EEEK!!!

Last night George was working late. It was time for Ella to go to bed. She said goodnight to Emily. I told Emily I would be back in a minute...she sat downstairs by herself to watch TV. Ella had climbed bed & I was just sitting down next to her when I heard a screech-y scream... "MOOOOOOOMYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!" followed by lots of thumping as she tried (and failed a few times) to run up the stairs.

"I saw it! It was little and it was gray and I saw it!!!!! I saw it run under the bookcase.....A MMMMMMMMMOUSE!!!! I will never get books from that bookcase again!!!"
She jumped up into my lap (on Ella's bed) and was holding on to be so tightly and shaking. She asked for socks to cover her feet (just like I would have!)...i never held her, she held on to me all the way down the hall to her room & back...she is 49" tall and not light as a feather but she held on with no help from me! When we got back to Ella's room I tried to explain to Emily that as unpleasant as our uninvited guest is, it won't hurt her...Ella added "unless you pet it Emily, then it will bite you!" What a nice little sister...but wait, it gets better. Emily said she wanted to sleep with me and I said no, she didn't sleep with me when she found the mouse at Grandma's house she wasn't going to do it here either, we all have our own beds. Still visibly shaken, Emily looked at Ella and said "can I sleep with you Ella, PLEEEEASE??" So her dear sweet little sister looks at her and says "Well, let me think about it. Maybe the next time you see a mouse I'll think about it but not tonight...you can sleep in your bed" Feel the love...

A little after we left Ella, it was time to go back upstairs for Emily to go to bed. She went to the bathroom (I had to stand guard outside of the door to prevent intruders) and I said I had to use the bathroom ... "I AM coming with you, Mommy" she said quietly. I told her that was fine, she almost walked on my feet she was so close to me. When we got to my bathroom we had a little conversation:
Her: "Mommy, can you give me something?"
Me: "like what?"
Her: "Anything..."
Me: "Emily what do you need?"
Her: "you know when I am stuffy and you give me medicine to help me and it makes me
so sleepy that I can't keep my eyes open?"
Me: "yes.."
Her: "that..."

Poor baby...my 5 year old was so scared she actually asked for benadryl so she could not even think of fighting sleep...

Terminix came today to put out traps, they were not what George said they would bring which was a larger version of the "roach motel"....they set out glue traps!!! I have left the ones in the garage until I can get some other ones tomorrow but got rid of the ones in the house. I can only imagine the trauma to my girls (not to mention the mouse or myself) if they came downstairs one morning & saw a mouse chewing it's foot off...or one that had managed to do so already! YUCK!!!!!!

Not much has gone on here in a while...we are bored!!!

Emily got her report card on Thursday. I can't believe she's been in school long enough to get 2 report cards!! She is doing really well in everything...all my worrying about no pre-school seems to have been for nothing. It even said she gets along well and cares for others...at home we see a lot of evidence to the contrary but...

Ella's big highlight of the week was that she had ringworm! We have NO idea where she got it from. DO NOT LOOK IT UP ONLINE!!! There are some really nasty pictures out there of bad untreated ringworm...YUCK!!!! She had a cut in her leg & we put a Band-Aid on it. A few days later she said it still needed a Band-Aid. The third day she asked for a Band-Aid I really looked at it (I know, more points toward mother of the year!) and noticed it was a circle...the next day I looked again and it was bigger, had scales inside of it and I noticed the red ring was raised. The morning after we started the medicine on it the scales were gone and she said it didn't itch anymore...all I can say is YUCK!!!

