Fashion Friday on the move

I wanted to get a quick shot of the cute outfits the girls put together today, and couldn’t get one single pic where they were holding still. Instead I chased them all over the yard (huffing and puffing) and got these.

This is why our custom BobBob monkey bars are so short:

Hm, synchronized monkey barring is so complicated:

Hope you all have a great weekend!

~~~~~~~~~

PS: Has anyone tried Pinterest yet? I’m loving that site. I used to flag good ideas that I saw as bookmarks (spread between 3 computers), links that I emailed to myself, starred items in Google Reader, printouts, file folders in Bloglines, and more. It was a mess, and I could never find what I needed. Well now I’m using this Pinterest site and with one click I can grab a url and a picture and “pin” it in one of my online bulletin boards. LOVE. Here’s a sample of my bulletin boards (I’ll make this image clickable if you want to see it bigger):

Anyhow, it’s fun and so easy. The site is by invite only right now (not sure why) and you have to have a Facebook or Twitter login to make an account (again, not sure why). So if anyone wants an invite, just leave your email addy in the comments and I’ll send you one.

Fashion Friday (probably can’t see this post anyhow)

Blogger is down – comments were disabled all day yesterday and they rolled back all blogs about 36 hours. That means the last two things I posted have disappeared. Hope they come back!

Anyhow, if this actually gets posted to the blog, here’s a Fashion Friday picture of the girls in the outfits they put together that were “matching but opposite.”

Can you tell who’s who?

The radically different heights in this pic are deceiving, by the way. One girl was standing with heels slightly lifted off the ground, and the other one had hip and knee cocked. So there really isn’t a massive height difference between them, more like three-quarters of an inch. Have to admit though, that even that 3/4” drives the shorter girl crazy.

Happy Friday.

It must be spring fever!

I’ve got a wild and crazy impulse to try and post something every single day this month. My own personal Spring Fling, if you will. I know, I know, I must be suffering from heat exhaustion or a similar malady to commit to this out loud. But there it is – I WILL post something (on good days it’ll be nice and meaty with pictures, on bad days it will at least be a whimper) every day in April. So here goes, kicking off Spring Fling month with a couple of fashion friday pictures of the girls on their way to school this morning. They put together such fun outfits – picking bright ruffly skirts (pink from Gymboree, blue from GoodWill) to go with their sassy ruffle tops from Old Navy, and grabbing their current fave shoes (both from Payless). Then they asked me to whip up a couple of hairclips over breakfast since they didn’t have anything “zackly right, mama.” Well you know I was happy to oblige. Oh man, we’re all digging these little 5-minute, practically-free hairclips!

Little cuties are LOVING the gorgeous hot spring weather yesterday and today. We’re heading to the pool again this afternoon and *I* might even get in this time since it’s 86 degrees right now. No promises though, haven’t pulled on that daunting bathing suit yet... I *would* have posted a cute swimming picture of the girls yesterday, but the mood was kind of spoiled when Ro (who hasn’t been in the pool since Aug, now that I think about it) went out a little too far and panicked and I had to get in with my clothes on to help her. She was fine and back in the pool after 20 seconds of cuddling, but I was grumpy, sodden, and a little jumpy after that.

Happy spring, everyone, and see you tomorrow. If you have anything you’d like to see or hear about this month, please let me know. I was thinking some crafts, some recipes, and a deeper look into the girls’ lifebook, for starters.

PS: Referrals are arriving in adoption offices right this very minute. I can’t wait to see good news on Krista’s site (A Million Miles to Mia) early next week and Tonggu Momma’s site (Our Little Tongginator) tonight! Woohoo!!

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.

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!

Fashion friday (in the cold and rain)

Our lovely spring weather has been rudely interrupted by a cold front. The icy temps and rain haven’t stopped for days.

Oh well, it’s warm and toasty inside. We watched Beauty and the Beast this morn (just delivered from Amazon) so both girls went with a Belle theme as they got dressed. Ree was thinking “early Belle” and chose all blue with a faux pearl shirt and her hair back (she also carefully pulled her socks up reallyreally high so they showed above her boots, but I’m noticing one slipped down for this pic, which is going to irk her). Ro went for a yellow theme with a nod to Belle’s famous yellow dress. She’s wearing a summer WelaWear dress, but put a yellow cardigan under it for warmth (I guess) and her beloved silver pants (which always look vaguely astronautish if you ask me).

