Kids Today

1)  Caroline came home with her birthday book from the library at her school a few days ago.  The school has a program where the parents purchase a book for the elementary school library for a birthday, and then the child gets to be the first person to take it out AND design a permanent bookplate for the book.  The book she picked (from a list provided by the librarian) is called the M.O.M., Mom Operating Manual, which is an amusing take on how kids can keep their moms happy.

And.......THIS is the picture she drew for the inside.  What do you think it looks like?

Caroline told me the bubbles on the left are balloons, and Dad is kissing Mom (see the arrows pointing to "CC" and "Scott").

First, I am curious why Caroline and I are now on a first name basis.

Second, I'm wondering what exactly Scott and I are doing in this picture.

Third, I am worried that I know EXACTLY what we are doing, and probably so does Caroline after a little um.... unexpected..... visit that occurred on Christmas Eve.  That is a hilarious story, which I'm not going to share here since I know that my parents read this blog.  (Hi Mom....Hi Dad).  I'll only say that sometimes things that happen in sit-coms really do happen in real life.

2) Last Saturday, we spent a consider amount of time helping Ben clean his room.  I am wondering why we bothered since this is what his room looks this morning:

Ben just asked me "Why did you take a picture of my room, Mom?"  I told him that I just wanted to share how well he disperses Legos over his carpet.  He didn't buy it.  Now, Ben wants to "put me in jail" for sharing this picture.  I suggested cleaning up his room and then I'll post before and after pictures, and that I would comment extensively on his amazing cleaning abilities.  He thought about it, but he's not interested.  However, he has stopped hanging on my arm while I type.  Instead, he has taken my noise-deadening headphones and a pencil so he could play "party rocker" and is now singing at the top of his lungs. There's never a dull moment here.

Party Rocker Ben

3)  Also in the "never a dull moment here" category is a little morning trauma Abby suffered on Wednesday when she realized that we accidentally bought her BOY sneakers at Target.  For the record, ABBY picked her own sneakers out from the GIRLS section at Target back in December and has been happily wearing them for about four weeks.  However, when she was putting her shoes before school on Wednesday, she noticed that the label on the tongue of the shoe read BOYS.  Naturally that led to tears and hysteria and emphatic cries of "I'm never wearing these again!!!!"  But it was gym day at school and those are her only sneakers that fit, so she immediately had to put them on and catch the bus. So, now I have to decide whether to buy her another pair of sneakers, GIRL ones, or to tell her to suck it up.....I'm probably going to cave on this one because I don't think I would have wanted BOY sneakers in third grade either.

So if you were wondering how we were doing, we're fine just fine.  Typical crazy things going on combined with girl scout events, planning cookie booths, a little snow last weekend, one gigantic report on dredged material, groundwater reports to validate, a certain birthday to plan, etc., etc.

Last weekend (Yes, they were outside in their PJs around 7:15 am building a snowman).

The temperature read 20 deg F.