Summer Basket List

Summer is over. Well, not really, there is still a month of summer weather left, but summer break is over, and school starts this week, and so we have crossed off as many of the remaining bucket list items as we can. I needed this summer to be something redemptive after last year, which was a sh!t show of emotions and baby soothing and feeling like I was failing everyone around me, and then feeling resentful about the failing, and yeah. This year was better.

I had a page in my notebook where I jotted down ideas the kids named as things they wanted to do this summer (a few times, someone got ahold of a pen and added ideas himself), and we got to almost all of them.

We also renamed it The Basket List because at the beginning of the summer Anneliese could never remember what it was called, so she kept saying that, and it stuck for the rest of us even though she rolls her eyes and refuses to partake of the cutesy rename herself. HER LOSS. CUTESY IS FUN, YO.

And truthfully we didn't even look much at the list because we were busy just hanging out and having fun. Montreat was a freaking delight. Our family road trip was more fun than I ever could have dreamed. And lots of little fun things in between the travels too:

1.) Ride on a ferry. This list was born in April when Nathan, indignant that I would go to Seattle and ride on a ferry without him, made a page in my notebook and put FERRY as the first thing on it. We... didn't actually get to this. But we have Outer Banks camping plans next month, and we will ferry to Okracoke and then Hatteras. The ferry will happen! I promise, buddy!

2.) Visit Northfield. Check and check. 'Twas delightful. Here are all the kids at St. Olaf:

Oh Charlotte. I don't even know, y'all. She just doesn't stop.

Road trip blogs still to come. (They are all half written and still need pics and there's a lot to sort through so eh.)

3.) Crayon A. This is a craft I have been intending to do for years with Anneliese and we finally did it, and it turned out great, and she loves it, and I love it.

NAILED IT. Suck it, Pinterest, I own you.

4.) Go camping. Not yet - this will be with the ferry ride next month.

5.) Eat purple carrots. Okay so Anneliese asked for this for weeks, and I wrote it down for her, even though you can't get any carrots at the farmer's market, much less purple ones, until fall. So this is still to come also. We did, however, make several stews with parsnips, and Anneliese has a new favorite vegetable. (She is an odd child.)

6.) Strawberries. There were no carrots, but there were strawberries, and Anneliese used them to bake her very first dessert for all of us. Bisquick shortcakes, and warm strawberries, and cream she whipped herself, and oh she was so proud.

7.) Cinderella movie. Anneliese saw this with Grandma. That counts, right? (I still haven't seen it.) (I am totally interested, but secretly more for the Frozen short than for the movie itself. Don't judge me.)

8.) Rise Biscuits and Donuts. This is a place in Durham with apparently really great breakfast treats. We never made it there, but I am counting our Duck Donut outing as a check mark on the list for new treat places.

9.) Learn ponytails. Anneliese did it! This is a life skill, I mean really.


(If you can't see the embedded video, click here to watch it on YouTube.)

10.) Learn shoe tying. Yeah, no. This did not happen.

11.) Watch Jurassic Park (not with the girls). Yes finally, Nathan, of years-long dinosaur obsession, has seen the original Jurassic Park movie. It totally scared him. But I think he thinks it was worth it. (It still is delightfully scary to me too.) We have listened to the soundtrack a thousand times this summer since then. Currently the girls' favorite song to dance to. We are That Family, apparently.

12.) Tropical Pick'n Chicken. It's a new (to us) local chain restaurant near our house, with Caribbean food and such. Nathan is enamored with it. It's just okay for me. But! We went! Summer dreams coming true over here y'all!

13.) Build legos. Um, duh. Done and done.

14.) Sleepovers. Yes, Nathan and Anneliese, every Friday, all summer (all year actually, but the summer was no exception). These two are best buddies, and never moreso than on Friday nights. We don't understand how they spend all day every day together and still have things to talk about into the wee hours. They say more to each other than they ever do to any of the rest of us.

15.) Baking contest. This got added to the list in summer's eleventh hour, and we still did it!

16.) Read lots of books. CHECK. We have been very library busy. And library days are the best days, aren't they? Let's not forget the afternoon I found the kids all outside reading their library books sprawled on the sidewalk WITH THEIR BEDDING, why children, why?

