Naughty

This dog is driving me nuts.
She is still CHEWING her way through our house leaving a continuous wake of destruction behind her. She's obsessed with baskets, toilet paper, shoes, feminine hygiene products (please don't ask) and worst of all....EYE GLASSES. On Sunday she got Ryan's new glasses and completely chewed them to bits. That makes THREE pair, oh probably about $500 worth of glasses, that she's eaten in the past 3 months. She also has eaten 2 of my cheap sunglasses.
Now. You would think that we, as the human grown-ups, would attempt to minimize the damage by keeping our valuables out of her reach.
You would think.
But she is so smart, and so naughty, that she's thwarted most attempts at keeping things out of her reach. I've found her standing on the kitchen table. I found her on top of the kitchen counter yesterday. Let's just say that I'm convinced that she possibly has super-powers.....a little red cape a la "Underdog!" that must be invisible to our eyes, but allows her to fly, levitate, and reach all things naughty.
Ty and I dropped her off at the vet this morning. As mad as I am at her right now, it broke my heart to leave her there....she cowered close to me with her little face buried in my arm. She's getting some shots and a little surgery to spare her the pain and heartbreak of motherhood. And is it weird that I feel guilty taking that opportunity away from her? Oh the complications of pet-ownership!

Cupcake Fail

St. Patrick's Day calls for Rainbow Cupcakes! I thought this would be an easy, fun way for us to add color to the holiday menu....
Grace clearly thought it would be fun...
Colors ready to go...all you have to do is layer them in the cupcake liners!
Fail! They did NOT come out like perfect-stripedy-rainbow-perfection. No. They look like a bad 60's drug trip. And tasted like artificial flavoring and cancer-causing FD&C Red #40 and Blue #whatever...yuck. They are still sitting on the counter a week later waiting to be taken out to the trash. I don't think even the dog would touch them :D

SURPRISE!!!

Andrew came home from work late yesterday...because he was picking up THIS!!!
Apparently he researched and ordered this beautiful computer last week and kept it a secret from me. All the kids knew. He tracked it every day through the shipping company...I had absolutely NO idea. He even slapped down a bit extra $$ for the fabulous PINK exterior. Perfect, yeah?
I don't even really know the stats...it's roughly 4x bigger- faster- stronger than it's predecessor. All I know is that it's super fast and I'm looking forward to spending (wasting?) lots of time playing with it! Best Husband of the Year Award goes directly to Andrew! And yes, that's a picture of me kissing it....perhaps I'd better go lay one of those on him ;)

Loyal Subjects

We were all in the kitchen last night chatting after the boys' choir concert. I sent Grace upstairs to get her jammies on.
A few minutes later she came halfway down the stairs, (jammied), stopped, flung her arms out and sang "Hello my loyal subjects!"

Of course the princess had the complete attention of her subjects for the next few minutes.

Lick and a Promise

It's been a crazy couple of weeks (actually read months) around here. Busy. My house is suffering.
My mom used to say, "We'll give it a lick and a promise!" Which meant we could hurry through the basic house cleaning jobs and get on to the fun stuff. She and I used to spend many a Saturday shopping, sewing, crafting, etc. Knowing my mom, we would always come through on the "promise" part later and do the deep cleaning. She and my grandma Tussey pictured above) were very clean people, but I know that this saying came from her Idaho roots.
So for about 2 months now I've been saying "We'll give it a lick and a promise!" every week. Did it again yesterday. It was necessary to my health and well being to get my hair done...did the Saturday shopping...spent time with Andrew...by the time I got home it was 6:30pm and I licked and promised once again. Which would be fine if I could manage to get around to honoring the "promise" every once in a while!
Other time honored Tussey sayings:
"Crap in a bucket."
"Slap you up to a peak and knock the peak off."