CHICKIES!!!!!

The feed store was getting their last delivery of baby chicks on Friday.  But I was scheduled to be in Ella's class doing art!  What to do!?!?!  COLBY TO THE RESCUE!  He picked out the best three chicks they had.  I mean, CLEARLY.  Look at these babes.   Above is when Gretchen saw them for the first time after school on Friday.  AwwwwWWWWwwwwwWWW!!!!

Right now they're named Chicken Nugget (formerly "Marky"), Hello Chicky, and Brownie*. 

*Names subject to change at a moments notice. 

We have to keep them away from Duke (who we are babysitting for Uncle Aaron for three more weeks).  He wants to eat them.  EAT THEM SO BAD.

We also have to keep them away from Russia, our comrade kitten.  She wants to STALK AND HUNT THEM SO BAD.

So for now they live in a big Rubbermaid container in the girl's tub.  Under a heat lamp.  With the shower door and the bathroom door closed AT ALL TIMES.

Because even though one's named Chicken Nugget, we don't really mean it...

Their feet are creepy, FYI, and may make you freak out a little bit. But get over it.  Cause they're so FREAKIN' CUTE!!!!

 Kiss!  Mwah!

  Creepy feet, cute face!  Awwwww!

Gretchen is super into "posing" them.  She kept trying to get this one to pose for a portrait amongst the flowers.  I'd already shut down the idea of posing in the fairy village (too far for chicky to fall) and she wouldn't stay still enough to pose in the flower pots....  CHICKY, BEHAVE!!!!

 Pretty much the best picture ever taken, right?  I KNOW!  CHICKIES!!!!

Oh yeah, and did you see Gretchen in her soccer uniform?  She had her last game yesterday.  She rocked it.  But she also hates it.  So she says.  (She says that about a lot of stuff, we'll see how she really feels when next season rolls around.  I'd bet she wants to join again.....)

And my dream of summer marshmellow roasting came true, friends.  Gretchen and I ran to Home Depot yesterday and bought a $20 galvanized metal tub..  Then we said, "That's our fire pit!"  Then we made a fire in it.  Then our friends came over and made smores with us.  AMAZING.  The backyard sort of smells like camping now, so hopefully our neighbors don't hate us.  AHHH SUMMER!!!  It's amazing!  I can't wait for the rest of it!  Except I sort of can, cause summer gives me serious anxiety (balancing work and chllins and chickies and trips out of town.... OVERLOAD!)  But I have a plan this year.  Only two road trips.  Passes to the water park.  And I will know my limits.  I WILL!  Ack!  When things get stre3ssful, I can just hold a chicken in the chair swing and it will all be ok. 

Only Tourists call it SanFran...

 

Look at that!  My friends, that is me and my baby girl right before we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge.  For my birthday weekend I got to go to Ikea AND spend the weekend with my family and our girl scout sisters in San Francisco!  It was my FIRST TIME THERE!  What?  How can I live four hours away and NEVER HAVE GONE TO SF?  How can we have gone to NYC TWICE since moving to Reno and still not taken a weekend trip to SF?  Because, my friends, we are ridiculous.  I'm not sure if you've heard, but San Francisco is pretty fabulous.  

In Girl Scouts there's this thing called "Bridging" where when you graduate from a level, you're supposed to symbolically walk across a bridge and be greeted on the other side by the next level of girl scouts.  One of our Girl Scout moms found out about this program where you can walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.  SIGN ME UP!

Here is my Bridge Walk Selfie.   (There were people with selfie sticks ALL OVER SF.  For reals.  They weren't even embarrassed about it.  They should have been.)

 

Here's the girls after we finished the walk.  Don't they look like they could be on the brochure for How To Be A Fabulous Girl Scout?  Yep. (That is not Ella's Bear, BTW.  We're not cool enough to have that accessory.)

 Our hotel was centrally located, which means we thought we could walk everywhere.  By the end of the day, one of our little friends' pedometer said she'd walked EIGHTEEN MILES.  I didn't quite believe the accuracy of that claim (the pedometer, of course I believe our friend!), but I'd bet we walked over 13 miles.  With 10 year olds.  It's not our muscles that hurt, it was EVERYTHING.  Ella kept saying, "My feet are so sore!  Not like in one spot, just EVERYWHERE!".  Yep.  You know when you walk around all day and then at the end your feet just ache when you stand up?  Like, "Nooooooooooooooo!  Not again!"  That.

