie? Oh my goodness. Kylie makes me the saddest. She only wants to wear the same two or three outfits. Over and over again. Today I realized just how far we've come with the clothes thing when Audrey asked to wear this outfit to Target:

 Yes, that is her Dorothy costume from two years ago complete with Toto in a basket. Did we get a few stares? Probably, but you know what? My seven year old thanked me for letting her wear it and smiled the entire time so it was definitely worth it.

We've got spirit!

It's that time of year again! Yes, college basketball season has begun and I am now one happy mama!

Unfortunately Sophie outgrew her cheerleading outfit (Kylie and Audrey look like they have too, lol), but she decided to improvise with her own little blue devil ensemble.  

Even the dolls are Duke fans around here.

TGIF?

To say that this week has not been good would be an understatement. Actually to say that the past few months have not been good would probably be more accurate, but I'm not even going to attempt to go into all of that.  I was really looking forward to today because the girls are out of school and I thought we could just hang out at home and relax. Well we are hanging out at home, but relaxing? Not so much. First I've had to fight my youngest angel over these:

 Yes, Sophie has pneumonia. Since she adamantly refuses to take liquid medicine this is what we get. Last time she had it she opted to go to the doctors office everyday and get a shot, but since she is in school now it's really not an option. I have to crush these humongous horse pills up and mix them with some pudding. And she does fight me on it every step of the way. Luckily I only have 7 more days of this. After the morning round of fighting over medicine I got to deal with this:

 That my friends would be my bathroom floor sporting a coat of mint colored nail polish. Nich eh? And all of this before noon. How lucky can a mom get?

To catch a ghost

About a week or so ago Audrey was sitting next to me while I was checking my email. I subscribe to emails from pixel of ink to get a heads up on free/bargain kindle books and I had just opened an email they  sent me and saw a book on it called '101 ways to catch a ghost'. Non-fiction of course. I started laughing and Audrey wanted to know what was so funny and naturally when I told her she begged me to download the book. Since it was free I did. She then proceeded to ask me everyday if we could read the book because she needed to catch a ghost. Things have been so hectic around here that I honestly have not had the time so this weekend when she asked me I just gave her my kindle and told her to have at it.
A little while later she, Sophie and Kylie came in the room and asked for a flashlight. Then a few minutes later they came back and informed me and my husband that we needed to be very quiet because they were ghost hunting and they wanted to be able to hear the ghosts. About twenty minutes later they informed us that we did in fact have a ghost. Nice. I pretty much forgot all about their little escapade until I was cleaning up this morning and ran across Audrey's notebook. She writes jokes and draws pictures in it and I was flipping through it as I was taking it to her room admiring her great pictures (her art skills are obviously a recessive gene) when I ran across a something that she had written. It would seem that she took notes while ghost hunting and I thought I would share in case any of you might be worried that you too have a ghost.

6:31 pm-We were in the bathroom hunting for ghosts this evening. We looked in the shower and the cord of the shower (I'm assuming she meant on the shower head since it's one of those that you can take down and use as a handheld) itself was moving! When Kylie touched it it was cold. BEWARE! OMG! Now there's a light. A little oval shaped light not caused by the flashlight. Now the phone is dialing itself (why they had the phone in there I do not know) I have a feeling it's a not a nice ghost like King Boo (I think this is a Mario Bro. character, but I'm not sure). Or it might be a nice banshee like Ecto (huh?). Sophie claims to have seen something up close to the shower! 

 Just when I was getting used to not having the kids barge in the bathroom on me all the time they just have to go and conjure up a ghost for me. Great.

Happy Halloween

Have fun and be safe!

Halloween smores

A friend of mine recently told me about the cutest Halloween favors over at Southern Vogue. I'll be honest with you I am not a Halloween person. At all. I realize Halloween is the nations second most popular 'holiday', but I really, really don't like it. Sure the kids are cute all dressed up, but the tons of candy and the tacky decorations just irritate me. I know, I know I'm a grinch. Whatever. Needless to say when she told me about the 'cutest Halloween favors' ever I was skeptical. Until I took a peek. They are smores in a bag and when I saw them I just knew I needed to make them for the kids to give their friends at school. 

 Special bonus they are super easy to make. All you need are one graham cracker, one peep, one hershey bar (fun size), a bag and a ribbon or twist tie to close off the bag. Easy peasy.

And so it begins

The other day a friend was telling me about their middle school child and how it appeared that the whole boy crazy thing was starting to take place amongst her and her friends. I just laughed and told her that I was so glad I didn't have to worry about that. Kylie still thinks boys are yucky, Audrey is too shy to even think about having a boyfriend and Sophie, well she's only five. Famous last words. 
A few days later Sophie came home from school bursting with excitement because she was invited to the birthday party of a boy in her class. On the way to the party she told me to make sure to keep the invitation because it had the boys phone number on it. I really didn't think too much about what she said, but then the next day I caught her going through my purse looking for the invitation. The next thing I knew she had her big sister help her call the boy. I could not believe it. My oldest two children won't even speak to boys, yet here she was calling them out of the blue. Then last weekend I took the girls to their schools fall festival. Sophie had not one, but two little boys chasing after her and guess what? Neither one of them was her little friend that she's been calling on the phone. 

