Nothing like waffles...

Another day another breakfast to make. Somedays it is just cereal and milk. Or peanut butter bread. Maybe yogurt and a breakfast bar. Rarely oatmeal (unlike the past seven years of my life on Mondays) because the girls are calling a boycott on oatmeal. Man! I had such high hopes for their love of a filling healthy bellyfull. At least once a week of eggs, but I am reminded that "Daddy makes the best eggs!", and so I bow to his chefness. So, I pulled out the not so quick breakfast and made some homemade waffles. Yes,friends the made from scratch kind. No bisquick. No shaker bottle. The flour, milk, egg, vanilla, kind of waffles. Oh, and a lot of love. That is what Stephanie said when she was basking in her waffle eating time.

"Thanks Mom, for making these fabulous waffles that had some love stirred in!"

It was worth it and now we have about 12 in the freezer for the next time. Yes, to most of you this does not seem like a blog-worthy moment, but if you could have heard the umms, and ahhhs and seen the sparkle in their eyes, you would be sharing the love too. Guess we wont be buying the "leggo my eggos" for a while.

Our weekend was fun. Igor the movie did not get but 1 1/2 stars from Steve, but he and the girls had fun. I went and painted a ceramic plate with all my sweet friends and then finished off the evening with some "bang bang shrimp" from BoneFish. Whew. I have been known to say that I love that dish. My girls get jealous. Crazy. It was a great girls night out!

Florida Gators won. Bucs won. High level of testosterone in my house...I love a winning football season.

Bad Hair Day

The day usually begins with my lovely quiet children watching the clock until it suddenly becomes 8:00. Then,if noticed as they pass my door, that I have not arisen (from the dead), they either go and begin their playing or catch some morning t.v. Today was not one of those rare days.

I was up and at 'em before they were squirming and I had peeked into the room and noticed little Miss Olivia's morning look. WHOA!

I have come to the realization that I did not pay homage to the "Hair Gods" when she was in my womb and thus, this is her plight in life. It would not be so bad if hair was not so completely important to her. She is barely out of bed and the first thing she does is grab the brush. Today though, I distracted her. I was like a hunter on the prowl. I could not fool her. She has this look on her face because she understands that this could make it on the blog. BINGO! Pass go and get your $200.00!

But I just had to share with those who love and adore my child, this is what we deal with every day. We have tried every idea known to modern man to help out this hair issue.

I do have one last reserve idea. She needs a silky pillowcase for her princess locks to not be disturbed in her nightly slumber. Oh my! How could a kid of mine have such high hair standards. Not sure. And, how does this hair resemble dreds? I have no idea.

But I do know this beginning will not be the level of life in our household today. We have quizes to take, chores to be done, groceries to spend our investments on, and a weekend with our favorite hero just over the horizon.Yeah, he is the one in the KISS shirt. Did I really spend money on that shirt? I wonder how old he will be when he no longer wears it.

What a silver lining. It could be worse.

Fall?

Oh I am trying to appreciate this time of the year with its colors of golden yellows and warm oranges, but heck, it is 90 degrees outside and my kids are still daily jumping in the pool. There is not a piece of decoration that welcomes Fall around here yet. This is because,we still could not survive without the A/C on and the lawn is still being mowed once a week, okay every other week.

The spiders have returned just in time for October's spookiness. Speaking of spookiness, has anyone else had the displeasure of having your nerves jump out of you because Universal has again decided to release an advertisement for Halloween Horror Nights that is completely unnecessary? I am not allowing the girls to even change channels for their morning shows because I don't want them having nightmares. I cannot watch the news without being exposed to the commerical. It is horrible. It is vile infact. I have sent them an email, I am not just whining on the blog. Back to the spiders, we have egg sacks everywhere on our porch from the brown widow spiders. Our resident banana spider is huge. It's body is as long as my index finger.

I am ready for soup (anyone have any great soup recipes, please email them to me)at least once a week and shorter days of sun. We are though, in full football mode around here; Gators on Saturday and Bucs on Sunday. Steve tries to gently plan our schedules around these events, and the poor guy has three of us who like football, but not love the game. He will be able to say he and his brother saw the Rays in their most winning season ever, but last night's game was a bust. Too many red shirts for this Florida man. Boston Red Sox fans outnumbered them five to one. He even boycotted the food that represented Boston. He was a serious fan last night.

