Riley and Avery

So Riley and Avery both got haircuts (by me, poor things). Avery's is a lot easier to cut because the curls are forgiving. Riley's turned out okay, I think. Don't have pictures of Riley's hair yet. These are pictures of Avery walking to the mailbox (wearing a 3-6 month dress as a top) in order to mail me a letter. She doesn't really get how the postal service works.

So I think I found a winner in terms of future schools. Globe Charter School is opening their new building pretty close to where we live (less than half the distance of Golden Mountain). They offer language instruction in French, Spanish, German, Russian, or ASL from Kindergarten. They offer a global-oriented environmental education with supposedly a lot of hand-on learning. I really can't wait to check them out, but obviously want to wait until there are actual children in the classes. And they offer K-9th grade and all the children have the same school day, so no separate drop-off and pick-up when Riley and Avery are both in school in different grades. The fee for going there is only $125 a year per child and 5-10 hours of volunteering/fund-raising each month. I like the approach to parental involvement. It seems that schools with active parental involvement do better. I'm not really looking for Kindergarten, but probably for first grade. If we can, we'll keep Riley at Golden Mountain through Kindergarten. They really really genuinely enjoy her being there and I would like her to graduate from there. But I'm really excited about this Globe Charter School.

So we went to Joe's Crab Shack for dinner the other day. I learned several things about my children from going there. One, my children are so unused to air conditioning that they freeze in ACed areas. Riley and Avery both requested jackets, and it wasn't even cold in there. Simply air conditioned. Two, Avery has no concept of how restaurants work. We must not eat out enough. She ordered her chicken fingers and kept telling me over and over and over again that she was hungry. I went out to the car and got the girls jackets and when I can back Avery said "Why you go outside, Mommy, I'm hungry!" And I asked her if she thought I was going to make her chicken fingers, and she was like "Duh!" No, the mommies don't go back into the kitchens at restaurants and make the family's food. Three, Riley has expensive taste. She was so excited when she looked at the children's menu and saw a snow crab option. I mean, she almost wet her pants. So Riley got snow crab, which was a lot of work for me, with very little pay-out. The restaurant was super-packed and super loud. They had four different birthday parties going on (the family kind, not the kid kind). The disco ball was spinning and the staff came out to sing and dance every several minutes or so. Riley did not like the noise. Which is strange for someone so adept at making a lot of her own noise. I had the crab cakes and they were okay. I mean, the proportion of crab meat to spices and breading was good, but they made the crab cakes with snow crab. I like snow crab as much as the next person, but dude, crab cakes are not supposed to be made with snow crab. It just tasted "off."

Avery said something cute yesterday. She went potty and then wanted to change her clothes. She picked out an outfit and said "I want to put this on so I can go outside and look pretty for Matthew. Because I like him." Rudi almost died.

So we bought a steam cleaner for the carpet. I've done the entry way and the dining room so far. The the kids art area is next, then the living room. Man, the high-traffic areas were awfull. I used way more cleaning solution than I had planned. Now I'm the carpet police. We also got a new vacuum cleaner. The one that we were given stopped working. It the Eureka EnviroVac, which uses 33% less energy and has washable filters so less is wasted. I really like it so far, but it's hard to tell. All vacuums work nicely the first week you have them. The true test will be if it can keep up with us over the next several months. It's picking stuff up from our carpet that our last vacuum didn't. The steam cleaner worked really well. I'm very pleased with it so far. We'll see if it gets the spilled paint off of the carpet. Oh, and the house smells soooooo good now. Geez, the carpets must have really stunk.

I ordered more RAM for my computer. I should be getting it within the next couple of days. 256MB of RAM just isn't enough. So I'll be getting 512MB in the mail soon. I can't even open iPhoto anymore. Insufficient RAM and more than 2,000 full-sized photos will do that, I think. Next I have to work on the combo drive. Fun.

About five years ago, we had Callie and Dicey. After getting Dicey as a kitten I vowed to never get another kitten. Just go for the older cats. I had a brain fart somewhere along the way and now we have a kitten. Now I remember how much trouble they are. She's cute and all that, but the kittenish antics are really wearing on everyone. Especially the jump-on-your-face-at-2am game that Little Sweetheart likes to play. Oh, and the run-like-hell-for-the-door-whenever-it's-open game is getting old too. As is the hide-under-the-car-and-try-to-catch-me game.