 But we didn't stop.  Instead we went to Alkatraz.

 You take a ferry there.  No, there weren't any sharks.

 But there is an audio tour.  So basically it's a bunch of people meandering around a big empty prison in silence.  That's not weird.

 Gretchen was a little creeped out by the whole thing.  The audio tour had "Sound Effects".  Do you know what it sounds like when someone get's shanked?  We do now!

Also, there was a dummy head from the infamous breakout/unsolved mystery.  They had it laying on the bed with blankets around it to look like a body.  It was SUPER CREEPY.  Gretchen thought they put a real head on the bed and it was NOT OK.  Even after we explained that it was just a statue, she still had a hard time getting to sleep for a few weeks.  Poor kid.

 Just chillin' in the prison dining room with dad...

 

 The Alkatraz ferry had pretzels.  That made life better...

After our marathon day, we slept HARD.  But we also wanted to get the most of our last morning in the city, so we met our peeps in Chinatown.  AND took a trolly ride!  That was a lovely $27 lift up a hill in an old-timey wooden car.  Have you heard how expensive San Francisco is?  Yeah, they weren't lying... 

 

 

Enjoying your trolley ride sweetie?  IT'S THREE DOLLARS PER MINUTE!  #$&@#$ ENJOY IT!

 

 

 Chinatown is awesome and we love it. 

For reals.

So these pics are NOT from San Francisco, but were on my phone and I wanted to share.  A farm in Spanish Springs had the brilliant event, "Baby Animal Days".  For two days they opened their pumpkin patch farm up to the public to share all their baby animals!  It was pretty much a cute overload.  You couldn't walk two feet without either hearing, or yourself saying, "AwwwwWWWwwwWWW!"

  

She's not really strangling the goat.  See?  It's smiling...

 

 

And then it was the collaborative art auction at the girl's school, which I missed for reasons I'll explain in a bit.  The piece above is called "100 First Grade Hearts".  My friend Michon & I are crazy and when to 4 classes to have each kid make a heart, which we combined and framed in this fabulous antique frame that my other friend donated to the cause.  It was pretty much awesome ifIdosaysomyself....  If I had a billion dollars, I would have put my hat in the bidding ring for it... You can't tell in this picture, but it's made up of acrylic, glitter paper, watercolor, oil pastel, tin, and MORE. 

 

 

And in Gretchen's class, we used manipulative hipster lyrics to trick people into spending more billions of dollars to support our school.  Each kid drew their "home".  Can you guess which one's is Gretchen's?  

(it's the yellow one in the middle!!!  Doesn't it look JUST LIKE our house!?!?!  I know, she's brilliant...)  

Ella's class project turned out pretty cool too (we acutally had to re-do it cause the first attempt was NOT COOL.  But onwards and upwards, it came together in the end.  And then I forgot to snap a photo on my phone.  Whoops!  I've got a picture of it somewheres....

Ladies and gentlemen, my daughter....

 

I was not at the fabulous art auction, because I was IN SEATTLE!!!!  I got to spend the weekend with my two BFFS!  First Lismarie picked me up from the airport and we got to spend a glorious evening eating the best strip-mall Thai food in Southcenter, then we got to stay up until midnight talking, then we got to go to Goodwill AND Target to shop, and lunch, and then the ferry to Seattle.  I KNOW!  But then it wasn't over, cause Lismarie helped me sneak into Janeece's house so we could set up her SURPRISE 40th BIRTHDAY PARTY!!!  It was so awesome!  Huge props to Mr. Janeece for arranging it all.  Saturday J and I got to get our nails did real pretty, then took the bus downtown and shopped and shopped and shopped.  We even got to go to the Japanese Dollar Store and get treasures for the girls.  I know!  Best weekend ever!  

  

And life just keeps getting even more exciting, cause look what they got at Costco.  CHICKEN COOPS!!!  WHAT?!!?!!  Should we get one?  (Spoiler alert:  WE DID!) 

At least I'm the only one that got sick....