Sweet girlies. I have a migraine so I’m missing out on classroom volunteering today for the first time ever (bleh). Hopefully the Imitrex will knock it out soon, because we’ve got big plans in the city with family and friends for Chinese New Year tonight and tomorrow.

Happy Friday!

Ok, THESE are my fave Ro and Ree outfits ever

Yeah, yeah, I say that all the time, but the outfits Ro and Ree put together today just made me grin. The colors, the spunk, the outrageousness. Kiddo perfection.

First, they wanted curly hair again. So I took the fabulous Ninotchka’s suggestion and spritzed their hair and then wrapped it around strips of paper towel tied in knots.

Oh my gosh, I am a paper-towel-curler convert. After about a half an hour of playtime in the warm sun, the girls had bouncy, movie-star hair that thrilled them to pieces:

Anyhow, the outfits... The outfits were hilarious. As were their poses. I took a plain, boring standing-up pic against the wall, and they scoffed and directed me to the low wall in the front yard. I told them the sun was directly behind them and the pictures wouldn’t turn out and blah, blah, blah. “Just take the picture, mama,” I was instructed, “and then you can put it on the blog.” Heh. Dang littles were 100% right again. I put the camera on manual and tried to adjust it so their faces wouldn’t be blacked out. And, wow. See?

Ree is wearing a WelaWear dress from last year. It’s too short now, so she wears it as a long shirt. She paired it with a ruffly red tulle skirt, and bright blue socks and sneakers (new from Payless, they’re having their BYGO sale thru Feb 15). Ro chose a fun red tie-dyed tee from Children’s Place, put a long-sleeved yellow tee under it for some pop, and grabbed a tiered skirt I found at GoodWill last week. Oh and she has the new soft flats she got at Payless. Notice that Ro’s shirt is tucked in and she is sockless – if you see either of these two clues in a picture, you’re usually looking at Ro.

Little cuties. You see why I don’t even bother to try dressing them anymore? Everything I pick is just... flat somehow. Anyhow, these images are going into the new blog header for sure. Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend.

Snippets from the week

How do they make babies?
When TubaDad was traveling last week, Ro hit me up with our first “How do they make babies” question. Totally unprepared to answer, I neatly deflected (or so I thought) with “Your father has a GREAT answer to that question – ask him when he gets home.” I thought she’d forget all about it, but no such luck. Apparently she cornered TubaDad after he arrived home and wanted her answer. He gave a nice high-level what-is-a-five-year-old-really-asking answer and, again, I thought we were home free. Yeah... not so much... At the bookstore yesterday, Ro informed me that “Daddy only gave me a summary, I want the details!” Heh. Has anyone run into this with your kiddos yet? Please share your stellar answers (good or bad, because you know I need a laugh!)

Good enough
All kindergarten parents recently had to fill out heart-shaped cards with love notes to their children and “special” decorations (such as glitter, stickers, or photos, according to the instructions). Sounds great in theory, but I forgot all about the notes until 10 minutes before school on the morning they were due. Gah!!! Ransacked the office, found the heart papers, scribbled oh-so-meaningful-but-really-brief notes, and ran a pink crayon quickly over the background. I handed them to the girls and we started running for the car. In mid-step Ro looked at hers and screeched “Maaaaaamaaaaaa, it’s not even pretty!!” but Ree checked hers and said matter-of-factly “Mama, it’s good enough.” That’s my girl!

New clothes
Ro and Ree are funny about clothes. They can spot something new in their closet within seconds of stepping inside. And it’s a reeeeeeally big closet. (Someday I’ll post a pic of it, but I’m afraid the blog commenter who was appalled by how many shoes the girls have might just fall over dead from a heart attack.) Anyhow, I got some darling white skirts at the Children’s Place, and snuck them upstairs Monday night, and sure enough Ro and Ree skipped downstairs on Tuesday morning proudly sporting the lace swishies and proclaiming that these were their new fave skirts (they’re kind of in love with anything white right now). (I used a funky preset on these two pics called “golden girl” to give them a sort of retro, sunny look):

Blog headers
Love all the suggestions for a new header, thank you!! I’m going to attempt a fashion friday one first, as so many folks suggested. So stay tuned. The wild-but-totally-Ro-and-Ree outfits that came giggling down the stairs today were so, so perfect for this that I grabbed the camera and snapped away. Here’s a small sneak preview with one of the photos that didn’t make the cut. Oh, and we all love the Choco Taco idea that was submitted (plus they are delish), so I’m thinking that concept will have to be made into a header next!

