Miss Granger, I presume

Our school doesn't have a dress-up Halloween. In fact it's not even called Halloween. They call it Black and Orange Day. I'm not complaining. I'm just stating facts. So when Emily heard today was Book Character Day she was very, very excited.

Here she is looking like a Rasta girl.

And now here she is looking CRAZY!

And now here she is heading to Hogwarts.

Hermione wishes she were this cute.

Meatballs

It was early October. The girls really wanted to go see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in 3D at the theater. Um, yeah. That's a lot of money. I wanted them to earn it so we made a meatball chart.

Here's how to earn a meatball:

1. You can't wake up the mom all night long. No screaming, no yelling, no deciding in the night that you just need to tell me something. It can wait.

2. If you have to use the bathroom in the night, that's fine. Please do. Just be sure to use your own bathroom and don't feel like you need to tell me that you did it. I'd love to hear about it tomorrow.

3. No coming into my room until "seven dot-dot". (The dots are the colon after the seven.) If it is not seven, and especially if it is not six, please play in your room or the playroom quietly. I love to have you jump in bed with me but I will be a much nicer mom if I don't see a six on the clock.

TODAY the girls earned all their meatballs.

I think we might have to see another movie instead since the first choice has now been out on DVD for several months.

(Yes, it took them SIX months for all three girls to sleep through the night the same time 20 times. I am tiiiiiired.)

LEPRECHAUNS!

I am not Irish. Scott is not Irish. It doesn't matter. I LOVE St. Patrick's Day!

The first St. Patrick's Day I remember was when I was about four. My family was in Utah visiting family and we wanted to go to ZCMI. (When do you not want to go to ZCMI?) I didn't know about leprechauns yet but I knew all about the pinching. If you aren't wearing green, you get pinched - it's a universal St. Patrick's Day truth, right?

Well, the lady ringing us up was NOT wearing green! I couldn't wait to pinch her! Luckily my mom realized what I was about to do and stopped me. It was discouraging, yes, but also so empowering! There were people who didn't know the St. Patrick's Day rules and it has been my mission every since to make sure St. Patrick's Day is celebrated the right way.

Of course my kids know all about St. Patrick's Day. OK, not the real stuff like Christianity in Ireland, etc, etc. They know all the about the wearing of the green and best of all - THE LEPRECHAUNS!

The leprechauns are so tricky. They've been at our house all month dying the milk green, dying the mashed potatoes green, buying Lucky Charms for us and sneaking around the house making sure the girls turned off the lights and made their beds. I'm not quite sure how they did that last part except that if someone forgot to do a job I'd just yell, "LEPRECHAUNS!" and suddenly the kid would remember to do their job. It's bee nice.

For the last two weeks they've been making leprechaun traps on the dining room table. Last night they moved the traps into the living room to try to catch our leprechaun Lucky or his assistant Molly. (Can you believe we have a leprechaun with the same name as one of our kids? I know, craaaazy!)

The girls also thought they'd lure the leprechauns to the taps with green bananas, markers, shiny shoes and t-shirts in the leprechauns' favorite colors. Did you know leprechauns love pink and white Paul Frank shirts?

Emily's trap. I like that she made it so welcoming.

Heidi's trap was very fancy.

Molly's trap was connected together by green toilet paper rolls. Perhaps she thought they might be Zhu Zhu leprechauns.

In the morning the girls came down and saw something nuts! (Do you like their jammies? Green underwear too, by the way. No one was getting pinched at our house!) The leprechauns, who escaped from the traps because they can get through tape - rats - left some gold in the traps and then stacked them. Next they let the garden gnome inside who cleaned up everything and even vacuumed.

The girls and the gnome then had a little tasty gold as part of a very complete breakfast. They can't wait until next year because Molly has moved up to be a head leprechaun now since Lucky has decided to retire and move to Hawaii.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Starvin' Marvin

*For the record, this is not a bullying episode. It's just a case of too much sharing.*

Emily has been coming home from school lately STARVING. I figured she was just growing again and didn't think much of it until this morning.

Today she asked me if I could please pack more things in her lunch. Was she extra hungry today? No. She wanted it so the other kids who EAT HER LUNCH FOR HER to have some extras. While it's very thoughtful to make sure your friends have enough to eat, (I know all these kids. Their parents thoughtfully pack lunches for their children each day.) it's also important to make sure you're eating lunch yourself!

I asked Emily what she thought she could do. I suggested she just ask them to stop eating her lunch but she said that doesn't work. Apparently this has been going on for a while.

She decided to write a note. I helped.

Emily also wanted illustrations.

Do you recognize the one with the bangs?

First, a little complaining

They look cute, don't they?

Um, yeah.

We thought it would be fun to go on a little vacation with the whole family. The day part was fun. The night, not so much. Let me give you a little timeline.

10 pm - Molly falls out of bed. Crazy. She hardly ever does that.

I put some pillows next to her so it wouldn't happen again.

12 am - Heidi falls out of bed. Crazy. She's never done that - ever!

I put some pillows next to her so it wouldn't happen again.

1 am - Heidi falls out of bed. Huh?

I put an ottoman with pillows next to her so she wouldn't fall out.

3 am - Heidi falls out of bed AGAIN!

Seriously? How did she roll OVER her pillows, onto the

ottoman and OVER the ottoman pillows too? Eeeks.

5 am - Time to take Scott to the start line. Ooooh.

Now onto the good news.

After we took scott to the start we had breakfast, went back to the room and jumped on the beds, packed up and then had a second breakfast. I love having two breakfasts. Lucky us!

More good news. My sister Amy is no longer my least favorite person to share a bed with. It's Heidi, who I put in my bed after she fell out of hers three times. I took this an action shot of her "sharing" with me after getting kicked in the head one too many times.

And now here's even more good news!

Scott ran his first marathon this weekend!

He was hoping to make it under 4 hours and he did - by 1 minute and 14 seconds. He's amazing. Did I mention I ate two breakfasts in one day?

Here's the after effects of the run. Ouuuuuch.

Surprisingly, he's not reconsidering the second one in April.