Have you ever had one of those days?

One of those days that leaves you with a deeply contented feeling? I'll clean the house tomorrow.

Right this minute.

Snapshot Sunday 07-26-09

I'm sorry I missed last week's Snapshots. Back on the wagon this week. Leave a comment if you have one to add or if you want me to link to your Snapshots from last week.


(it becomes obvious what this is in the last picture)



This last picture has a funny story. Ainsley decided to cut the hair on her dolls, so after she was done I lined them up and took a picture. They look darling, I think, in their hip new haircuts. I especially like the topless Joan Jett mermaid, second from the left.

After I took the picture I left them there. When I walked back by later, I saw a new arrangement.

Oh my.

How it began.

Sherry
West Coast Addict

The last big unpacking project.

This stack of boxes.
All with this label on them.

You remember when my husband complained about us having this many books when we moved in?
Claimed that that was too many books and said that we needed to pare them down. At the time I remember being nervous about when we would move the 'real' stack of books.

Not to worry, though. I know I have a few relationship books in there somewhere.

What am I supposed to do with a child like this?

I am alternately bemused,

amused,
(With great power comes great responsibility)

enchanted,
impressed,

twitterpated,bewitched, (hee)

and amused all over again.
Then, when I finally get a handle on her, along comes this one.

Now what am I supposed to do?

An errand filled day.

The day started out with a move - the caterpillar moved into our old triop container.

Then a trip to the library to drop books off ...

and pick new ones out.

Then to the fabric store for necessary supplies.

The boas were not necessary supplies.

A trip to an outdoor recreation supply store was in order. Very cool statue out front.

Awe-inspiring.
Inside the store, we went to price out camp stoves. We saw a lot of stuff on the way.

Disturbing stuff.

Really? A giraffe?

See, I try to rationalize it. "At least they probably used the meat." Not likely on a giraffe, but possible. Helps me sleep at night.

Then I get to these little guys.

Literally, very little guys. The necks on those are no longer or thicker than my upper arm. Barely enough meat on their whole bodies for a single kebab.

I had to distract myself, so I asked Hannah what she was looking at.


"Big knives, Mother. With weird handles." Yeah, the handles were made of badger jaws - with teeth still intact. Doesn't seem like a real comfortable knife to use.

Another try at distracting myself -

That's much better. Fantastic wine bottle holder. Gave me a fit of giggles.

Cloth shopping bag giveaway!

Want to win some cloth shopping bags? I'm giving some away! Come on over and enter the drawing!

You won't regret it. (Plus, I could use your help with travel and camping food ideas ...)

Stuff I've learned since becoming a mother.

I've learned to decipher kids cries. Where I used to get angry and annoyed at children crying, I now hear 'tired', 'hungry', 'cranky', 'overwhelmed', sadly sometimes 'scared', and even 'spoiled' and feel sympathy.

I've learned that if you see kids at the grocery store in pajamas and it is one in the afternoon, don't assume that they've been in those pajamas all day. Their current ensemble is likely the fifth of the day.

I've learned that if you see a mom in pajamas at the grocery store with three kids in tow and it is one in the afternoon, it is safe to assume that she's been in those pajamas all day. For this reason, please be kind.

I've learned that if you see a mom at the store with what is obviously children's jewelry or with a hairstyle that is obviously contributed to by children, smile at her but don't mention the unusual hairdo. Please. She has forgotten that she let her kids fix her hair and dress her up and reminding her that she is still 'the prettiest pincess in awl of da house' might make her realize that the man she thought was checking her out when he smiled at her was really just smiling because he thought she was ... well, she might just keep thinking he was checking her out because she needs to feel attractive that day.

I've realized a certain pride in knowing other humans so intimately. Identifying little voices on the phone that sound like any generic toddler to the uninformed, telling sleeping children apart by their breathing, knowing who's coming down the hallway by the footsteps you hear. Being able to tell who passed gas by the smell of the gas, though - that's a certain intimacy I could do without. I nearly cried when I realized I had climbed to that level, but then I laughed, while holding my nose. And then I stopped laughing because the smell was so bad that even having an open mouth was not acceptable.

