Friday, September 30, 2011

Super Glad It's The Weekend

By Friday we've just kind of fallen apart. Everyone is exhausted. We have a "no screen time, no dessert" rule for weeknights, so Sunday through Thursday night the children look wan and peaked and they spend their time doing things like - gasp! - reading and putting together puzzles and practicing piano and trumpet!

Not Friday Nights. Oh, no. On Friday nights we have dessert! Tonight we had a delicious chocolate pie, thanks to Aunt Boo (who is back on her hair cutting horse after giving birth to Baby Duncan and who came over to give us haircuts).

On Friday nights we also watch TV! The girls are in the basement watching Disney Channel and they will certainly stay there until I have to pry them out of there with a crowbar.

A side note: I really cannot stand kids' TV. In fact, I really cannot stand MOST TV. I have literally no idea what the new shows are this season, and I don't care. I do however truly enjoy watching 30 Rock, and if I had room in my life for one more TV show and I didn't have young kids, I would also enjoy watching Glee. How can a show that is about high school students be so totally inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18?

In the meantime I am exhausted from an awful day at work and a long week all around. Tomorrow we will try to unwind with some fun lessons in the morning (Rose #3 and Rose #2, gymnastics and soo bakh do respectively) and a fun outing with Little Fins in the afternoon/evening.

Monday, September 19, 2011

We Went to a Bike Race!

Each year H enters the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival bike race. This year he got into the 40-mile race! Yahoo! So we packed up the car and went to The Hayward/Cable Area (which is apparently the Golf Capital of Wisconsin). We brought our friends and had a grand old time.

On the way up, unfortunately everyone had to go to the bathroom approximately 100,000 times. Here we are on the second stop (it's a 2.5 hour trip) at a Holiday in like Turtle Lake, WI. The Roses found hats to try on and to beg me to purchase. I didn't, but I took a couple of cute shots:

Rose #3 thought her hat was very spiffy. I thought it looked like a jazz singer's fedora:


We stayed at a cabin that we found on Vacation Rental By Owner. It was surprisingly extravagant! It was on the shores of Lac Courte Oreilles (which I am trying to figure out: Lake Royal Ears? Lake Court of the Ears? I am reasonably sure that "oreilles" means "ears"). The back deck looked out on the lake. Here are Rose #2 and #3 enjoying the first morning when it was really quite chilly:


I took a quick shot of the Roses sitting on the fireplace. How cute are they?


On Saturday morning I dropped H off at the starting line at about 8:15. We didn't see him again until about 2!! The race started with 1800 riders at 10:00 a.m. and we were standing at the finish line when he rode across. The girls were happy to see him:


They were also happy to lay on top of this random small house in the parking lot. Rose #2 said that she wanted me to take a picture of her as Snoopy:


And Rose #1 showed her smiley face and her extremely strong abs:

After we got back, H "bonked" which is a biking term for "totally crashed and burned, was completely exhausted and had to go to bed at 7:00." He was right as rain in the morning, made pancakes for all, and we were on the road by 11:00 to come back home.


It was a great weekend! We're looking forward to Cheq '12! You can read about the race here.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The First Day of School

No cute "getting on the bus" photos. Rose #3 goes right to Discovery Club, which is before and after school care.

Roses #2 and #1 missed the bus. On the first day. I am trying not to see this as a harbinger of an awful school year to come. The bus was scheduled for 8:04. We walked up to the bus stop at 7:57 only to find it had left 5 minutes before.

ARRRRGH. They did look cute walking in to school from the dropoff line though...