I took the girls to church 2 weeks ago, St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic. Ella said it was delightful because there were no dead people there (the last times we were there had been for funerals), Emily said it was horrible because you had to be quite for so long! Someone tried to "peace" Emily & I couldn't decide if she was going to deck them or throw up! When we left Emily asked that we never go back there again because it was horrible! I really think she meant more than the quite, she was just very uncomfortable). This past weekend we went to St. Julian Episcopal Church. When we walked in Emily said it was much nicer than "that other church"...after the service she asked if we could keep coming to this church & that this was where she wanted to go to Sunday School. The pastor told Emily that she would be teaching the Sunday School class that Emily was in & Emily said "Good, I like to learn and Mommy said she's not a good teacher! I need to know a lot of things about this place!" Ella thinks it will be fun (although she's just not like Emily) and told the pastor that "her church was much nicer than that dark church we had to go to last weekend". I guess that's where I'll take them...now what about George? ;)

No School today

Emily doesn't have school today...she's not happy about it. She has known this day was coming for a while. As soon as the teacher sent the school calendar home she was upset because the day was marked NO SCHOOL! A few days later she asked why. I told her for Martin Luther King Jr day. She asked what that was...I explained. She asked me if Barack Obama would have a day & I said I hope not. When she asked why I explained again that we have this day because Martin Luther King Jr was killed...so no, I hope we don't have a Barack Obama day anytime soon. I guess she was okay with that because she left the room. A day or two later she asked again why there was no school on the 19th. I told her again, Martin Luther King Jr day. She said I know about that but the calendar says MILK DAY...I don't know why we have to be off for milk...I don't even drink milk!!!! {the calender shows MLK Day so aside from being offended at being off for MILK, she apparently thought the creator of the calendar was a moron who couldn't spell milk...}
That's my Emily!

Back to normal

Okay...we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief! All photographic evidence of my children is still intact!!!!! Apparently the other computers' motherboard died but the drive was still fine. George got some contraption that will allow us to use the drive from the old computer as a back up drive (the computer guy removed it from the old computer). We also have another hard drive floating around our house that can be put in this thingy he got & use it as storage as well...hooray! I would post some pictures just to share the joy but I can't upload them yet because it keeps telling me I am missing something that is required to upload and I have no idea what it is talking about so it will have to wait until George is home and NOT working...maybe this weekend...

Emily is still in love with school. Her class has started to keep a reading log. She brings home two easy readers a night and we have to write down what she read and how long it took. It is supposed to take 15 minutes...it takes about 1 minute for her to read both and about another minute to tell me about them...we add her skinny book club books to the list and that takes about 15 minutes (if we include the time it takes her to write the report for her book club). I asked Emily if they ever read out loud at school and she said sometimes. I asked her if she liked it and the conversation went something like this:
me: do you like to read out load at school?
her: everyone gets a chance, it's not just me
me: but is it fun Em?
her: everyone isn't as good at it as me
me: well Em, everyone needs a chance, that's how they will get better
her: if they have a chance and can't do it, I should be able to do it for them...
that would be a better way!
I am glad she has self confidence but a little charity would be nice too don't you think? She did tell me later not to worry, she didn't actually tell any kids in her class that they didn't read very well, that's something...

Ella and I were at Publix the other day and she say a magazine cover of Barack Obama.
This is how that conversation went:
her: is that rockin bama?
me: yes, that is Barack Obama.
her: is he going to be the new president?
me: yes, he will be our new president.
her: when?
me: next week...just a few more days.
her: we need a better president that we have now huh?
me: yes, I think we do.
after a pause...
her: mommy, is rockin' bama Little Bill's daddy?
(Little Bill is a cartoon on Noggin about a little african american boy,
basically it's Bill Cosby)
me: no Beans, he is not. Barack Obama is a real person, Little Bill is a cartoon
character.
her: well, they both wear brown skin mommy!

