Let's back up a bit, shall we?

I just realized that in my blog-block funk, I have neglected to report on this years' Smoky Mountain trip:

The last weekend of August, we had the privilege of doing something we'd never done before. We combined the Pressleys and the McCarthys for a weekend in the mountains. So, the kids had an entire weekend with both sets of grandparents. They were in hog heaven.

We had a really nice time. Judy and Dennis cooked lots of great food (as usual), and there was lots of rock hopping, river swimming, outlet shopping, trail hiking and over eating.

*This is really not my story to tell, but since none of the eyewitnesses will blog it, I shall record it for posterity myself. When Grandaddy and Corin and Evan and Pressley went hiking, they saw a big black snake in (or right off of) the trail. Upon closer inspection, it turns out the snake was in the process of eating a chipmunk. Whole. So they watched. The 3 generations of boys found the whole thing way cool, while our little Miss P was completely grossed out.*

Here is Pressley with GranNan at Newfound Gap on the way to the cabin.

The terrace level of our cabin not only housed two bedrooms, but also a foosball table and a pool table.

Evan playing pool with Grandaddy.

Here's one of Pressley with Gran at Metcalf Bottoms.

And, finally, some pics of some of the river fun.

A big thanks to the McCarthys for being such gracious hosts and a shout-out to my dad for once again stepping up as family photographer when this lame-brained mommy forgot to take a camera. Again.

There are many more photos of the mountain trip, as well as some September soccer photos and whatnot at the August and September album links.

She made a liar out of me

I may have mentioned that I have been highly skeptical about the success of Pressley's soccer career. I agreed to let her sign up for soccer, and we bought the stuff, but I really doubted she would ever actually play. I was just trying to be a good mommy and let her learn on her own.

Her first soccer practice was last Thursday, and we had 5 minutes or so to kill after we endured the grueling task that is getting a child into their shinguards, soccer socks and cleats, and this is how she killed the time:

That would be an Americal Girl Doll catalog that she is browsing through, exclaiming on every page, "Ooooh, mommy. I want this for Christmas!" Didn't do anything to boost my already low expectations for soccer practice.

But I dutifully filled a water bottle, put her new pink ball in her new YMCA sports bag, and drove us all over to practice. I was shocked when she trotted right out onto the field with her ball and started kicking it around with her friends. Even more shocked when she ran her little heart out doing sprint drills, and I'll be derned if she didn't then do this:

She fell down many, many times during the various drills, but she never cried about getting dirty. She did, however, stop in the middle of her turn to dribble the ball down and kick it into the goal to brush every speck of dirt off of her knee after she fell before she proceded to complete the exercise. A girls' gotta have priorities after all.

In Evan news, Corin was reading a story to the kids the other night called "What Do People Do All Day?" (As a side note, this book is one of the kids' favorites, but it was clearly written very many years ago when it was ok to write things like, "Rail yards are busy places. Some railroad workers ride in a caboose. The frieght train engineer watches the signals. A hobo doesn't work, but he likes to ride in a boxcar." With a picture of a cat in a jacket with patches on it, carrying a stick with a bandana bundle at the end, and labeled 'HOBO'.)

Anyway, Corin is reading this book and starts asking the kids, "Do you know what daddy does?" Evan: Oh, yeah. You settle arguements, blah, blah, blah. "Do you know what my job is called?" Evan: Ummm, lawyer. "And what does mommy do?" Evan (excitedly): Stays home and relaxes!

Corin got a huge chuckle out of that, but quickly corrected him that mommy works very hard, etc., etc. (Probably mostly because I was within earshot, but whatever works.) Then, luckily, the book helped to further explain the situation by explaining what people do with the money that they get when the provide a good or a service. "Grocer Cat (not to be confused with Hobo Cat) bought a new dress for Mommy. She earned it by taking such good care of the house."

And then I burned my bra.

So long summer!

You would think that after sending the kids back to school, I'd just have all kinds of time to blog, right? I don't know what has happened to me these past 4 weeks, but I have been having a bit of bloggers block and also keeping very busy gearing up for our fall schedule.

