Artist in Residence

As you may have read in my last post we had my mother, Nana, visiting last month. Ellie has recently developed a love for art, and was so excited to hear that Nana is a real life artist! We were accumulating a LOT of loose pages of Ellie's "art", so we gave her a folder and told her it was her "portfolio". That portfolio travels around the house with her now and helps collect all of the days "art" which you can guess by my use of quotation marks is a word I am using loosely. Most of her pages include at least one smiley face with a tongue sticking out. So, anyway, back to Nana...I knew right away that her one job while she was here, other than doing "art" with Ellie, was going to be painting murals on the kids walls. Were we ever excited!!



Ellie got a collage of butterflies above her bed, with one little one over by the window who must have been trying to escape from the pack :) She has slept backwards in her bed ever since Nana was here, because wants to fall asleep looking at her butterflies.



Matthew got an alligator in a swamp, along with a little dragonfly by his window. He insists on saying "night-night alligator" and blowing him a kiss before every nap and bedtime.




And I got a row of little duckies along the bottom of the kids bathroom wall...We love it! Thanks Nana!

August

As I was looking through my camera I had an abundance of unusually cute pictures. I can't think of any blog posting that can explain them all so I'm just going to give you a run down of our very hot August here in Texas. There was the ballet lesson of course, and you'll never believe it, but two weeks later I spent the day promising her that she would finally have a lesson that day when the phone rings and the teacher is sick. No ballet that day either. You have GOT to be kidding me.

Our main event this month was a visit from Nana. She braved the hottest month in Texas, with temps never falling below 100 while she was where. I did hear her say, "this isn't so bad" a few times. There's just something different about our heat than up on the east coast. That said, I can't wait for jeans and the fireplace...I'm done with this heat. One of the most exciting parts of her visit was the creation of the murals on the kids walls. I'll show you the pictures in a few days as they deserve their own post. While she was here we rode the hot train....

Wore our hot sunglasses....


Saw the hot dinosaur at the science museum....


Harvested our hot (and somewhat pitiful) carrots, which Ellie ate all of at one sitting....

Wore our hot farmer Brown clothes....

And I don't even know what to say about this one other than, "How adorable is he!?"

Oh, August...eight days to go...I don't why I keep telling myself that September will be cooler...It will, RIGHT????

Ellie's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Before we left for ballet.

After my terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.


It was Wednesday morning....play group day, and the day of my very first ballet lesson. I was SO excited. Play group was at our community pool and I have been swimming almost every day and even learning to swim without my swimmies on. I was SO excited. Mommy has been telling me about ballet class for many weeks. I got a ballet dress, and tights, and tap shoes, and ballet shoes. I was SO excited.

Things were going ok until after my nap. I was so excited for ballet that I barely slept. I put on my leotard and ballet skirt. I carefully put my ballet and tap shoes in my princess backpack. Mommy put my hair all the way up in a bun just like a real ballerina. I was SO excited.

We got to the place where my lesson was and sat down to wait. And wait. And wait. No teacher. Uh oh. It was going to turn into a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. We waited and waited some more. When I put my head down to cry on mommy's shoulder because I was so sad about my teacher not being there, I realized that my ear really hurt. It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Well, the teacher never showed up. "Maybe next week" they said. I was SO disappointed. But, mommy said we could go eat and play at McDonalds instead. On the way she called the doctor who said I had swimmers ear and that I couldn't go to the pool for a whole week. It's 105 degrees here...we'll see about that. It was a terrible horrible no good very bad day.

It was so hot that the Mc Donalds play place stuff burned my hands and I couldn't play on it. My chocolate treat melted into a puddle between the check out and the car. And when we put it in the freezer to harden up again I STILL couldn't eat it because now it was so hard it made my ear hurt when I chewed. I had to lay on the couch while Mommy put in ear drops that cost a million dollars (well, I think it was close to that much based on her reaction at the drug store) and I couldn't hear my movie with this cold wet stuff in my ear! It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I think I'll just go to bed.