Twelve Quick Takes for Summer Break

1.) Reading outside. I make such a habit of sitting or walking outside for a while every day (sunshine is good for my soul, also it's my hippie Sleep Plan attempt at making the days bright and the nights dim, in my never-ending quest to sleep better), and often it's to read, that it seems the kids have picked up on the habit. On library day a few weeks ago when I chased them outside, they did... this.

I tried not to look at their pillows on the ground and just decided to feel happy they were all reading and quiet.

2.) Better swimming. I can't believe that this time last year, none of the kids would even put their face in the water happily, much less let go and swim on their own. Now Nathan and Anneliese are both little fishies, with endless energy and bravery, and Charlotte (with her puddle jumper on) will go anywhere in the pool too, for hours. Until she's exhausted, clearly.

when you're swimming with your thumb in your mouth, it's time to be done

Nathan has gotten to be a really decent diver, too! I'm legit impressed with this. Mad props to his teacher whoever that was. *brushes shoulders*


(If you can't see the video embedded above, click here to watch on YouTube.)

There was a time when I was worried about owning a pool, and now I never want to live without one again.

3.) Duck Donuts. We found a new (to us) donut place where every donut is made to order. Which means you pick your frosting or glaze, and whatever sprinkes/nuts/sugar topping you want, and they serve it to you warm and ooey gooey with a fork.

I'm not a huge donut person, but this is really excellent. RECOMMEND.

4.) Noemi. The fabulous Noemi came over (and we went once to her house) and, well, fabulous Noemi is fabulous. She is fun and funny and her kids behave and are polite and adorable and she's just generally excellent to have around, and she better watch her ass or I will smother in my attempts to conquer her friendship heart and she will have to awkwardly pretend she doesn't know me. Not that it will come to that.

5.) Yay marriage! Mark and I finally had that anniversary date we missed on father's day. And it ended up being on the same day that marriage equality passed nationwide. What a great day to celebrate marriage, amiright? Cheers, everyone! Everyone!

And happy dozen years to the best person I could hope to share this life with.

6.) Booler bruise. Charlotte fell off her bed, and apparently she landed on her... chin? I don't even know with this girl. She is my delicate flower who bruises and breaks and seems to fragile, or maybe just klutzy, or yeah I don't know. Another booler injury for the record books. It turned all sorts of colorful shades for several weeks before it finally went away.

7.) Paper chain. Anneliese made a paper chain to count down the days to Montreat. There are links on that chain with labels like "grandpa" and "Another Nathan" and "skate camp" to mark the time and plans for the month. I guess this is as good a calendar as any, when you're five?

When she and Nathan were at Grandpa's house, Charlotte took over tearing a link each day. She took her responsibility very seriously. (And yes I am aware of the irony of letting any of my kids, especially my breakable delicate flower stand on the very ledge from where Anneliese fell and smashed her face all those years ago.)

8.) Ice skating camp. Yes, Anneliese did a day camp for ice skating. We had her signed up for something different, and then it got changed, and then she reminded me she had liked skating when we tried it back in February, so she suggested ice skating camp instead. Um, okay.

It's the most random thing. We are not a people of ice. Or skates. But I do love about her that she is willing to try new things she knows nothing about, and assumes it will be fine. I like that she wants to do her own thing. And she did great, made new friends, and by the end of the week she was super proud of herself for being able to skate without holding on to anything.

On the last day, they had the option to skate a little "program" where they choose a song and skate around by themselves for the parents. She thought she was doing it, but apparently she didn't sign up in time, so she didn't, and was sad, but then when I saw how she "skates" I realized she could never have done a whole song:


(If you can't see the video embedded above, click here to watch it on YouTube.)

But! So proud! She is so proud, y'all.

9.) Two-piece swimsuit. Her best friend has a two-piece tankini, and she asked for one on repeat forever, so we found one that isn't triangle cut on top, doesn't have a skimpy back, doesn't show her belly, and comes in rainbow colors. It was a quest. She is now happy.

10.) Bee stings. One more about Anneliese, apparently. Mark and I went to dinner tonight and the kids were playing at Nick and Barbara's house, and apparently there were suddenly bees, and one of them got in Anneliese's shirt, and she came away with like ten stings or something. She was fairly traumatized. Apparently some of the the bees even followed them into the house! (They ended up eating pizza for dinner on the floor of Ali's nursery to hide from them.) Props to Uncle Nick who took a few stings himself trying to get Anneliese away. Oh man.