I have a feeling the next few years are going to be fun.

I heard a rumor..

The other day I heard something that just made me laugh and laugh and laugh. Some silly person told me that fall (you know the season of changing leaves and cooler weather?) had arrived.

 Now I realize that I'm blond and well, us blonds tend to have a reputation of being gullible, but really?

 Surely they were just teasing me. I mean there is no way I would let my kids go to the park in sandals and sundresses if it were really fall. 

 That would just be too weird.

Sisters and best friends

For now at least

 

The exploreum

Over the weekend I surprised the girls with a trip to the exploreum center. Audrey and Kylie have been before on field trips, but Sophie has never been.I have to say I was nervous about taking them by myself, but they were really very good and we had a fantastic time. 

Learning about gravity

Audrey playing the stringless harp

No idea what this thing is called, but it's awesome!

 And no I did not tell them that it was educational.

The 100 workout

At the beginning of summer I told my family that I wanted to get in shape. They were very supportive, but trying to exercise with three kids around just wasn't working out so well and my plans kind of fell by the wayside. I decided I would try again when the kids were in school and I had some free time to myself. Since school has begun I've been riding my bike around the neighborhood in the mornings. I'm not sure if it's helped any yet, but I'm sure if I keep it up then eventually it will.
A few days ago I was trying to catch up on some of my favorite blogs and ran across something interesting. Leslie over at There's More 2 Les mentioned that she and her husband were starting the 100 workout. I've never heard of it, but thought it sounded interesting. 

I've decided to give it a try. I am making one slight modification though. The running. Right now it's 99 degrees and humid where I live (hello...fall? Hurry up will ya?) so I'm going to substitute running with bike riding. I would love, love, love it if some of you decided to participate along with me. I have a hard time staying motivated and I think if I know some of you are doing it along with me it might help keep me motivated. Any takers?

Sometimes you just need to remind them

Yesterday my husband had a few small errands to run. Kylie asked to go with him and he of course was fine with that. I mean a nine year old is generally pretty to handle right? Then Sophie found out that her sister was going somewhere and asked if she could go as well. My husband looked at me with one of those looks that clearly said, "Help me out of this. Please. I can't handle more than one kid at a time." So what did I do? Why I did what any good wife/mom would do. I looked at my baby, smiled and said, "Sure honey, you can go with daddy. Why don't you go ask Audrey if she would like to go as well."   The look on my dear husbands face was quite similar to the look a man gets when he's playing catch and accidentally catches the ball between his legs. Did I feel guilty? No. For one reason my children are (now) pretty well behaved. I knew that they would not give him a hard time or do anything wrong while they were out so he had nothing to fear. For another reason with his work schedule as it is the kids really don't get to see him or spend much time with him. That's right I wanted to give them a bonding experience. 
So off they went. Apparently it was a good trip because I only received three phone calls during the hour they were gone. Note to self, next time hide hubby's phone before he leaves for optimum fun. When they made it back home before I even had a chance to ask how things went he said, "Honey I think every time you take the kids somewhere by yourself you should get a medal. Really. I know they are good kids, but I don't see how you do it. They make me a nervous wreck." I told him that I really didn't want a medal, but that a new purse or  shoes would do just fine every now and again. "Absolutely, you totally deserve it." was his response.
Mission accomplished.

Keeping the tooth fairy busy

Yesterday morning when I sent the girls off to school I crossed my fingers that Audrey and Sophie would lose a tooth while they were gone. Yeah, go ahead call me a crappy mom. That's okay, I totally agree with you if you do. You see I hate dealing with loose teeth. It grosses me out big time and I always make my husband be the one to pull the teeth around here. The bad thing about that is is he's rarely home to do it. He works 13+ hours a day and when he gets home at night Audrey and Sophie are already asleep. Anyway, when they left yesterday morning they both had a tooth dangling and I just knew they would fall out during lunch. Nope, didn't happen. I thought surely it would fall out during dinner, but that didn't happen either. I knew at this point that I had to do something otherwise they would end up coming out during the night and they would swallow them in their sleep (trust me this happens. Kylie did it about 3 or 4 times when she was younger.) I took a tissue and wrapped it around my finger and told Audrey to bite down on it. She did and her tooth came right out. One down, one to go. I tried the same thing with Sophie. The little stinker bite down alright. She bite down on the wrong side of her mouth and nearly took my finger off! She ended up panicking and I told her we would deal with it in the morning and I sent her to bed. Around 9:00 my husband came in from work and I guess Sophie heard him. She jumped out of bed to show him her loose tooth and the next thing I knew she was showing me the tooth in her hand. Thank God!