I love my girls :)

Saturday

As promised, we built a Time Capsule at Lowe's yesterday. The girls had a good time. Ella was very serious with her hammering...a few times George was afraid she was going to whack her head she was so close to it! Emily had to sand EVERY piece of wood before they could begin assembly...I wish they wouldn't include the sandpaper in the build kits...it is not needed at all! I took lots of pictures...Ella's serious look (up close!), Emily looking very pleased, George building these things. Sorry you can't see them...why? Oh that's right because our computer melted yesterday morning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was just sitting there, playing on Facebook waiting for breakfast to finish cooking and it just died. The screen got funny, lines all over, pixel-y, slow & then it just went black. No noise, no blue-screen of death...just quietly gone. At first I said to George "Oh well, you just have to laugh right?" I was trying to be "optimistic", if it died it died, there wasn't anything we could do. George did what he could, he put in a different something to see if it would work...never even got the thing to turn back on...it pretended to but it never booted again. All of a sudden it hit me... no computer = NO PICTURES OF MY BABIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Every picture I've every taken of the girls is on that machine. Yes, we have a few printed out...Yes there are a bunch floating around (of Emily) but that isn't even a quarter of the pictures I have taken of them. I was in tears...I still get teary thinking that the ones that all my friends & family have might be the only ones left. We won't know until Monday if the computer guy can get them off of the old drive. I don't care if we can get anything else...I just want the pictures. there are some e-mails that would be nice to have (like the one from my dad about having his mother's phone number turned off) and my stuff from quicken would be handy now (tax time and all) but all I really want are those pictures!
Please, let's all hold our collective breath and hope all is not lost shall we...

Daily Life

I have not abandoned the blog, we've just done nothing exciting...nothing even not exciting. I have been working on trying to organize the playroom. It is a disaster! I have had to do this before but this time just seems more complicated. All the other times Emily and Ella have gone to play in another room while I straightened up. Emily is in school so I am all Ella has...this makes most things difficult. I went through and got rid of 2 large garbage bags full of junk...broken toys, toys with missing pieces and LOTS of happy meal stuff. They haven't noticed anything missing yet.

Everyday has been the same this week...get Emily to school, clean the kitchen, watch HSM & HSM2 with Ella back to back to back to back (she wants to marry Troy Bolton... uh-oh!)Emily gets home, we do homework have a snack, read books & then it's time for dinner bath & bed. Then I make dinner for George & I, clean up, watch tv & then go to bed. It's fine...I think Ella and I are bored because we had so many people here with us for 10 days & then they left & George went back to work & Emily went back to school. We are just trying to get back to regular days...that don't include shopping trips everyday! We did go to story time this week. Ella really likes it. Of course I wasn't sure if I should be concerned or not when the "winter scene" she drew was a few falling snowflakes, some snow on the ground and a snow covered roller coaster with a police chase going on. I of course only knew about the roller coaster and police chase from her description...

In Emily news, she tried to eat a paper towel yesterday. Why? "they are yummy" was the answer my 5 1/2 year old munchkin gave me! I wonder about her sometimes... She also said she thought it might help her to not get the pudding on her tongue... like I said, I wonder.

Tomorrow we are going to a build a time capsule at Lowe's. I have tried to explain to the girls what a time capsule is and they have both told me that is ridiculous. All that they were going to do is pack it full of stuff...shocking!

A New Year

So here we are 2009...This will be an exciting year I hope. I also hope it will be calmer than the past few have been for us. Ella is all registered for pre-school...she doesn't start until August but periodically asks if she is going on Monday when Emily goes back to school. Emily can't wait until tomorrow. This has been a long vacation for her. Fun was had by all of us with all of our company. Elizabeth & Geoff were her from the 23rd of December until the 27th. My parents were here from the 26th of December until the 3rd of January. It was a full house but like I said, fun fun fun! The girls have been sick. They each spent about 4 days with fevers over 103...mostly 104.something, nasty cough and congestion. When they started to complain of ear pain, I took them to the doctor. Of course that day they had no fever! Lots of nasty goop in their head though. It was good that I took them though, a day or 2 on the medication and they were feeling much better.
Now I have the daunting task of reorganizing the playroom to fit all of the new toys and things. It is an utter mess but in a few days it will be great...I hope! I love January...all of the organization and getting rid of clutter. A fresh start, I hope it keeps going.........