11.) Sardi's Den. A restaurant that Mark and I loved when we lived in Clemson just opened up a branch in Raleigh, and we took Charlotte there for dinner. Ribs and backyard punch! Was really fun and tasted like memories of our early months of marriage.

12.) VCS. We survived another year of vacation church school! This year instead of teaching my own class, I did a variety of a/v tasks to run the assembly each day, and compiled a slideshow video for the last session as always, and did a rotating science teacher thing where we taught about movement and reactions by building lava lamps and playing a catapult game. Was fun and also unbloggably annoying in some moments, but mostly it's a really great week every year.

I took our annual pic in the matching shirts, but before I could get everyone to smile, I got them to frown for a few tries.

Let's just take another look at Charlotte's face here.

Excellent, yes? Yes.

Marky Day 2015

Last time our anniversary fell on the same day as Father's Day, I proposed that we re-name it Marky Day. Because he's a fantastic husband and a fantastic dad alike.

This year, we celebrated the dad part more than the anniversary part, since I figured he could use a day that's just about him and our anniversary date and feelings could wait a few days. So we took him to a baseball game to see the Durham Bulls play, and get to go onto the field before the game and throw the ball around with the kids.

Real talk: sometimes the picture perfect plans we dream up don't end in perfection.

cherish every moment?

Nathan and Charlotte did have fun throwing the ball around for a few minutes though, and once we got out of the heat and into the shade and found some snacks and drinks, Anneliese perked back up too.

So twelve years and three kids later, I'd say he's still a keeper. We love you, Marky.

Like, really really love you. In a messy, real life, working hard, adoring our kids, crying, sweating, having fun, laughing together at the funny and chaotic things of our life way. I wouldn't want to do this with anyone else but you.

You definitely deserve your own day.

Lasts and Library and Church and Feelings: Summer Begins!

Occupying my brain space this week:

1.) Nathan has learned to do some farting noise thing with his hand and his knee-pit, and it is making me batty.

2.) Mark and the girls have been doing random dance parties in the living room the last couple evenings, and the most recent version seemed to be Ace of Base. Everyone should be so lucky as to have a co-parent who helps teach children the important things in life. (I'm being absolutely sincere.) (Picture me with heart shapes in my eyes.)

3.) Our public library has had a long-standing policy that your fines will max out at $10. Like, however much you owe, $10 will clear it all out. So for years, I have just... left it at $10. I don't pay it, they never ask, and it never gets higher, even when I keep books out overdue. (Yes, I know, I am terrible, shut up.) So anyway they just re-did their website, and I logged in to request a book, and suddenly I owe like... a lot more than $10. What happened? Did the policy change, or just the website? I'm skeered. (Update: just the website changed. I paid the whole giant debt with $10. And yes I paid it because I decided I feel bad about it.)

4.) I have hard church feelings. There's not a one-sentence way to boil it down, but maybe... feeling unsettled in what place I have right now? Anyway. I am taking a tiny break from choir, partly to avoid some toxic people and feelings (which usually I am great at avoiding and handing out grace as I pass by, but these days feels hard), but mostly so I can go worship with my family, in the pews, without dragging them into the chancel with me (which they do, gladly, but it has started to feel complicated) -- and thus try to reframe church from being a thing that mom and dad need to go to, where they get dragged along, and back into a place that's also for them, where they are wanted and needed and valued and belong in their own right. It has gotten out of balance.

5.) Last week was a horrible sad time with my family, and we will be burying my Grandpa this weekend. He was old but it was also fast, and I feel exhausted of the emails and planning and I need some room for my sadness, and I will have more to say about him and his life later, but now I don't have the bandwidth for real words about it. We miss him. It sucks. He was wonderful. He was my last surviving grandparent. He was a good man, in the least trite way one could possible use those words.

6.) Last week I had my last day with Ali. (Well, not my last day. She is still my niece and she better come over here and swim every weekend so I can see her.) But my last day as her daytime caregiver. It has been a heck of a year juggling four kids but most days I think I did it well, and I will have a bond with her forever because of it, I hope. She is a funny sweet energetic bright-eyed little girl, and it has been an honor to be amongst the first humans on earth to truly know her, and love her. I am also glad for the empty summer stretching before us, with lots of time for the kids before Anneliese starts her school years and I go back to work. It's both/and.