First things first: The kids are both adjusting well and really enjoying the new school year. The only hiccup has been that Pressley took a couple of weeks to get used to going to school every day. Being used to going two days a week, a five day week has apparently been hard for her to get adjusted to. One day, during the second week of school when I was asking her to get herself dressed for school, she said (in typical exaggerated Pressley fashion) "A-GAIN??" When I said yes - and I thought you loved school, she replied, "I do, but not EVERY DAY!!" She seems to be past that now and we're rockin' right along. She is doing very well. She is perfecting writing her letters, learning a new song each week about the letter of the week, counting to ten in French, and doing "homework" every Thursday night (which consists of cutting pictures out of magazines to correspond to the letter of the week and pasting them into a "book" that she has decorated at school). She is growing up so fast.

Evan has had a rather seamless adjustment to school this year. He is in a first grade class with a handful of kids from his kindergarten class as well as one good friend from the neighborhood. I was a bit concerned that he and the neighborhood friend would be trouble together, but so far, we've gotten all "greens" for behavior, so we're pleased that it hasn't been a problem. Evan is becoming quite the little reader, but his favorite subject is math. He came home with a math assignment the other night to do on the computer and was very excited to tell his GranNan and Poppy all about it.

And, why were GranNan and Poppy there helping him with his homework, you might ask? Because I have started back with my seasonal job at GSU College of Law. I am offering career advice to law students three days a week, and one of those days, I need to stay a little later, so mom and dad helped out with the kids the first week until I could get a sitter in place. I always enjoy my time at GSU. It is nice to be back in the working world for a little bit, but I am always anxious to get back home to be with my kids (and back into my flip-flops!) :o)

Fall is shaping up to be very busy around our house. We've got Pressley taking gymnastics, ballet and playing her first (and maybe last) season of soccer. Her soccer practices start Thursday of this week, so I'm anxious to see how that goes.... Evan is playing soccer in a new league this season and is continuing with his karate classes one day a week after school. I'm teaching pre-school music on Wednesday nights at church, so we have at least one activity scheduled every day of the week. I have a weekly calendar that hangs on the side of my fridge with a separate column for each family member just to keep me organized with who has to take a leotards and tap shoes or a gi and library books on what day. And I'm still not sure I'm on top of things.

I say all that to say that even though this post contains no pictures, there should be plenty of photo-taking opportunities in the coming weeks and I promise to be better about updating the blog. I had no intention of being absent for this long, but it was as if I blinked and August was gone.

Back to school

I'm too tired to be sentimental right now. Pressley woke me up at 2:45 a.m. by climbing into bed with us and telling me she was too scared to sleep in her bed. Then, I lay awake for a full hour before stumbling down the hall to get another 3 fitful hours of sleep in her bed.

We woke up when the alarms went off at 7 a.m. But I'll be derned if I know what happened to the time. By the time they were fed and had teeth brushed and I'd made 2 lunches, we were already behind.

But, I did manage to snap a few pictures of Evan's first day of first grade and Pressley's first day of Pre-K. They were very excited and TOO cute!

Getting ready to go:



Happy first grader:

Evan at his first grade desk in Ms. Baldwin's room:

Daddy and Pressley walking into the Frazer Center:

Pressley with her teacher, Ms. Martha: (Evan also had Ms. Martha, and we LOVE her.)

Diary of a mom of an exhibitionist

I do NOT have time to be blogging right now. We should be getting ready for my Granny's 90th birthday party since we will be leaving in less than an hour. (Happy Birthday, Granny!) But, I cannot take the chance that I will forget to write about this later.

This morning, Corin decided that he was going to embark on the project of getting Evan to ride his bike without training wheels. I know most 6 year olds can probably do that already, but our neighborhood is very hilly, and there is really nowhere for him to ride without very close supervision, so his bike time has always been fairly limited.

Anyway, while they were doing that, Pressley and I went to the grocery store (we never made it yesterday for the lunchbox essentials). A lady at Publix was handing out samples of fat free blueberry pudding. After initially passing on this offer, Pressley decided that she did want the pudding and then proceeded to nibble on the thimble-sized portion for about 20 minutes - including taking it into the car with us for the ride home. As we neared the house, she spilled some! Heaven forbid. So she began crying that she had to change her clothes. For once, this actually suited me since she needs to put on a dress for Granny's party. I told her there was nothing to be upset about because she was about to take a bath to get all clean and pretty for Granny's party.

Then, I got carried away with getting the groceries in from the car and watching Evan's bike demonstration. While standing in the shade across the alley-way from our garage and watching Evan try to learn to push off and get the bike going solo, I glanced over toward the house. And then did a double take. There stood a totally buck naked Pressley just outside the garage door in the driveway wearing nothing but a sheepish grin. Where any resident of about 10 neighboring houses could have seen her if they came out of their garages.

