Monday

Today was the second Monday of the school year.
But we were feeling under the weather.


It didn't help that it felt about 65 degrees on this last day of August.

But, we're always willing to eat popsicles and dance with the neighbor girls!
But, some of us were just up for watching...




So, I think we'll be staying home tomorrow...what with the H1N1 flu going around...I don't think they'd let us come 10 blocks within the school! The girls will spend the morning with me and then the afternoon with Grandpa and hopefully we'll get over our fever.
A little shot of our little cottage...I call it a cottage...much nicer than calling it a small house!

p.s. your posts are working so keep them coming!

Breaking the law, breaking the law

Today was a first.

Today, I dropped Lily off at school on my way to my school.

She didn't want me to park and walk her up to her line, she just wanted me to pull up in the drop off lane and drop her off in front of the school like the other big kids.


She seemed fine with everything...I was a little distracted as I watched her in my rear view mirror, making sure she headed in the right direction as she walked with a friend.


And, then it happened.

I became that mom...

You know that crazy mom in the drop off lane...

the one teachers and other parents smirk at...


The crazy mom who makes an illegal left turn and immediately gets pulled over by the police?

Yes, that was me...I was the crazy mom who got a moving violation ticket today.

The police officer was nice, but told me the "Chief and school officials are so fed up with people making a left at that corner I have no discretion here"...as I sat in my car horrified that the chief of police and school officials were "fed up" with the likes of me.

He did give me a ticket but didn't take my license, only giving me supervision...
I thought only criminals got supervision.
I can now tell people "Hi, I'm Shannon and I'm on supervision with the Downers Grove police department for the next 90 days."

He told me that I should pay the ticket within a week and that while on supervision for 90 days I could not get another ticket. I made sure to tell him this was the first ticket I had ever received.

As we both pulled away I pulled out my cell phone and called Greg.

"I just got pulled over and got a ticket"

"You did? What happened?"

"I made a left onto Fairview after dropping Lily off"

"Oh, that's right, you can't do that."

"I think I'm going to cry." {big sob}

"Shannon, don't cry. It's only a ticket. Everyone gets tickets."


And so my Friday began.
I owe the city of Downers Grove $75...and will never make a left at the drop off line again.

Rainy Day Photobooths

Today was Lily's third day of kindergarten--gym class-- "it was fun"...but apparently the stretching hurt! Yesterday morning while she was getting dressed she told me, "Mama, yesterday at school, it wasn't very interesting. I just drew a picture of myself!"

I sat in technology training all day and Hannah Grace spoke on her cell phone catching up on her many social obligations.

I discovered that while I've learned how to download pictures to my computer, I can also take pictures with my computer. So, the girls and I played with it this rainy afternoon!

You can see Lily's sassy new haircut and my sassy new back to school highlights. Waffles and bacon tonight for dinner! We actually ended up with a free welcome to Downers Grove pizza from Aurelios...saving the waffles and bacon for tomorrow night when Greg and I attend our first curriculum night!

ABC easy as 123

So, it has now been three days and still no notice of or comments about the blog. It would seem my two readers, Mom and Lauren,are not checking the blog on a daily basis. Now that I know how to upload the pictures I am going to try to keep this up more regularly. I was actually going to take some pictures of our house today to show you what we've done, but the memory card was full...and that's something I don't know what to do with!

So, now that Lily has begun public education we have entered into the world of homework and projects...including long term projects.

The first project Lily had to do was take a picture for each letter of the alphabet. The school gave her a disposable camera and I tried to give her free reign in being the photographer. This resulted in us having only 7, out of 26 pictures that were printed and recognizable to use for her book. So, we went back to our pictures from our summer vacation and snapped a few with our digital camera (i.e., Q-tips, Ice cream, and Pogo sticking in action).

The Heuber Junior family made it into the alphabet book and I wanted to share my favorites from her book!

Vacation with my cousin.

Uncle Bobby

Exercise with Aunt Lauren

Lily had good time making the book and I was good about keeping my hands off of it and letting her make her own project...even when she was slapping the pictures in the book and some of the edges of the pictures were overhanging the edge of the book. It is all pure Lily!

As I re-read what I've written I realize that I use the word "so" frequently to transition to a new thought. But, I will leave you with this last picture of our accessory queen, who still at times demands to sleep with her hair bow and will pat her head and say "Hair bow go?" when she realizes she is accessory-less!