7.) Speaking of last days, Nathan had his last day of school yesterday and he is done with second grade and he is still so tiny and still my baby and what is even happening?? On Friday they did a "wax museum" biography project where they dressed up as a person from history and gave little prepared speech about them. Nathan was Walt Disney and he was ADORABLE.

Walt Disney and George Washington were great friends, didn't you know?

Allowance (And a Shopping Day!)

I feel like there is an ongoing discussion about allowance and kids - how old, how much, how to connect it (or not) to chores and/or behavior. We are about a year into our allowance system in our house, so -- here's what we do.

Both big kids (not Charlotte yet, since she can't count) get an allowance. They get $5 a week, of which they are expected to:
-- give 10% (church offering plate or the like)
-- save 10% (in a piggy bank, for bigger purchases which will involve a Together Decision with parents -- although neither of them has crossed this bridge yet)
-- and the rest is theirs to do with as they please

Based on the twitter chatter, this is more than lots of kids their age get, but part of the reason (the hugest part actually) that we wanted to give them an allowance was so that they could stop asking us for things, and learn that a finite amount of money means they make the choices about what they want to buy. And $5 is enough that they can actually get something they want. Which means they don't have to whine at me. So, this amount works for us.

(I will say, for both of them, in the first weeks of getting an allowance, they were both drunk on their riches and would wander around looking for something to buy -- just to buy something, anything -- which drove Mark and me nuts. But they grew out of that within a month or two, and it's better now. I know some grownups would do the same with a sudden influx of cash so I tried not to scowl too much, assuming it's a normal part of some money learning process.)

Okay so they each have a wallet and a piggy bank, and they divvy up their $5 every week into the proper pouches/pockets/places for each designation (we give part of it to them in coins to make this divvying easier) and when we are out and about, they buy their own things.

Exceptions: when we (adults) suggest an outing, we pay. We also pay for presents for friends' birthdays, and give them an extra budget at the holidays to choose gifts. And of course, we buy all of what we consider "needs" (clothes, school supplies, activities/equipment). Anything else they want, they can pay for. This system has all but evaporated the whining in Target.

Also, their allowance isn't tied at all to their chores or their behavior. We didn't want to send the message that, A: they "get paid" for doing chores, or B: that doing chores or behaving properly is somehow optional, with a consequence of less/no allowance. No, they behave because they need to behave. And they do chores because they're part of this family. And (I guess) (I hope) they will always need to be part of a household that will require work/upkeep/contribution, and they will never get paid for that, so no we aren't starting that mindset now. I don't know that there is a right or wrong answer about this, plenty of kids get paid for chores or rewards or grades or whatever, and it seems to work fine. This way just made more sense for Mark and me and our family.

Anyway, that's how we do allowance.

I should also say that with the upside kids making their own purchase decisions also comes the downside of... kids making their own purchase decisions. It means ugly things will come live in your house.

Exhibit A: meet Flower. She is a sequined rainbow cat purse, and she was the longing of Anneliese's little rainbow sequined heart. So she saved her money up and now we own this monstrocity and she loves it and I hate it and I have had to make peace with it.

(No, she does not keep money in there. She keeps a mint tin with the Seattle space needle on it, now empty of mints but housing one pressed penny, also with the space needle on it. She should do a "what's in your purse" blog post, yes?)

Mark spent a lot of time hand-lettering that cat nametag, can you tell?

Another of Anneliese's dreams was to take a trip to a mall with just mommy, where we could go into Claire's (the magical land she had heard about from her friends) and also look in any store she wanted, for as long as she wanted, and hey! that's a dream I can relate to!

So she saved her allowance for many weeks and we went with a full wallet and she spent every dollar and walked away happy. She got a stash of accessories at Claire's, including this ridiculous headband that she proceeded to wear all through one mall, and a lunch date, and then a second mall, without feeling silly or self-conscious in the least (I love her).

She also got a little bundle of wooden carved roses sprayed with piña colada scent, which is a kiosk I would have never in a million years walked up to, but she loves them and letting her wander where her heart calls is sort of fun.

She also got that buttefly necklace which came with a matching ring, and in the process of showing it to me to take a picture, she full on flipped me the bird while grinning, and I will not post that picture here, but will happily email or text it to anyone who would be delighted by that kind of thing.

I mean, she certainly delights me. Rainbows and fake flowers and bird flipping and all.