I began dying laughing and running back across the street. She asked me "What??" about 10 times, but I couldn't stop laughing long enough to answer her. I just shooed her back into the house and up the stairs.

I mean, seriously. What will this child think of next?

Mad painting skills and missing teeth

Just a quick update today. I told you that after we "surprised" Daddy with Evan's finished pottery, I would try to share it with you. Turns out Daddy wasn't all that surprised since Evan had left our gecko templates lying around the house, but he was still impressed by the finished product. I was too. Check it out. I really only helped a little bit. I traced our templates on where he told me to put them. Then, Evan painted and I re-traced the template lines with black paint. I think he should be pretty proud of himself.

And, I also promised a picture of the first missing tooth. Or, more accurately, the first gap left by the first missing tooth. This is not the best picture of Evan, but it is really hard to get a photo of a gap in the bottom teeth with a pleasant look at the same time.... Ya know?

That's all I have for today. Happy weekend. I'll be back Monday (if not before) to report on the kids' first day of school. I can't believe my babies are going to be in Pre-K and First grade! I'll wait until Monday to get all sentimental and mushy.

We've already been to open house and gotten all the school supplies labeled and in Evan's desk. Now, we're off to the grocery store to stock up on lunchbox necessities.

I'm thinking of seeking help

You'd think at age 30-(ahem), I would know myself pretty well. But, in my thirties, I've had lots of "new" revelations. For example, I can wear my hair curly (without a perm); I am a bit of a control freak; and my most recent revelation: I apparently was not done playing with Barbies when I was a child.

You see, I've discovered, much to my dismay, that I sometimes treat my only daughter as a bit of a Barbie doll. She may not have long blond hair or unrealistic body proportions, but I tend to dress her up all the same. I don't necessarily sign her up for activities just so I can buy the outfits that go along with it, but if I'm being honest, I have to confess that dressing her appropriately for each new activity really is my favorite part. I even find myself walking past the leotard section at Target every once in a while just in case they have any new offerings that Pressley might like.

It is a sickness.

So, when we decided to sign her up for soccer, I knew she would need cleats. So we went to Target yesterday to buy cleats. And a lunchbox for school. But that is beside the point.

She tried on the cleats with the pink accents, and right next to them were the matching socks. Now, I know that her uniform will come with some navy socks with some gray stripes, but BORing!! So, we bought the socks with the pink stripes. Then I realized that the child does not own any athletic clothing whatsoever. Not even a pair of shorts. So, here's how the rest of the thought process went:

"If I don't buy her a practice outfit, I'll have to let her practice in her uniform. If she sweats in her uniform at practice, I'll have to wash it. And we know from Evan's experience that the soccer uniform doesn't hold up so great in the wash. If I have to wash it twice a week, it will be ruined in no time. And then we'll have to pay $30 to replace it. So, it really would be cheaper to buy a new outfit for her to practice in."

See how neatly that works? If you need to rationalize something, you just give me a call and we'll work through it together....

So, I ended up buying her an athletic skort that is pink and black and white, which matches the new cleats and socks.

Luckily, Pressley is a willing and eager participant in this hobby of mine. She may even enjoy it more than I do.

So, yesterday you met Cheer Barbie:


May I now introduce Soccer Barbie: (She wore this whole ensemble - including socks - to get her hair cut and run errands today. I did make her take off her cleats and put on her sparkle cheer tennis shoes, but she still got quite a lot of attention. The person working the drive-thru at McDonald's yelled out the window as we walked past in the parking lot..."I like your socks!" And then called other employees over to look out the window as well.)

Here's Spectator Barbie at one of Evan's swim meets: (This is a bit of a stretch. I didn't actually dress her like that. She picked out the dress and necklace and then took my sunhat from me because it was miserably hot and sunny out.)

Beach Barbie:

Gymnastics Barbie: (That is a lollipop stick in her mouth. This pic was obviously taken after a haircut or a trip to the bank.)

And Mermaid Barbie: (But, in my defense... this was Halloween, so there was a legitimate excuse.)

So, you tell me... Do I need counseling, or do all mothers of girls do this to their daughters to a certain degree so long as the daughters are willing to indulge it?