Want to know the story behind these pictures?

Sure you do!

Visiting Grandma and Poppa.

This last weekend, we went to Grandma and Poppa's house so that my husband could help his father out with some farming and cattle work. This meant that the kids saw very little of Grandma and nothing of Poppa. 'Tis the way of farming, I suppose - especially during the busy haying season.

So we amused ourselves in other ways.

The trampoline figured prominently. For jumping on...

and for having tea parties under.

We found innovative ways to keep cool.

And then, in the evening, we came inside to play. When we used our bird book to look up some hawks that we'd seen, Hannah's cousin Zee was bitten by the birding bug. She didn't put the book down for an hour.

We pulled out an UNO deck, removed all but the number cards and had a rousing game.

Trust me. It was rousing.

Giggler Extraordinaire, that girl. And sharp as a tack, too. She beat all of us.

My weakness.

Book sales. I cannot resist book sales.

I only allow myself to visit BookCloseouts.com once a year. If you like books, do yourself a favor and don't click on that link. The prices are so incredibly low on most books that I want that even with shipping it's half of the price of Amazon. In fact, I shouldn't have gone there to get the link - there's a banner there proclaiming an extra 50% off of kids books. KatrinaDaisyPetal, help me, I don't think I can stay away.

But yesterday it was a library book sale that we went to. It was at the small, rural library in the town we used to live in. I wandered around while the girls sat at the table in the kids section and tried to figure out which books they wanted. At three books for a dollar, they could each get nine books.

There were the usual sections - Geography/History, Westerns, Health, Biography, Fiction, you know the drill. Then, in this teeny, tiny, rural library sale I came across this section -

(The picture's a bit shaky because I had a five-year-old tugging on my arm asking if I could read a book title to her.) I asked the volunteers and apparently there are a few local Scientologists who donate a *lot* of their books to the library. The librarian only keeps a select few. This section wasn't exactly being picked over.

The broad religion section had an awful lot of Book of Mormons for sale for fifty cents each which made me smile because the Mormon missionaries hand those out freely. They weren't flying off the shelves either.

Then I came to this section -
(Sorry the picture's so shaky. I had a two-year-old asking me if she could buy a book on sharks.)
Actually, the first of THREE of these sections.

(Sorry the picture's so shaky. I had a one-year-old pulling on my hair.) And here you have the reason that we paid the out-of-town fees to our nearest 'big town' library instead of supporting our local library (we lived just far enough out that we had to pay out-of-town memberships no matter where we went). Harlequin romances made up almost one-quarter of the local library's adult section. 'Tis what happens when you have a lonely librarian and no buying oversight. (Also, the very small children's section was overrun with Disney and other licensed character books.)

Add lots of women locally who read and then donate these books to the library, and these romances made up one-quarter of the sale books also.

I was doing fine, only had three books in my hands, until I hit the cookbook section. Then I was done for. Ask my sister about our foray into the big city's library book sale and my encounter with their cookbook section. Or don't. Maria, you're not allowed to comment on this post.

I had some interesting conversations with the librarians about homeschooling - even the ex-teacher librarians are homeschooling fans. I got quite a few children's books, some because they looked interesting, some because they were ones I want in our library, some because the artwork was so lovely. I have a problem.

But it's a problem I'm passing on. The girls couldn't even wait until we were on the road to start digging through their books. If my kids are going to have to be in therapy, I want to pick the reason they're there.

Hannah found a George and Martha book. We love George and Martha. We've read it seven times since we got home.

After the book sale, we went and picked up more plants for the butterfly garden.

And then the kids had a Daddy night while I went with some friends to watch Harry Potter. Clearance priced books, 50% off plants, and Alan Rickman. Yesterday was a very good day.