I've been feeling kind of bad lately cause I feel like I have a MILLION pictures of Gretchen, but none of Ella.  Ella is now a super mature 10 year old, and I worried I wouldn't get to capture her sweet face on camera much anymore.  Being 10 can be awkward.  Being 10 can be embarrassing.  Being 10 makes you very self aware and quick to edit yourself.  But then she signed up for an Instagram account.  On  my phone.  Which means two things:

1.  The world will not be deprived of thousands of pictures like this: (phew, right?)

Introspective Self Portrait - January 2015

2.  And I will probably never see my phone again. 

We did have a little chat after she ran the batter down AGAIN (for the third time in a week) that she needs to #%$&#* ASK ME before she uses MY PHONE.  The message has been received.  We're totally getting along again. 

We had another whirlwind week.  What else is new, right?  Our dear friend Tauni flew in from Seattle so we could work on their new card game.  It's going to be adorable, BTW.  It's geared more towards kids (which I love) and is dog themed (which I ALSO love).  Tauni & I worked nonstop for two days and got a ton done.  She spoiled us rotten too.  Took me out to lunch, took us to dinner Monday night.  She let Ella choose the restaurant for dinner, and of course Ella promptly chose Olive Garden.  Which (don't tell Olive Garden, they'll be mad at me) but IS NOT MY FAVORITE.  The girls were happy though.

But man, Tauni got us this fabulous new dessert which just may change my mind about pseudo Italian food.  Totally don't remember what they were called (something Italian-ish...)  They were like beignets and had this ridiculously amazing sugar concoction dusted on top and raspberry dipping sauce.  And it reminded me of donuts.  So I was sold. 

So Tauni left Tuesday night, and I worked some more, went to bed, and then WOKE UP TOTALLY SICK!  It was CRAZY!  My right eye was totally sealed shut, I was coughing so bad I was seeing stars, I was a hot mess.  Luckily our insurance doesn't suck anymore, so I was able to go to Urgent Care and knew it wouldn't cost me $500.  Yay!  So I called around to a few Urgent Cares and found one that wasn't slammed with other sickos, and headed down.  By the end of the day I was on 3 prescriptions and in bed.  I crawled out Thursday morning to get the girls to school and work a few hours, but by the time I picked the girls up from school that afternoon I was DONE.  So I slept and slept and slept.  Friday morning I was so much better.  I'm so grateful for drugs!  I'm so grateful for modern medicine!  I'm so grateful I didn't die of pneumonia or go blind.  Yay for living in the year 2015!

To celebrate my newfound health, Friday morning I taught 50 first graders to draw elephants, went to lunch with my Art Moms, worked furiously for 2 hours, met with Gretchen's teacher about my dummy book/educational standards, accompanied 8 Girl Scouts to the Planetarium, and then rounded out the night with some super healthy In & Out with Colby & our GS Peeps.  Yay!

Saturday was surprisingly awesome!  I knew it'd be good cause my dear friend invited us to the Grossology Exhibit at the Wilbur May Museum.  But I didn't know it'd be THIS GOOD.

You know how Reno is a super small town?  You know how you can't go ANYWHERE without seeing someone you know?  Well, it's true.  You can't.  And it's awesome.  (Unless you're a stripper on the side, that could probably get embarrassing).  Anyway, since I'm not a stripper on the side right now, I was so pleased to run into ANOTHER friend at the Wilbur May.  So instead of hanging out with 3 awesome families, we got to hang out with 4 awesome families!  And join in the wonders of the human body. 

Ask Gretchen what happens to food once you eat it.  Not only did we learn all about it, WE SAW VIDEO.  Mmmhmmm.  Then Gretchen got to crawl through a simulation.  (You slide down the large intestine and land on a poop-colored pillow.  Classy!)

Here you see Ella with the "Burp Machine" behind her.

And here you see Gretchen shooting snot balls into giant nostrils.  (Hands on learning at its best!)

 

Afterwards we saw they had the old park open, so we went and climbed on dinosaurs until a pack of teenage girls scared us off.  (Youths!  Quick!  Run!)

We escaped the Youths and went to Popeye's.  Where I ordered extra biscuits.  And my life was complete. (Geesh, sorry I keep talking about food!  I'm hungry!)  (And I honestly really love teenagers.  Promise.  We didn't really run from them.)





Ella and I rounded out the evening with a whirlwind trip to Savers.  I love that kid, she is SO EASY to please.  I love that she loves thrift store shopping as much as I do!  We found a number of treasures, including about 5 new pairs of jeans for her, a brand new royal blue leather purse that perfectly matches her new gauzy orange skirt, and a cute pair of black flats.  Gretchen is the proud new owner of a pair of shoes that don't fit (the Saver's cycle is complete.  They'll go right back next week in our donation bag!) and a new collection of Cat and Peace Sign shirts.