Ali, Adored: Pool Version

So here's a random icy day activity -

Nathan was texting ("texting") with Uncle Nick and found out they were taking Ali to one of the indoor city pools, and talked his (our) way into joining them, and so suddenly in the middle of an icy cold week we got all swimmy and had a fun afternoon.

And I daresay I haven't seen a cousin so adored in... maybe ever. They see her every day. And yet.

Ice Skating and a Chinese Buffet (A Patriotic Holiday)

So today is Presidents Day, except not really, because Nathan has school. Except not really, because I didn't make him go, because I told him it was a holiday (I thought it was! my calendar said so! my calendar doesn't lie! except this one time) and the girls are out of school, and it's supposed to snow/ice tomorrow which means we will be out of school all week anyway, and what's the point of going for just one day? There is no lasting education happening (that won't need to be repeated) in a one-day week. Anyway, I decided to let him stay home and make the most of my mistake.

And that's the story of why Presidents Day isn't Presidents Day this year. Which is... not a story.

But what we did do with our Presidents Day non-holiday is go... ice skating. I KNOW. MY KIDS. I KNOW. But we tried for a trampoline jump place and they were closed, and ice skating was next door, so we tried something new.

Well, the girls did. Nathan wanted none of it. Although he did take some pictures for us. So, thanks for that, grumpy gus?

Charlotte mostly wanted to hold my hands (ask me what makes ME unsteady on skates? a three-year old hanging on me, that's what) but Anneliese got braver and braver and was off in the middle of the rink, pushing around the stacks of buckets they had on hand for young kids. Really cute, and she was so proud. She is asking for ice skating lessons now. Cute.

And then Nathan and Anneliese had been asking for Chinese food (I don't even know) and since I am the kind of lady who loves a Chinese buffet, we had planned a buffet date for the "school holiday" (remember that thing about how I didn't remember it was a holiday, so).

Y'all, they loved it. My picky eaters tried all kinds of new things, they made lists of what they loved and didn't love, they went back for seconds, we had dessert, we left full and happy and it was the most random thing but also delightful.

So we celebrated President's Day by trying ice skating for the first time, and then pigging out with picky eaters at a Chinese buffet. Anything else would have been unamerican, amiright?

November 1st

So, hey, I had a birthday!

There is not much exciting to tell about it, but it was actually a lovely sort of low-key day. I slept (somewhat) late, had a morning choir rehearsal, had a sweet brunch with Mark and the kids, spent most of the afternoon snuggling and reading, which is exactly what I wanted, and then went on a fantastic date to a vietnamese-asian-something-type seafood restaurant in Chapel Hill.

"Charlotte told me what to write,"
Nathan explained (rolling his eyes).

A lady in choir made finger cookies, which were FAR to reminiscent of
the snow adventure horrible finger situation for me to actually stomach.

We also shopped some for a new wedding/engagement/anniversary/whatever ring, to replace the one I lost on the cruise this spring. I can't make myself pull the trigger just yet, it's a weird mix of exciting and lovely and also SO SAD (no ring will ever be the one he put on my finger at our wedding) but there is one that he loves that we feel good about, so that will probably be happening soon.

Oh! And my dad sent me flowers as per his tradition.

I'm sure a lot of dads send flowers on their daughters' birthdays, but I'd like to think my flowers make me smile more than other people's, because the whole thing started when I was five and my dad brought home apology flowers for my mom but since it was my birthday I assumed they were for me (red roses! HA!) and I guess my dad couldn't bear to tell me they weren't, so he went with it, and then the next year I was so excited/expected to get flowers again that it turned into a Thing. And he's sent flowers for every single birthday since then, including the two years I was living in Europe on my birthday. There is something really fun and adorable about your dad tracking down a florist in a foreign country to wish you a happy birthday. (The internet was not then what it is now, y'all. Just trust me. It was a sweet and impressive feat.) Anyway it's a fun tradition and it makes me smile every. single. year.

(I just went and looked, and somehow this a story I have never told in a blog post before, WEIRD WHY NOT ERIN?)

Also! Marky got me a Kindle paperwhite! I am new to the world of e-reading, so y'all tell me what I need to know to become a kindle person, okay? Right now I'm not a kindle person. But I can be! I want to be! It is better than packing stacks of books when I travel, for sure! Right now I mostly only use kindle as a phone app, for reading trashy romance novels. Smut, basically. So a real kindle is like my version of big-screen smut! Yeah I said it. Anyway it's beautiful and I want it to be for more than that so help me!