Blog problems
Thank you also for all the comments and info about who can see the blog and what you’re using to view it. (There were some browsers in there that I’d never even heard of, by the way -- must try out Google Chrome, it sounds intriguing.) I was hoping there would be a huge, obvious hole in reporting, so I could easily pinpoint a problem, but that wasn’t the case. So I’ll be using all the info you gave and doing more troubleshooting.

Happy friday

It’s Friday, the day that TubaDad finally returns from the icy tundra (Boston), and we can’t wait. It’s kind of been a long week. The girls have been beyond hyper and I have been beyond impatient. (I think I’ve got the January blues. Seriously. And I’m taking steps to pull myself out.)

Anyhow, the three of us all had an hour of independent play this morning, and it was heavenly. I think it did us all good, and by lunchtime we were all ready to play nice again. The girls made their own lunches (Onigiri, pretzels, fruit, and nuts for Ree; salami, cheese, crackers, and fruit for Ro; and a tunafish sandwich and pretzels for me). And then I had to take a few pictures because the outfits they picked out just made me smile.

Really, could you look at these ensembles and not laugh? Ree was so bright and vivacious in her souvenir tee that Wela and BobBob brought from Wyoming over a bright blue ruffled sweater from Target, a lime-green corduroy skirt handed down from buds H2 and S2, striped lettuce-edged pants (also from H2 and S2), electric blue socks from Children’s Place (they’re having a big sock sale right now – 5 for $5 if you need any), and new patent yellow boat shoes from Crazy8 (also in stock now). Oh, and she was laughing at something her sister was doing out of my vision, which I’m probably glad I didn’t see:

Ro (who was giving me her smug smirk in this pic), found her fave old princess crown headband that had been lost in the move and paired it with the Rapunzel tee Santa put in her stocking (that Santa is a hip dude!), a light grey corduroy skirt from Crazy8, charcoal grey leggings from Target, and her old standby Skecher shoes (without socks, apparently, which I should have caught before she went to school in this cold weather). Not a bad little look she put together here! I like it, it’s feisty (and if you swapped the Rapunzel tee for a Black Eyed Peas tee, I could totally see a teenaged Ro wearing this look to a concert – those words are going to come back to haunt me in some way, aren’t they?):

Yeah, they’re funny. And now I have to run because I volunteer in their classroom in 15 mins and don’t want to be tardy. TaTa, and happy friday!

Is it friday already? Kind of snuck up on me.

Ok, first things first. I made the girls a gorgeous bento for snacktime at school today, BUT forgot to put their weekly homework packets in the car. Fourth week of school and I have already gotten them to school late one day AND caused them to miss one weekly homework assignment. Nice... I guess the only thing left for me to forget is to pick them up some day. Gah.

Anyhow, here are Ro and Ree in their outfits of choice for this week’s Fashion Friday. Of course as soon as I wrote last Friday that they don’t care about clothes and want me to pick them all out, they flip flop and won’t let me anywhere near the sacred closet. So this whole week they picked their own outfits. My fave (not pictured) was when it was 80+ degrees and Ree was wearing a heavy top, skirt with built-in shorts, and full-length leggings and I said “Babe, don’t you want to run in the bathroom and ditch those hot leggings?” and she replied “No way, mama, the white leggings match my top perfectly and besides it all looks SO CUTE!” And then she skipped off to class in the sweltering heat, while I just about died laughing thinking “Awwww, her very first instance of suffering for beauty...”

Here’s Ro in her favorite Justin Roberts Willy Was a Whale tee. Notice that Ree is once again standing (or scootering, I guess) on her toes:

And here the girls decided to don matching headbands, Mickey Mouse tees, shorts, and heavy ribbed tights.  Aye yi yi. (By the way, is it just me or are the girls looking HUGELY different lately? Check out this photo and the one below: Their faces have really changed so that Ree’s is noticeably wider in the cheek area, her eyebrows are much much pointer than Ro’s, Ro’s left dimple is more pronounced, and Ro is always crinkling her eyes up when she smiles.)

This was today’s outfit. Ro picked her fave Wela Wear dress and Ree chose a fun Hello Kitty tee that actually looked really cute with her Crazy8 tie-dyed skirt. Their school has a “no open-toed shoes” policy, in case you’re wondering why those sweet pedicured piggies are always covered lately.

Hope you all have fun weekends planned. We have to be out of the house for a few hours each day because our agent is holding open houses. Think good thoughts!