We, my friends, are happy campers!

End of an Era

 Things are changing, and they'll never be the same again. Is that dramatic enough for ya?  But it's true.  I had a lovely emotional rollercoaster this week.  It ended with our beta fish, "Fishy" finally going belly up (10 points for creativity on that name, right?)  Well, I mean, finally going belly up and MEANING IT.  After Christmas, we came back and discovered that our fish had had a stroke.  Or some other fishy-health crisis that resulted in him laying sideways in his bowl.  Everyone who came over would say, "Oh no!  Your fish died!"  You know, cause the fish would be floating sideways at the top of the bowl.  But then I'd assure them, "No, it's cool!  He didn't!" shake the bowl and FREAK THEM OUT.  (Both our guests and the fish).  The fish would do this crazy sideways flop/swim and our guests would say, "OMG, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR FISH!" 

But then one day he didn't do his flop/swim.  And we knew he was gone.

The girls celebrated his life by organizing a playdate around the funeral, making a tombstone out of sculpey clay and burying him beneath the rose bushes in the back yard.  They made up a schedule (that included "play games!!!" in the lineup), and drew a little program.  It had a picture of a fish with big X eyes.  Subtle.


But don't think when I say "emotional roller coaster" that I'm counting the death of our fish.  Mostly, I was upset because we said goodbye to Ella's charter school!  Her last day was Wednesday.  Gretchen and I walked her across the park and into class, where we realized that Ella hadn't given me the permission slip to watch "Flushed Away".  So we went inside for the LAST TIME and signed off on that.  And I figured while I was there, I might as well get it over with and turn in our resignation.  And I CRIED.  I'm sure the super kind front office lady thinks I'm a huge nerd, though she did get a little teary too.  Only because she's so nice and kind and didn't want me to be a nerd all by myself. 

As we walked back though the park to our car, Gretchen noticed that I was still upset, and she said, "Mom, it's ok!  Take big breaths, in and out!"  I explained that I was just feeling sad saying goodbye to all our school friends, and she said, "When you feel that sadness coming up, just swallow it back down!  Big breaths and swallow it down!"  WHERE DID SHE LEARN THIS!?!?!!?  She tried to make me laugh and said, "Did you think that was funny?  Are you happy now?"  OH MY SWEET GIRL, she just made me cry more.  So really, it's all her fault that I was walking through the park crying.  But at least Sammy, the local pan-handler didn't come up to ask me for money.  So that's good.

Before we said goodbye to the fish, before we said goodbye to the school, before we avoided eye contact with Sammy the pan-handler one last time, I joined the fourth grade for their LAST FIELD TRIP!!!!  We went to Virginia City STEP BACK IN TIME and got the most excellent tour of the cemetery I've ever had the privilege to attend.

When I got to school Monday morning, Mrs. P said, "Oh Apryl, I have a project for you!"  Immediately I thought, "Oh no, who am I driving, and will I still be smiling in the next 5 minutes?"  But the "project" was just our sweet, lovely girl scout friend with a broken foot!  The crutches and the wheelchair weren't going to work, so we got a WALKER!  We were super cool and got to go first and park closest at everything.  See?

 Ella didn't want me to be left out, so she took my picture too.

 Here the kids are learning about how much it sucked to live 150 years ago!  (It did)

 And how much it sucked to grind ore out of rocks at the gold mine! (It did)

 But ditching the rest of the class and getting pizza is TOTALLY worth it.  (totally)

 And eating candy on train rides is AWESOME.

 See?

 No, really, SEE?!?!?!

To help us get over our sadness, we left the school and met our friends at the Peppermill.  My friend Jaime is pretty much the best and organized it all.  We had an excellent time.  But really, how could you not?

Only problem is, no pool will EVER be as fun as that pool.  Especially when it's filled with 20 friends from school on the first afternoon of SUMMER VACATION.  So hopefully the girls will get used to a more sedate (and cheaper) life at home. 

This week is Gretchen's last week of school.  Which means kindergarten graduation.  Which means I'll be crying again soon.  Which means that Gretchen will be giving me more tips on how to shove all that emotion down into a dark place in your soul until you can't handle it any more and explode (I'm guessing we need to have more talks on healthy emotional outlets... ;)