Sick, sick, sick, sick, beach, more sick

So Ree got a cold and missed an entire week of school, then Ro got it and missed a few days, then I got it for a week and lost my voice, then Ro got a freaky high fever, then everyone was better and we ran to the beach, then we got home and Ree got the weird high-fever thing. Bah. Let’s focus on the fun beach weekend, shall we?

TubaDad had a gig in San Luis Obispo, so we packed the van with practically everything we own (plus our friend Maggie) and headed for our fave Avila beachhouse.

Friday arrival started with a nice fish dinner and a sunset walk on the pier:

On Saturday it poured all day. Seriously, didn’t stop for one minute. The girls said they didn’t care, it just made for “perfect sand-castle sand,” so we suited up and braved the elements. (They couldn’t decide which lucky duck got the pink boots so they compromised with one of each.):

Then we spent a few warm, dry hours at the SLO Children’s Museum, which was really cute. How come we’ve never been there before? Oh yeah, probably because it’s always sunny and we never move our blissful butts off the sand. I think this one exhibit was more for the grown-ups, judging by the succession of grinning adults who climbed aboard the cycle:

The sun came out on Sunday, and we whooped it up before driving back home:

I think the girls had forgotten what a blue sky looks like since it’s been raining so much at our house:

Does anyone remember the fateful Twin Faceplant in the Waves incident? (Here’s the video, just for old times’ sake.) Well little Ree still gets concerned when Ro goes “too far” into the water and still celebrates every single time she emerges unscathed:

Maggie took this nice family shot of us on the beach (thanks Maggie!):

Ro and Ree worked all day making what they called “the deepest hole in the world” (with their accents it sounds like “the deepest hole in the woy-old”):

Little beach girls. They really do love to have the sand between their toes:

It’s just too bad these two are so danged unhappy all the time. Heh:

It has been quite a spirited week

Today is the last day of Spirit Week at Ro and Ree’s school, and the girls have been THRILLED to play along with the daily dressing themes.

Monday ~ College Day (wearing Duquesne tees and representing the cousins in PA):

Tuesday ~ Pajama Day (I think to a five-year-old, there’s hardly anything better than getting to wear your PJs to school):

Wednesday ~ Blue Day (each grade level was assigned a different color):

Thursday ~ St Patrick’s Day, which meant green, of course (I thought the green outfits they put together were feisty and fun):

Friday ~ Twin Day (the girls were RIDICULOUSLY excited to dress exactly the same, something they never do, and we actually had a hard time finding identical tops in their closet):

So can you tell who’s who on Twin Day?

PS: Both girls have totally recovered from their colds and have been feeling great all week, I on the other hand have the crud now. It started on Monday and I’m still feeling horrible.

We’re going to have to call the people on the blog

Ree is fever-free and feeling better so she went to ballet with TubaDad, and Ro and I are playing Scrabble. But we’re stuck and need help! According to our kid rules (which are detailed here), we pool our leftover letters at the end to play every single letter, and we can’t do it this time. Can anyone see where where we could play that dang V? It drives Ro crazy when she has just one letter left over. (Ok, it drives me nuts too.) We looked and looked, then she scrunched up her nose and finally said “That’s it mama, we’re going to have to call the people on the blog.”

So don’t let her down, blog people, where can that V go?

PS: The blank tile at the top is an “M”, “SOX” is Ro’s phonetic spelling of “socks,” and the blank tile near the bottom left is a “G.” Oh, and I didn’t mean to double post, but Ro was emphatic that I ask for help. So there’s a new post just below this one called “Princesses, They’re Just Like Us.”

Princesses, They’re Just Like Us

When we go on vacation or I get sick, TubaDad buys me a stack of trashy magazines and I read myself into happy reality-free oblivion. I always gravitate toward those “Stars They’re Just Like Us” columns and crack up at the captions they come up with. Lately I’ve noticed I get more pics of the girls wearing princess garb than regular clothes, so here’s our own “Princesses They’re Just Like Us” article. Heh.

They sew and do crafts!

They wear dark glasses and look fab even when they’re tired:

They dance with their girlfriends (who are princesses too):

They play board games:

They go grocery shopping for junk food:

They have trouble getting into cars gracefully with those huge skirts:

They sneak the dough while they’re baking cookies:

They drink plain water from the fridge door:

They track how much exercise they’re getting:

They eat out at chain restaurants:

They like the occasional wild party:

Rock on little princesses -- it’s good to know you’re just like us regular folks underneath those glittery gowns and sparkly crowns.

