Um...thanks?

After dropping A off at school today I came back home and actually got dressed. Took a long shower, took my time getting dressed (just jeans, but a cute shirt and my nice boots) and *shock!* did my hair and make-up.
When I went back up to hang out fod A's V-day party, several of the teachers were sitting at the work room table.
One of them says, "Wow! Jennifer-you look so pretty!"
Another one pipes in, "Yeah! What did you do?"
The third, "I know! I saw her walk by earlier and I didn't even know who it was!"

Now my question: At what point is it no longer a compliment??

Oh. My. GOSH!

Sweet little A has said this several times in the past couple of days. And she says it just like that. Oh. My. GOSH! I know it could be worse. Much worse. But I'd just as soon put off this phrase in the girls vocab as long as I can. It leads to another familiar phrase, I think. And it just doesn't sound sweet coming from a 3 or 5 year old mouth to me. I'd much rather hear a precious, "Wow"! or "Awesome"! or "I can't believe my eyes"!. OK, stretching it. But you get the gist.
ANYway...where did she pick this up?? From a classmate? A playmate? TV show?
No.
From yours truly.
I try to censor myself as much as I can. But sometimes we just can't help ourselves. Here's the sitch: Ally was on the toilet. She called to me that she was done. I obediently went to help her. Leaned over to take care of business and help her off. My glasses (which were already masking-taped together on one side and in DIRE need of replacement) fell into the toilet. If you ask me, I did good with "gosh". :)
And if this wasn't already TMI....thankfully, it was just #1. :)

Too Funny To Forget

I never got around to posting about a funny "craft" we did months ago. This was from our letter "P" month..."P is for Plant". We planted grass by stuffing a knee high hose with a mix of potting soil and rye grass seed, then decorated it to look like a caterpillar.
Here's how they began:



Miss A wanted extra eyes on hers:



So then what, you may ask? Well, take it home and water it, of course! E's came in really sparse, it must not have been mixed well. But A's took off! Here's a pic from about a week later:



And then about a week after that:



What fun! We really had two new pets for awhile. The girls loved watering and caring for these critters. We were sad to see them go... :)

Winter Break? Ha!

Today was the first day of what is being called a 3 day "Winter Break" for the LISD crew. It was 80 degrees today! Here are some pics from our fun:








Poor independant Miss E...this is the only pic I got of her!! Lil' A I have to keep up with, but E was running the entire time with buddy A.
From the park we went to Gattiland for the "Moms Eat Free" Monday special. Grammy met us there for lunch, then Emma went home with her and stayed the night over there. A fun time!

ACM

Miss A and I had a fun time today at the Austin Children's Museum with some friends from our playgroup. There was a new exhibit that we had not yet seen, so it was the usual lots-of-stimulation---where-do-I-go-first sort of beginning. Once we settled in A enjoyed and explored alot of the neat things.
She donned some construction gear and spent some time sorting nuts and bolts. When our supply ran low she'd call down to order up more from whoever happened to be standing by the shoot down below!



We spent 20 minutes sending a parachuting pig up a pulley (say that 5 times fast!) and letting him float down. This was alot of fun for her because it was one of the things she could operate on her own. The pig was in a harness, which we would attach to a clip on a parachute. There were different sizes and shapes of parachutes so we experimented and found the one that worked best. Once she pulled him to the top, the clip would slide into a cone, causing it to release. Lots of fun!




She boogied on stage a bit....(she can see herself in an off-stage monitor, so there was definitely some hamming going on!)...sorry I didn't get a good pic of this.

Then it was time to make an "insta-worm"! This was some special solution the kids squirted into a cup of water, then fished out, bagged up, and brought home....interesting... :)




All of these things are really the staples. The displays that are always there. Of course she also enjoyed "milking" the cow, playing doctor, cooking in the deluxe kitchen and both stocking and shopping from the store.
The exhibit right now is "noise", and we really didn't get around to much of the new stuff. There was a school field trip there when we arrived, so we stayed out of the way at first and found the other things.
But we did try out the voice changer phones. These were cool. There were 4 phones and each one would make your voice change in a different way, which you could hear in your receiver. Cool!



And there were lots of xylophone type things that she tried. Hearing the difference between wooden, metal, and pvp pipe organs.
We did splurge and get a membership for the year, so we'll definitely be going back as often as we can. Lots of fun!