And the size of this thing is just perfect. So much smaller than a tablet, so much bigger than a phone. It's like... a BOOK! (Duh, Erin.) (I am easily impressed.) The size sort of delights me.

A fun part of my new kindle was texting with Kelley in India for pointers on connecting it to my library account. What, doesn't everyone contact your friends in the third world to help with their first-world problems? (Yes, yes actually, we do.)

Anyway. I digress. Happy birthday to me! And yes, the leaves changed just in time.

Pumpkin Patch (Etc.) (ETC!)

A question for the ages: if you take your kids to a pumpkin patch, but don't instagram anything while you're there, did it really happen?

Because the kids had a teacher workday, and so we went to a pumpkin patch (AND MORE) (there is no such thing as just a pumpkin patch, I have learned) and despite what you didn't see on instagram, it was a fun little outing!

more than just a "pumpkin patch" y'all

They had bounce houses and pig races and and giant shelters full of hay for rolling around, and inflatable horses for kids to race each other on. And also tunnels for crawling in, and an old barn-turned-fort. Oh! And a petting/feeding zoo of farm animals! Naturally!

They also had a silo thing filled (shallowly, but still filled) with corn and y'all, that's kinda the stuff of nightmares. I let the kids get in it and they LOVED IT but hot damn I will be thinking about it for weeks. That sh!t is terrifying. A silo full of corn just looks like danger danger danger death to me. Am I the only one with this fear? Because yeah no.

Slightly less terrifying, a big tube built onto the side of a hill that serves as a giant slide. We rode down on burlap sacks. Yes, slides are still fun for grownups, stop pretending you wouldn't have gone on it it too.

And, of course, we did do the hayride to a pumpkin patch* to pick out our pumpkins (*field with already-picked pumpkins lying in neat rows, for instagram purposes I assume). My rule: you can have any pumpkin you want, as long as you can carry it yourself. And that's the story of how we got the three smallest pumpkins in Youngsville yesterday.

But they carved up just fine, each kid designed their own and Mark helped cut them and they came out cute!

Barely in time for Halloween! We are just super on top of things yknow.

Lemurs and a Lunch Date

I am weeks behind and was just pulling pictures off my phone and look what I found! We had a whole day of lemurs (which has turned into a lemur-chattery month) and I never blogged about it!

On labor day, Mark was working but Nick and Barbara were off (and therefore home with Ali), so it was a good day to do some big-kids things with just my three. We had an imax gift card from Nick and Barbara, so we decided to go see the 3-d movie about lemurs in Madagascar.

Not the animated one, this documentary one. And it was so good. If you have kids who like animals. watch it. It's under an hour. Recommend.

It was the perfect level of cute and informational for young kids, without being terribly dumbed down. Nathan loved it. (That kind of thing is totally his jam.) Anneliese hung onto it really well too, and Charlotte was also amused, although it took us all day to convince her they were lemurs and not "silly jumping monkeys." When she finally decided they were lemurs, she pronounced it wee-muh, which is, well, hella cute, and also only one of the reasons lemurs are my new favorite animals.

Want to know all the reasons? Sure you do.
1- they're freaking cute
2- they're prehistoric primates, they survived what killed the dinos!
3- the females are in charge
4- they communicate by singing! like whales!
5- wee-muh, in Charlotte's sweet voice

I'm not even that into science or nature, I mean, it's fine, whatever, I'm not usually particularly fascinated by it or anything. But I am so taken with these lemurs. There's a lemur center up the road at Duke, and we will totally be going there soon. I've got my eye on you, Groupon.

So anyway after the lemur movie we went to the science museum for lunch (it sounds random, but a delicious family of restaurants here in Raleigh has one of their locations at the science museum, and they have the best iced coffee in town, and it's a very cool place we like).

We ate, and then we gave three cheers for Charlotte going potty in a public bathroom (her first time not at home! wooo hoooo!) so we didn't feel in a rush to get home. We wandered through the museum for a while, saw some whales and water and weather exhibits.

When the girls and I got scienced out, we hauled Nathan away from his fun! facts! and picked out some wax paper dinosaur silhouettes to make stained glass decorations for the bonus room windows.

(I remember when I used to think I would never have such tackiness in my house. Hahahahaaaaa, 2007 Erin, you're cute.)