PICTURES including pretty pink princess flower fairy ballerina

Pretty pink dress handed down. Here, she's spinning and it was just luck that I got such a lovely ballerina pose.


I try to take pictures and she wants to see them before I've even taken them.



DS1 trying to hold her still.



DD sleeps in our bed. DS2 crawled in this morning.

I got up to start the day and next thing I knew, DS1 was in there, too.

DH was trying to sleep.



"Where? Where? See!"

school preparation

Well, I've struck out so far on getting the kids up much earlier so they will be ready for school.

We have about half of the stuff on their supply lists - and the meet the teacher day is tomorrow and i like them to have most of it by then.

DS2 keeps asking when he "gets to" go to school. Please remember that this is the child that it takes a crowbar to get out of bed on many school mornings.

We didn't do most of the things I had hoped we would do this summer, including very much reading and math practice.

We didn't take a vacation, either. Just as I was thinking that we really needed to get away for a few days, we found out my MIL has leukemia, so I'm being really careful with money because we'll need to go over to France really soon. Luckily, it hasn't been as hot this summer as some other summers we've had. Not that it's been comfortable, just slightly less miserable.

And the boys have still never ever gotten their rooms picked up.

rockin to REM

pictures of a late summer

Self-explanatory


See! Seeee! MINE SEEE!


Those boxes of cereal I mentioned on facebook.


Hey DS1! Hey! What're ya doin'? Come on. Come out. Hey! DS1!

writing again

not very quickly, but school starts in a week. What I am doing is taking a story I started a few months ago (turmoil in Louis XIV's France) and then got stuck on. I have plotted it out now, moving the existing scenes around within the first half and then making notes on missing scenes and thinking it through from there.

I started this because I know the story is in there, I just have to get it out of my head and on the screen. Maybe this way, I'll have fewer useless scenes to cut. Maybe.

I also started to get serious about it because I had a new idea come to me, a sort of vision of the heroine's brother as he is confronted by his late wife's cousin at a siege in Franche-Comté.

(commence eye-glazing) It was a rather quick campaign in 1668 related to the War of the Succession between France and Spain. See, Louis married his 1st cousin (on both sides - they had all their grandparents in common. ew.) a Spanish princess who had a claim to the throne. They signed away the right to the throne in return for a huge dowry from Spain.... which was never paid. Nothing like cheating your own nephew for kicks! Louis then went and started conquering a bunch of Spain's possessions, like the Netherlands and Franche-Comté. Which happens to be the part of France that my husband's from. (/eye-glazing)

Anyway, he's there on a mostly useless, marginalized campaign, and his dead wife's cousin shows up, saying someone tried to kill his daughter. Oh, and she's so myopic, she's practically blind, back then when they didn't have eyeglasses. And I plotted it out after writing a couple of scenes and then figured I should really finish this other book first...

How cute is this?

The boys (especially DS2) suddenly desperately wanted the Lego Passnger Train with power functions (motor and remote). between them, they had about $90, so I told them that they could do extra work around the house to earn the rest ("But whyyyyyyy won't you just buy it for us?" It costs $129.99, plus tax and you JUST HAD your birthday. But I'll put in about $20 if you let your sister play with it too.)

So they washed the car ($5 each), helped pick/pick up peaches ($2 each), washed the sinks and toilets ($1 per item cleaned), and mowed the lawn and clipped around the edges ($5 each).

So this morning, at almost lunchtime, they were adding up their money (still working on that with DS2...) and they had $120.08. And there was much rejoicing.

We went to Toys R Us (part of the 'money' was an old TRU gift card with $15 on it. And I surfed around the internet and no one had it cheaper) and they had just one. And there was much rejoicing.

So that's it. We have the train and track and motor and remote and 9 (NINE!) AAA batteries. I figure that hey, it's Lego, so when they get tired of the train going around and around, they can use the motor to build something else. And it's their money.

And so far, only one fight because "[DS2] has had more turns and longer turns and won't let [DD] play with it very much."

I'm thinking up a plan for allowances.