By the way, she is wearing the same nighty Audrey wore when she lost her first tooth. It cracked me up when I was looking at the pictures and realized that.

After her tooth was pulled she went right to bed and fell asleep. The tooth fairy then sat down and composed a "so you've lost your first tooth letter" for Sophie and gathered up some money for the little snaggle tooth girls. Then the real fun began. Here's just a reminder of the kind of bed the girls share:

How lucky we are that the tooth fairy can fly right? I mean, I would sure hate to be the one to try to smuggle not one, but two teeth out from under those pillows way up there without waking up two little girls. I mean, call me crazy but that sounds like it might be a little hard to do. Luckily all went well and this morning I had two very excited little girls.


My lame attempt to get a picture of the snaggle tooth kids.

 I still can't  believe that not only did my youngest start kindergarten last week, but she lost her first tooth too. Hopefully now that she's got this milestone behind her she'll slow down a little and let me enjoy having her be little just a bit longer. Something tells me that's probably not going to happen though.

Mommy scores bigtime!

In the early years of my marriage before I had children my husband and I would often go to antique stores or thrift shops in our spare time. Mostly to look for cool little nick-nacks or the occasional piece of furniture. I tried to go a few times when Kylie was small, but quickly found it was just more trouble than it was worth going to places like that with a child. Over the years I would read on various blogs about someone going into one a second hand shop and finding a great deal on something and I would think that it would be so cool to do, maybe one day I can try it.
Well my friends that day arrived today. My husband now has Wednesdays off and he told me about a new shop that opened nearby (I think it was a goodwill store, but I'm not sure). I told him that I wanted to go and check it out so off we went. When we got there I was far from impressed. Instead of having racks and shelves everything was in a bin on tables. A complete mess and most everything looked like garbage. We walked around for a minute or two and I told him that I was ready to leave. He said okay and as I was walking towards him to go I saw it. An American girl bitty baby doll. I picked it up and couldn't believe my eyes. We have a couple of them already, but this one looked ten times better than ours. No marks or scratches anywhere! I checked around to make sure there weren't any other little treasures (there weren't) and hurried to the register to pay. Now, does anyone want to guess how much this set me back?

I paid a grand total of............wait for it.................




                                                 .50! 

My husband actually asked me if I really wanted to buy it because it didn't have clothes. Silly man, we have suitcases full of bitty baby clothes already! So have any of you tried thrift stores? If so what are some cool things you've found?

A tiny little project

A few years ago right around the time Kylie started kindergarten she began an annoying little habit of uttering the phrase every mom hates to hear. I'm bored. It was like fingernails on a chalkboard to me and I cringed everytime I heard the words come out of her mouth. In part because it was annoying, but mostly because I remembered saying it constantly when I was a kid. I just knew that if my mom heard her say it she would die laughing and say something about coming full circle or something. So I basically banned those words from my house. I told the girls that anytime they said they were bored I would give them something to do that would keep them from being bored. Like clean closets. Occasionally they will slip up and say it, but generally all I have to do is give them a look and they stop. 
Well guess what? Today I found myself muttering that I was bored. Not good. With the girls in school I'm kind of at a loss of what to do during the day. My house was clean and I didn't really have any errands to run so I decided I needed a project to do. I hopped in the car and drove to Hobby Lobby. First of all let me just say, it's so weird to be able to just decide to go somewhere and do so. Usually I have to get at least one little person ready and then deal with carseats. Second, I think this is probably the only time I've ever been to Hobby Lobby and not had to say, "Don't touch that!"  I have absolutely no idea what I want to do, just that I want it to be something small I can do before the girls get home. I go into the section where they have unfinished wood and I spot one of those wooden containers with a lid. I decide to decorate it for Kylie's room. In part because she tends to collect crap stuff all the time and I thought it would be a good place for her to put it. And also because she likes to pick on me for always buying little decorative boxes for her and her sisters to keep in their bedrooms. Anyway this is what I made:

Nothing fabulous of course, but it matches her room and helped keep the boredom at bay for a while. Now I just need to figure out what to do with myself for the other 178 days the kids are at school.

First day of school

Well I knew it was coming, I just didn't realize it would be here so soon. The day that we go from this:

To this:

Even though autumn doesn't start until September it looks like our summer is officially over. The girls began their first day of school today. I was very good and did not cry (yet) and they all left with happy smiles on their faces.

2nd grade



4th grade



kindergarten

They all three got out of bed this morning without any protest (yes, I know by the end of the week they'll all be whining about waking up), ate breakfast, got dressed and then they all had to sit down and watch Curious George. Watching Curious George has become a bit of a school morning routine around here.

Then it was time to load up and head out the door.

But I had to take a few more pictures first. Obviously.

Yes, even at the bus stop.

And now I am experiencing the strangest thing ever. Silence. A sound that I have not heard in my house in almost ten years. Right now it's a bit unnerving, but I'm sure that in the days, weeks and months to come I'll come to look forward to this time. For now though it just feels strange and wrong.