Nancy and I braved the museum with all six kids, and, unbelieveably, we left with no blood shed and all kids fed, content, and accounted for.
Of course, the only good picture I took was on the way out the door when four of the six were strapped into the strollers.
Tom and I have meaning to spend more one-on-one time with the kids. It happened sort of by accident today. We desperately needed to take the recycling (which, of course, was at the far away location today) but Neko just really wanted to stay home. Shep and I set out to save the environment while Tom and Neko hunkered down to be creative.
First, they made a Henry the Octopus hat out of an old pizza box (which turned out quite nicely), and then they moved into enthusiatic multiple brush painting on cardboard.
My only complaint is that when these moments occur, Tom must start taking the 30 seconds required to install the bounce flash.
Someday, when they’re famous, we will demand a big, fat thank you in the liner notes of their debut CD.
We met Kate and the kids at a park/farm today. Neko finally rode the pony by herself, but only because Irene went first. Good to see she’s got a little bit of fear in her. We saw animals, ground corn, watered the garden, and took a tractor ride all before we hit the playground. Good fun for nearly two hours.
Kate and I both lamented the fact that we never get to take good pictures when we have both kids because we’re usually wrangling one or the other. Photos are shaky and poorly composed, at best. You’d think Shep wasn’t even there, based on his absence in the documentation. He was running too fast in the opposite direction for me to catch physically, much less photographically.
My favorite photo of the day was taken by Neko (the second photo).
Taking a break from the non-stop 9/11 coverage to remind myself that all is well and good in my little corner of the world.
We went to see Thomas today. A fun outing on all counts, but I really need to remind myself that the kids really don’t care about the $16 train ride. They just want to see Thomas and pet the baby goats, all of which is totally free.
Whenever I go to playgroups, people look at Neko and nod with this look of, “Well, of course they’re mother and daughter. They look exactly alike.” But when their eyes settle on Shep, my blonde, blue-eyed child, they look at him, and then me, and then back again. It’s clear they think I must be babysitting.
Then we see these people at the grocery store, but this time it’s our whole family. And they look at Tom, and there is that look of relief, like when you finally found that missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle underneath a couch cushion.
I’ve been meaning to blog more. I’ve been meaning to add pictures to my blog. But, quite frankly, LiveJournal confuses me and I can’t figure out all the complicated code to make it pretty, so to this day, my LiveJournal is still donkey ugly.
So I thought I’d return to my old friend, TypePad. I have a 30-day free trial. Let’s see if I can be more productive this go around.
These are pix of Neko and Shep enjoying Push-Ups at Renita and Diane’s house. Not quite visible in the photo are their tastebuds exploding at the introduction of artificially-colored and flavored, non-organic, nearly 100% high-fructose corn syrup.
Lordy, did they love those Push-Ups.