Notice the hot pink goggles that match the pink dots on her suit, casually strewn around her neck...she is a walking fashion plate!

Date Night

So, it's been about 24 hours and no comments yet...we'll see how much I'll have to say before I get a comment!

Tonight, Greg and I went to see this movie

Julie and Julia
We both really enjoyed it. Of course I want to move to France, buy a Le Creuset, and make a beef bourginoin (I know I'm spelling this wrong. The first time I typed it I wrote beef bargain)...but I'd like to do all of that back in the 1950's when life seemed a little more glamorous.

Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci were fun to watch. I was less interested in Julie's character. I looked at her blog once a couple of months ago and was turned off by her writing, a lot of foul language. I had thought her book would be fun to read, but then after seeing her writing on her blog I decided not to read the book.

One of my favorite stories about the book Julie and Julia is that a woman we know from Hinsdale Covenant, her kids were in Greg's youth group, is a very big cook. She gave me my Cuisinart at my bridal shower and said all new wives need a Cuisinart in their kitchen. Anyway, she apparently loves Julia Child and wanted to read the book Julie and Julia but couldn't get past all of the language. So, she asked a friend of hers, who is in my book club, to read the book and mark out all of the bad language. Then she could read the book and not visually see the words she found offensive! I thought that was a good way to solve the problem. But, the best part was that after all of this happened, Julie Powell was on NPR being interviewed (I believe about the upcoming movie) and our friend called into the radio station and got on the air! She described to them how she had had a friend mark out all of the bad language in her copy of the book and asked Julie why she wrote the book in that manner. Apparently, Julie said something to the extent that this was just who she was and how she writes, but I thought good for our friend for speaking up about the writing style!

So, I enjoyed the movie, think I'll read Julia's book "My life in France" and now need to start a small savings account for that ever elusive Le Crueset dutch oven!

p.s. Greg told me that if I wanted to keep writing this blog and get a book/movie contract out of it he would be very supportive!

Slipping Thru my fingers

We went to kindergarten today.

"No cereal today Muma, I just want some juice"

I convinced her some cinnamon raisin toast with a little butter would taste good.

Posing for Daddy before we left. ...one with the little sister, who insisted on bringing her tinker bell and snow white doll.


Bananas!



Little sister was also very excited today...she looks really funny in these pictures! At some point in the morning, Greg stopped mid sentence, looked at Hannah Grace and said, "Hannah Grace what happened to your hair?" He then looked at me and said, "It's like you washed it with Pert shampoo, it's all pouffy." I didn't respond, distracted by the mass amounts of people, keeping track of our kindergartner, wondering how Greg knew about Pert shampoo, all the while wondering what in the world happened to Hannah Grace's hair myself...it's a wonder we found Ms. Riley's line.
Just after this picture was taken she asked, "Da YaYa go?" And, then the tears started as Greg and I sat through a meeting on the new Jolly Phonics reading program the school uses.


I had no tears until tonight when I heard the song.....

Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile
I watch her go with a surge of that well-known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while
Slipping through my fingers all the time I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see whats in her mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time




I had decided to finally watch Mama Mia tonight (even though I had heard all of the bad reviews). The last time I tried to watch it was up at Stormy Lake. Greg had come through with one of his bootleg copies...which turned out to be a movie that would skip about every few minutes, basically unwatchable. So, tonight I watched it on on-demand and, while, Meryl Streep's singing leaves a lot to be desired, I could hear the real ABBA singers singing and then began to cry. Greg would say I'm being melodramatic, but then again, he's out shooting raccoons right now in the back yard...so, I could just say he's being a little bit "country". I've also told him that I just don't think I'd be able to go to the Cook County jailhouse to bail him out should the bootleg cops come a-knocking on our door.


But, I've gotten a little sidetracked and long-winded, so I'll end this post on this note...

For my dear sweet girl, who will be 6 in 3 weeks as she keeps telling everyone!

Colossians 1:9-14 "And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

Greg is taking me to see Julie and Julia tomorrow night-from what I've heard it's a much better venue for Meryl Streep....and I'm going to wait to see how long it takes anyone of the two people who read this blog to come across this post! Let me know!