Updates: short & sweet

To bring you up to speed since July (can't believe it's been that long)....

Annie started school, 3K, where she goes three mornings a week to be loved on and taught by the two most patient and gentle women on the planet. I need to go to 3K, myself.

Lucy is in first grade, which makes her sound entirely too old to me. She isn't big on the structured school deal - preferred the Montessori life of kindergarten, so it's been a bit of a struggle, but she's slowly getting into her groove there. She reads like a champ, and still plays as hard as she ever did.

First day pics...

Lucy has lost more teeth, some pulled by mom and some pulled by the dentist. This was not a fun day. Can I just say that permanent teeth are GROSSLY large in the mouth of a 6 year-old? Creepy, really. She was really brave though (getting two pulled), and any pain that she felt was allayed by getting to KEEP THE TEETH (imagine my delight) and parade them around school the following day, much to the horror of all of her friends. You ever seen teeth with the roots attached? It's the stuff of vampires.

Halloween was a blast....Annie and cousin Molly were Thing 1 & Thing 2. Tried to get Michael to be the Cat in the Hat, but he wasn't going for it. Lucy was Wonder Woman. She wanted me to get the adult WW costume, but I usually wear more clothes at the swimming pool, so I cited the "one superhero in the family at a time" rule and was saved.

We went to the beach in September...clearly we are not working in chronological order here, but I don't really care. We had a great time...hadn't had a family vacay in soooo long. Don't think we had EVER taken a vacay just the four of us, which is a bizarre thought. Always with family or friends or whatnot. So we were so grateful for our friends who have this amazing house in FL that let us escape there for a week. Entirely too many pics below. Erin and Jack came to visit us there for a couple of days, which was absolutely the highlight of the trip. Most of our trips to the beach in our family have been with them, so it just seemed right to have them there. Jack is so big and so much fun and we just ate him up, every moment.

I've quit making tees...just got tired of it. I committed to be a vendor at a big Christmas show in town, one that would pretty much insure that I was furiously appliqueeing tees into March, and as soon as it sunk in what I had committed to, I renigged. And I have been SO happy that I did. I do a few here and there for friends, if I am feeling up to it when people ask, but mostly just sewing for the girlies.

I'm sewing again for the girlies...which is delightful. I stocked up on sewing supplies before school started, so I have piles of outfits ready to be made - fabric, lining, buttons, thread, patterns, all in one place, so that the sheer frustration of trying to find the materials to make clothes in this city doesn't kill me, and I could really spend every moment of free time in my sewing room. Some of my recent creations....

There are more, but I don't have time to post them at the moment. Off to see the 1st grade's rendition of a Thanksgiving village...will be sure to post pics of that soon.



Happy Thanksgiving to you all....Mel