Whose daylight am I saving?

How non-morning people
deal with DST.
Cartoons and snuggles.

The girls did fairly well with daylight savings time yesterday. They slept in to a reasonable hour - even a reasonable hour in the new time (I told my Dad that I wasn't changing the clocks until we got up - because if I had to get up with a 4 or a 5 in the time, I was going to be unreasonable for the day!).

We had a good day together, including a trip to the Children's Museum and a bit of time outside before the wind threatened to just simply blow us all away. It was going well ... until after dinner. When they descended into anarchy! I don't know why rules were suddenly irrelevant. But they were. And Quinn the Destructor was in full form. Her poor big sister was just trying to deal with her tired in a constructive way by building a hopscotch game out of beaded necklaces in the hallway. And Q dealt with her tired by taking great joy in destroying said game. Repeatedly. Physical separations ensued.

Stocking hat twins

Luckily anarchy was short-lived as we simply put their tired, unreasonable selves to bed. And by 7:40 in the new time regime, there was silence from the back hallway. Anarchy will liking rear its head a few more times as bodies fully adjust. But they both seemed to enjoy their extra hour this morning as they slept until we woke them up. And were both in sunshine-y moods. So much so that Fiona has already earned herself an extra book at bedtime. If only all Monday mornings went so well ...

Tricks, Treats, and Two Disney Mice

Quinn is playing a trick on the family. She's cutting FOUR molars. Three are at least partially through and one is royally ticking her (and us) off. To be fair, she's cut (or almost cut) six teeth this month. None of the rest of our mouths want to do that. A little grace will be given ...

We managed to tease her into a good enough humor to be our Quinny Minnie and join her Mickey for a round of trick or treating around the neighborhood. For the first time, Buggy totally understood it - and LOVED it. After each house, she would say, "can we trick or treat again?" We started out pulling the wagon, but decided it was a pain to pull them out at each house. So Mike carried Minnie and Mickey walked (!) with me.

Then even more magic was discovered when we got home. Oh. my. goodness. Other friends came to our house and we could put candy in their bags!! The girls were totally into it. Our visiting friends were so patient as Quinny slowly, painstakingly, put a single candy in each of their bags. Then they put their bags up again so Buggy could put her handful of candy in each bag too. The most patient of friends got a serious haul from us - so it was worth their wait.

Moral of the story: with the hyper big and cranky little, we didn't get much for pictures tonight. These were the best we could do for the day.

Getting Scary

We're practicing up for Halloween. We've donned our costumes twice, are trick-or-treating pros, and are sure there will be cake at the day care Halloween party (fingers crossed).

What a glorious weekend we've had. We spent the morning outside on Saturday, ensuring the leaf pile was nice and compressed for Daddy. Mom had the brilliant idea to line the slide up with pile ... sweet! Then Auntie came down for a fun afternoon of pumpkin carving. We have a silly pumpkin and a happy pumpkin (Bugs' orders). Bug even helped Daddy scrape out one of the pumpkins and oversaw the carving. Her attention was rock solid for 1 1/2 pumpkins. Not bad for a three year old!

Mom, Bug, Q, and Yogs headed to the park this afternoon after nap because it was just too beautiful to not be outside as much as possible. It was so great that we all headed back out after dinner. Breathing in all that fresh air as long as we can.

A humorous side note from Friday ... I texted Mike around 11 am on Friday to tell him I was so hungry that I was considering eating my arm. He texted back that he was starving too. I met my good friend Mary for lunch at Punch and ate an entire pizza (that's not abnormal. They're sorta personal size). I called Mike after to tell him I was still hungry. He told me that he had gone to a Chinese restaurant and had a double entree and a side of potstickers ... and was still hungry. Then, when M picked up the girls from Ms. A's, she likened feeding our children at lunch to "feeding the lions at the zoo." There may or may not have been nearly literal pouncing on food. And knowing Q, probably bellowing for more! My official diagnosis - family tapeworm. What else could it be? ;-)

It's not Fall ...

until you jump in a big ol' pile of leaves! Fiona has been asking for a leaf pile every day for over a week. Mike got home a little early today and worked quickly to surprise her with a pile when he brought them home from day care. She LOVED it! Quinn was unsure. She ventured in a bit, but was mostly content to watch from the sidelines.

There are so many more leaves in our yard ... so she'll have another chance at bravery and leaf pile jumping. Even better, our neighbor buddy B was walking by with his mom and baby sister (he's just a few months younger than Fiona) - so B stopped by for a few minutes to enjoy the fun too. Leaf piles are better when shared with friends. And brave sisters ... ahem, Q ...

Eight!

Eight happened! As of this week, we've been married for eight years. That doesn't feel like enough to either of us ... think we'll hang together for a few more! ;-)

We spent a great day together on our anniversary. We both took the day off of work, brought the girls to day care, and then hung out. It was perfect! We spent the morning cleaning the garage - much to my sister's dismay. Then we got cleaned up and headed out for pizza and nachos for lunch. Our big kid doesn't like pizza. Seriously - what kid doesn't like pizza!?!? So we eat it on our anniversary - because we like pizza. Then we went mini-golfing - and I WON (by one stroke). We're normally neck and neck - but Mike always beats me because I lose focus on the back nine. Not this time ... or I did, but had built a good enough lead.

Our anniversary always makes me think back to the day we got engaged. We both had homework. Grad school for me. Work training course for Mike. So we went out for Chinese for dinner to "save time" (procrastinate). After dinner, we walked through the mall to Kohl's to look for new wind pants for Mike. On the way, we saw a jewelry store with signs for 70% off. We'd been talking for months about getting engaged, so Mike suggested we go in - just to look. He found the perfect ring. As soon as I tried it on, we both loved it. So we left the store without buying it. We do things like that. We wandered aimlessly around Kohl's - both thinking of the ring. Wind pants could have jumped out at us and we wouldn't have seen them. I didn't want to pressure the boy ... so didn't say anything.

As I followed him out of Kohl's, he smirked at me and said, "don't think we are leaving here without that ring." So he bought it. And proposed that night in the parking lot of my apartment building.

It may seem like a strange engagement story - but to me, it is the perfect snapshot of our relationship. Things happen when they are supposed to and we are delightfully happy when they do. We don't do fanfare - but we do "together" really well. Neither one of us is super romantic (heck - we cleaned the garage on our anniversary), but we are truly, deeply in love with each other. I love the guy who proposes in the parking lot because he doesn't want to wait another minute to ask me. He loves the girl who offered to forego the ring and get engagement shoes instead (he's the best - because I got both the ring and the shoes!).

Thank goodness for Chinese food, wind pants, and wickedly good discounts on diamonds (dude - we were young and poor!). Happy Anniversary, honey! I love you!