Birthday party

Molly had her Winter Fairy 7th birthday party yesterday.

We spent all week getting the house ready...

Molly invited everybody to wear fairy or elf costumes. Almost everybody did! We had a big pile of wings and costume bits accumulated by the end.

The mother of one of Molly's friends offered to stay at the party to do face painting. She's a professional-artist-turned-at-home-mom and we're all very lucky that she enjoys doing this so much.

No butterflies or fairies for Kate. She wanted pizza!

We also used star garland and curling ribbon to make fairy crowns. The little fairies had a good time stabbing balloons with pens ... then, when most of them had popped, there was no end of trouble because there weren't enough balloons for everybody. Lesson learned for next time.

 Molly wanted a lemon cake ... the first time in many years that we haven't made pink cupcakes. We settled on a Wegmans cake with a lemon filling layer. It was yummy!

Somebody mentioned "cake" and suddenly all the fairies magically appeared at the table, sitting politely and quietly.

I served a lot of seconds ... and maybe some thirds, too.

Cake + fairies =

 

We got through it with only a few tears, nothing broken (as far as I know) and a very exhausted but appreciative birthday girl.

Bye bye, Bunny

Our little Snowplow bunny passed away yesterday, at the very elderly bunny age of 11.

He was sick for only a day or two, just enough time for us all to say good-bye.

We'll miss you, little guy.

Happy Halloween

Race day

We all got up early this morning to see a special guy run the Rochester Half Marathon.

Coming up the long hill on Highland

Waiting in the rain at the finish line

Coming in for the finish (that blue blur)

Preschool begins

We visited the classroom and teacher together Monday. Kate stays for an hour and a half today. Friday is the first full 3-hour morning.

Fingers crossed that everything is going well in the classroom right now!

Off to first grade

Everybody was so eager for school this morning that kids and parents where outside waiting at least a half hour before the bus arrival time. Then the bus was (as expected) 20+ minutes late so we had a long time to stand around in our driveways.

Ready for first grade.

Hug good-bye.

Molly and two neighbor girls on our street gathered in an impromptu bus stop --  because who wants to wait alone?

There they go!

Strangeness around the house

The other day I was lying down with Kate trying to get her to take a nap when Molly interrupted to ask, "What's that strange 'ts ts' noise?" I told her it was probably just insects outside.

A while later, when Kate was asleep and I went to the kitchen I noticed this ...

 It looked as though it had been nibbled by mice. Odd.

 Then I saw this -- claw marks in the corn.

And this, a giant bite out of a banana.

 
Which led my glance upward to this... a giant hole in the window screen!

And just outside the hole, looking at me as if wondering when I'd go away so he could finish his snack?

This guy!

Grrrrr!!!! This picture is actually from today. I've been keeping the window closed, but each day he comes back and chews away more of the screen, trying to get in. I even put Frank's Red Hot all around. Yet here he is.

So that happened.

It was so annoying and bizarre that it almost overshadowed the discovery that Jim made a few hours later -- our Night Blooming Cereus (aka the Ugly Plant) had its first ever flower! We missed it, of course. The flower blooms only one night and we hadn't even noticed the bud forming. But at least now, after many years of owning this thing, we know that the bloom is possible!

Anyway, Molly saw her classroom and met her teacher (who lives just down the street from us!), Kate had her first successful grandparent sleepover and then a second a few nights later, Molly had her first friend sleepover... But whatever. There was a squirrel in our kitchen. A squirrel. In our kitchen. Man, what a week.