PS: You’ve probably all heard by now that Bloglines is closing soon – sob! I’ve reluctantly transferred everything to Google Reader, but just don’t love it. Does anyone have any other great solutions?

Fashion Friday (now with even more neon yellow)

Got a new, shorter (and even brighter) cast for little Ree yesterday. She picked yellow and then was pretty happy that she happened to be wearing a complementary yellow outfit. I saved the old cast, even though it is perhaps the smelliest thing I have ever touched. It’s just that Ro and
Ree, the 6 Texas cousins, and the 3 California cousins all signed it, and that makes it utterly precious. The doc said I could cut off all the white part (to get rid of the stink) and then glue it back together so we could have it forever. Heh. I guess I’m not the only nut he’s seen.

Anyhow, here are the girls in the Fashion Friday outfits that they picked out today. They wanted to match, which involved some scuffling and pushing in the closet, but eventually they settled on the cute flowered green and orange dresses. As an aside, these outfits look kind of normal to me, not as crazy as Ro and Ree usually look, dontcha think? Ro was funny, after they plopped down for a pic she said “Mama, there are two things different, can you see them? I have legwarmers and Ree has a cast.” Funny girls.

Oh, and I took a few pics of them all smiley, but this one is my fave because Ro was teasing Ree and she was looking at me kind of exasperated saying “Mommmmmmm!”

Does anyone else have any fun Fashion Friday outfits that your kiddo(s) assembled? If so, please share!

PS: I know this is a long shot, but are there any orthopedic specialists reading this? We have an appointment to get a second opinion on Monday, but in the meantime I’d love to hear another professional assessment of Ree’s most recent xrays (I can email them to you). TubaDad and I don’t have any experience reading these things, so maybe everything is perfectly on track like our ortho doc said yesterday and will be fine with time, but the radius looks troubling to me. No big deal, and we’ll hear more on Monday, but if anyone feels like looking at them this weekend, just give a holler.

Fashion Friday and a cast-cover review

Just a quick post to document what the girls picked out to wear for Fashion Friday today. It still amuses me how different they are in their styling. Wonder what Rachel Zoe would make of their choices? Heh.

Ree went for an orange-on-orange look with a black belt and black patent leather shoes for some pop (actually her words were “I want a belt to make everything look pretty, mama"). And Ro is clearly wishing it would cool off already. She loves the layered looks that she gets to put together in winter, and today went for a pink paisley top, hot pink ruffled skirt, multistripe leggings, disney socks, and her old pink shoes which are seriously getting too small but she won’t let me throw away. Oh, and she wanted legwarmers on her arms. Never mind that it’ll probably hit 90-degrees today...

For the most part, by the way, the girls haven’t felt like picking out their outfits for school. They’d rather play in PJs until the absolute last minute and then just tell me what colors they want. So I’ve been putting out clothes, and they happily put them on. But they’ve decided that they definitely want to pick their own outfits on Friday (I think they just enjoy singing the words “Fashion Friday” as they get dressed), so hopefully we’ll have fun/zany/twinado outfits to post each week.

We’re heading out for the long weekend at the beach, and I’m not packing the laptop. Hope everyone has fun! Oh, and that reminds me of the little war we’ll be fighting against sand this weekend. In prep, we’re bringing the cast cover we got from XeroSox, a rubber kitchen glove, and some trashbags and painter’s tape. Why so many things? Well they all kind of work in different situations. The XeroSox cast cover (Ree is wearing it below) is awesome for swimming or any total immersion activity (it comes with a little ball to pump the air out and make a vacuum seal). But, the tight top makes it a pain in the butt to get on, so it’s only really worth the hassle if I know Ree will be submerged in the water. By the way, this thing really should have been designed a little differently – there’s no need for the enormous cartoonish mitten/thumb part at the end, Ree’s hand doesn’t even come close to that part, and it just hangs there and looks silly. I’d like it better if they had just rounded the top off.

For bathtime, I’ve found that the easiest thing is to trim a plastic garbage bag down to size and tape around the top with painter’s tape (so the tape is partially on her arm and partially on the bag). The tape won’t hold if it gets submerged, but Ree is great at keeping her bagged arm on the edge of the tub. And it’s easy to put on and remove. I’ll probably use that same thing at the beach, but am also packing a kitchen rubber glove just in case. The rubber glove easily fits over her hand and some of her arm, so if Ree can keep the sand out of the top of the cast then we’ll probably just go with that since it’s reusable and we don’t need to bring any tape down to the beach.

