Behind closed doors

Is anyone else bothered by those closet ads showing pictures like this?

Don't get me wrong, I love how organized it is. But am I the only one who thinks closets are for HANGING clothes? In our master bedroom, we don't have a walk in closet, but one whole wall is dedicated to our closet. There are two shelving units in there that take up valuable space for clothes I want to hang.

Maybe it's just my disdain for wrinkles from folded clothes. I hate folding clothes, I can never get them to fold flat. Could just be my lack of retail experience! I have a hard time filling the drawers in my dresser. Socks and unmentionables are about the only things I want in a drawer, because they don't need to be folded. I much prefer to hang everything!

There are places for nooks and crannies and shelves and baskets behind closed doors - but they're called PANTRIES and linen closets.

One down, countless to go

Lauren did her first real school project last week. Her kindergarten class is learning to count to 100, both by ones and tens. They needed to pick 100 items, group them into 10 groups of 10, and create a small poster board display. She loves giraffes, so we picked giraffe stickers as her item. She did all the work herself, as you can see below.

Daddy showing her how to get a

perfect circle by tracing around a glass:

She cut out all of the circles:

And stuck ten stickers to each circle:

Then Adam helped her hot glue the circles to varying sizes of foam, so that the poster would have a three dimensional quality. That's Daddy for you, always thinking! She picked the layout of all the circles and then they hot glued everything to the poster.

The proud student with her finished project:

Zoomed in:

Choir boy

Owen is in the bath, laying down with his ears under the water, singing "alleluLA" over and over and over.

Video chatting with Daddy

Little Drummer Boy

The kids' friend Paige got a drum set for Christmas and Owen had a fun time trying it out at her house a couple weeks ago.

New slang

Owen's been truncating his words for a couple of months. Instead of saying Noni and Papa, he says "Non and Pop". When he got a new bank for Christmas, he talked about how much "mon" was in it. He always calls his pajamas "jams" and his slippers "slips". There are so many more I can't think of off the top of my head right now. The kicker was this morning, when he was getting dressed for preschool. He wanted to wear his "Nin Turd" shirt. That'd be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the rest of us!

Look what happened this morning!

(after three and a half months of waiting - and exactly 2/3 of the way to age six, to the day!)

Last night

A girl after my own heart

As far back as I can remember, I would rather play with babies instead of toys. I would follow my baby cousins (or whatever baby I was near) around and pick them up, even when I wasn't much bigger than they were. I was always interested in what they were doing. I also remember as I got older that it was heartbreaking leaving family parties and having to leave the babies behind. I think my biological clock was ticking from a very young age! The first family get-together after Lauren was born I was absolutely giddy that she was going home WITH me!

Lauren seems to have gotten this baby syndrome from me. She was enthralled this past week with her little cousin Katrina - not a baby by any means, she'll be two later this month, but she sure is tiny!

Home Sweet Home

We've been on the road, traveling around visiting family for the holidays and just got home late last night. I promise to catch up on our goings-on soon. But for now, bed. Happy New Year!