PS: Ree ended up missing the entire week of school because of this cold, and Ro did a double fist pump when she came down with her own fever and got to stay home and watch movies and snuggle on Thursday and Friday. We went to the doctor’s office yesterday because the low-grade fever was hanging on so long, and they both got the all clear for lungs and ears, so hopefully we’re a go for school on Monday. We’ll see.

I guess she’s not going to win a perfect attendance award, heh heh

Ree has a cold. I kept her home from school on Monday and Tuesday because she had a low-grade fever, and then last night she got a bloody nose that just wouldn’t stop (our girls always get bloody noses when they have colds) and today she woke up congested, feeling crappy, and still feverish. So school today is just not in the cards either...

Sister Ro was NOT digging the solo school experience at first. So now we’ve added a special treat just for her that has restored the zip to her skip. The brave scholar gets to have dinner at Pasta Pomodoro (her fave) with daddy tonight.

Ro is being such a good sister, bringing kleenex, blankets, etc. This morning she just wanted to be close to Ree, who was watching a movie, so she opened the recliners, propped them up with a footstool, and made a bed right near her sister. Little honey.

Alrighty, I’m off to take temperatures, refresh sippies of herbal tea, and snuggle before getting Ro ready for kindergarten.

PS: Do you keep your kids home from school at the first sign of a low-grade fever, or keep them home only if/when a full-blown illness shows up?

Fashion friday – have a bright, colorful day today!

Ro and Ree trounced down the stairs all proud of themselves that they had put together matching outfits. Awwwww! Reminded me of the days when I used to be in charge of dressing them.

Cuties. They did manage to sneak in two of their faves: tank tops (even though it’s partly cloudy and kind of chilly today – I swear they’re part polar bear) and lots of white.

Shopping Alert: If you need any of these clothes for your little babes (the tops are so fun, four moms at school asked about them today), they’re all in stores right now. The colorful tops are from Old Navy (I can’t find them on the web site, but got them in store this week—does that mean they’re too new to be webified or on their way out?), the white lace skirts are from The Children’s Place, and the white lace-trimmed leggings are from The Children’s Place (ours are, well were, the full-length leggings, but the girls have had a massive growth spurt recently and now wear them as capri leggings, they sell either version).

Move It: We’re doing a fun experiment today, part of my personal “move it” campaign where I try to get more exercise every week. All four of us (me, TubaDad, Ro, and Ree) are wearing pedometers that count our number of steps all day. Care to enter guesses for how many steps each of us will take today? I’m guessing that Ro and Ree will take wayyyyyyy more steps. Who knows though! It’ll be fun to see, and then we’ll try to make some healthy changes after watching these counts for a week.

Happy Friday!

I couldn’t choke down green eggs, but the girls had no such compunctions

Happy birthday Dr. Seuss! In honor of the auspicious occasion, everyone in Kindergarten brought in a fave Dr. Seuss book today and had to fix green eggs and ham for homework.

I (wisely) decided that this was a wonderful job for TubaDad to oversee and delegated myself as camera woman, standing far back from the action and enjoying a soothing glass of wine to distract me from the eggs raining down onto my freshly cleaned floor and counters.

You think I jest? It was like a serial egg killer was loose in our kitchen.

Oy. Let’s just say that out of a dozen eggs, we did manage to get enough to feed four people (barely). But my wine was lovely...

Luckily the little egg assassins are cute. (And no, I’m not quite sure why Ro wanted to dress up as a cupcake for dinner. Whatever...)

After the egg slaughter, they did a pretty good job of mixing, stirring, coloring, cooking...

I really couldn’t get past the green color, but I think I was the only one bothered by it:

Mmmm, mmm, anyone hungry?:

In the end, our green eggs and ham dinner was enthusiastically received. Ro gave it two thumbs up and even ate seconds of the eggs:

And Ree gave it a thumb and a half up (the girl takes her ratings seriously, I think Tangled got the same rating):

And TubaDad and I were pretty dang happy that we had hot biscuits to make “hamwiches” so that no one could really tell how much green eggage we actually consumed.

Thanks for the laughs Dr. Seuss, and thanks TubaDad for humoring me and wearing the hat. You’re tops in my book.

PS: That’s one of our new free pans courtesy of the Lucky grocery store sticker program! Did anyone else collect stickers?