Cheers!

Fashion (and I use that term extremely loosely) friday

Catherine is on her way to our house right this minute and we are so excited to see her and to meet baby Hannah (squeal!). I’m sure we’ll have one or two pictures of the kiddos together in the days to come. Heh.

In the meantime, here’s what the girls thought proper pajama party attire looked like tonight. I’m not even sure what to call this style? Ree has on a fleecy pj top around her chest like a tube top, a ballerina tutu skirt around her right shoulder, a pair of striped pj shorts around her left shoulder, and red pj shorts on her actual legs. Ro (who wouldn’t stop making odd faces at me) is wearing a similar layered style with random pieces in even more random places.

In this picture, they’re upstairs in our bedroom looking sideways at the weird “live” tv that has an odd thing called “commercials.” Why? Because our beloved huge screen tv down in the family room convulsed and died a tragic death during the power outage we had this weekend. Now all we can see is a green blinking light on the front. TubaDad googled it and found out that users have dubbed it “the green blinking light of death.” Now that just doesn’t sound promising at all, does it? TubaDad and BobBob are going to try some fancy capacitor welding replacement thing, but if it doesn’t work, we are looking at a HUGE replacement cost and are all kind of ticked off about it.

Oooh, I hear the garage door opening, TubaDad is pulling in with Catherine and Hannah!!!!!! More later! Must go hug!

A veritable plethora of Fashion Friday looks

Hmm, I don't think I've posted Fashion Friday pics in a while. Guess that’s what happens when you gallivant all over the place. Heh. Anyhow, TubaDad is finally home from the longest business trip in the world, and we’re all actually staying home for 4 or 5 days. Wow. So I had a few minutes to comb through neglected pics, and here are the Ro and Ree fashions from the last few weeks.

Ro (left) has been on a real orange kick lately. Here she’s wearing beach braids and her new fave shark shirt. Ree (right) still loves blue, and particularly likes this “nabee blue” give peas a chance shirt. I found both of them in the boys' sale section at Target for pennies:

Here they were all dressed up for preschool (oops, sorry, they correct me every time and say, “no mama, it’s pre-K!!”) and holding their items for sharing day. Ree on the left, and Ro (looking all sassy) on the right. Is it just me, or do they look really old in this picture? They’re killing me with this stealthy and speedy growing-up thing:

All golden tan and looking like beautiful island girls after our Hawaiian vacation. Ro left, and Ree right. We were running super late for pre-K this day (yeah yeah, what else is new?), so I grabbed the shirts and then told them to put together the rest of the outfits. Sometimes I like to do that just to see how different they end up. Yes, sometimes it IS all about amusing mama:

See, orange has been huge around here lately. Ro left, Ree right.

Playing the high-jump game with BobBob. Ro left (in a little halter top that she got from friends H2/S2 and has been DYING to wear) and Ree (also wearing a dress from H2/S2, now that I think about it) in mid-air:

Ree left and Ro right. I think this picture was from yesterday, but the girls have changed clothes so many times in the last few days that to be honest I kind of lost track. Their clothes used to go right in the hamper after wearing, but not anymore. Now their stuff gets the sniff test, and a whole bunch of it goes right back in the closet. Shhhhhh… Do you think the new daisy/initial hairclips will help the kids in their Kindergarten class? Hope so:

I think I’m all caught up now and plumb out of pictures (gasp). Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. My little bro is entering an antique speedster race with my dad this weekend, and we should get some really cool videos and pictures of the girls in a lime-green Ford speedster to share.

Thank you for all of the awesome fish recipes. Yum!! If you feel like helping with something else, I’ve got another question: The girls are graduating from pre-K in a couple of weeks and they don’t do a ceremony or anything at their school. No biggie at all, but suddenly I thought “Well shoot, that doesn’t mean WE can’t do anything!” And now we’re having a family graduation party (with honorary family members Catherine and Hannah) on July 2. So, does anyone have any fun/cheap/quick ideas, crafts, or decorations for the party? I ordered darling pink and purple gowns and caps for Ro and Ree from an online store, found a cute letter poem of the word KINDERGARTEN that the girls can draw and act out, and found instructions on how to make mortar-board party hats for the guests to wear. Ro and Ree are so excited. They’re going to do a little show that will highlight some of the new skills they’ve learned this year and have already started practicing. I’d spill the beans on the agenda, but promised Ro and Ree that I’d keep it under wraps until the big day. :-)