Olivia is still deciding if she can even take time to learn about eagles, because they eat their meat RAW! They throw up the fur and bones of the mice! and their only redeeming quality is that they look pretty once they turn five. Oh my!

Stephanie struggles with my need as her teacher for all things written to be neat and spelled correctly. She thinks I am just being so demanding. UGH! I will say though, Steve and I decided September would be candy-ice-cream-gum free month, and it sure has been less stressful around here with the attitudes from sugar highs. I hope I got Uncle Jason in China all caught up on life here now, for this week anyway.

Lowry Park Zoo

What a FUN day! Six girls and a whole bunch of wild animals provided a great study for Maddie and Olivia and their animal habitats. Olivia is learning about eagles and Maddie is learning about llamas. We had a terrific trainer give us an almost private session with the birds of prey. We saw more raw meat set aside for the flying birds than we cared to. At the end he brought out "Olivia" the three year old eagle who is new to the zoo and being trained. She still has her juvenile feathers so she is dark in color. We watched her train on a leash and in the end she got a large rat to eat. The girls did not seem to mind the messy snack. Yikes!
The new flume ride was the hit of the day. We all got SOAKED. No, I mean really soaked. And I had white shorts on. Not just once either. Twice for me and Oivia. Three times for Maddie and Samantha, oh the last one was a doozy. Eight times for Emma and Steph. We did go during a special time of the zoo, because there were babies everywhere. Our favorites were the pygmy hippo and the orangutan. Just look at that baby. It was a very fun time.What a cute bunch of girls. Happy Birthday Aunt Sam.

A different insight

Shelley said it best and I had to borrow her post. She knows so much more than I ever could.

To sew or not to sew

Back in early summer Stephanie began sewing lessons with our family friend and camping partner Mrs. Russ. She is the grandmother of Alma and Chloe, two of our greatest friends, and I taught with her for years. Stephanie is very comfortable around her and loves learning how to sew. It is in a room full of material, pins, needles and kid friendly machines.





We picked back up the lessons with the school year and Stephanie makes me so proud I could shout. See, she comes from a long line of seamstresses. Both of her great-grandmothers, grandmothers, and even myself have threaded more than our share of needles and ripped out a few seams in our time. It is something I am so thankful she is learning. My machine would not have produced such a love and interest. She would have tossed it out the window in frustration.







It is a joy to watch my little one with so much heritage of creativeness coarsing through her to thrive on her "projects". Somedays it is a mudpie with jewels, or a design made out of strings and beads. Other days it is a pillowcase or quilt. She is a fifth generation crafty girl.

AAA and History Coop

She is very proud of herself.

Little lefty!

We used real fish to paint and press on our shirts.
They all turned out sooooo cute!

Friday was our first group school (co-op) of the new year. This year we have outgrown meeting in homes so we are meeting at a community building. It was quite successful. We have the morning session with the pre-schoolers to first grade. They are called the AAA (all about animals) co-op. This month they each studied something from the ocean habitat. Olivia had coral reefs. She really learned so much. I love her pipe-cleaner polyps. One day when her dad asked her to tell him what she had learned, it went something like this.

"Tell me about coral reefs"
"They only can live in shallow water where the sun can get in and reach."
"What else did you do today?"
"Well, I learned that if you let the sticker just touch the paper a little, it must stay right there, cause they're really sticky."
"yeah, but what about the reef?"
"Daaaad!, On the coral reef picture, the stickers stuck so good!"

Stephanie's History co-op played a game similar to LIFE(thanks Ms.Amy aka gamelady) but in Colonial times and waited for their afternoon session. They shared reports of people of interest, John Carver was Steph's choice. They also made a great scroll paper craft(good one Aunt Sam!) of the story of Roanoke, the lost colony. What a great group of kids we have.

They all made shirts for their feildtrips and ended the day with spending the night at a friends house. Stephanie got an extra biology lesson using plastic horses from Taylor. Steve and I are still chuckling over this one.

"hey, is your horse a stallion or a gelding?"-T
"I dont know"-S
"Look at it, does it look like a boy or are there just bumps?"-T
"It is just a horse."-S
"Do you know what a gelding is?"-T
SILENCE-S
"You know, that means he cannot make any more kids."-T
"Oh yeah, Oh yeah....well, I like this one cause it is brown."-S
Nice subject change there... Out of the mouth of babes....