Summer Fun-Week 12

We did our best to enjoy the not-so-summery weather this week. On Tuesday, it felt more like Spring (which is still better than winter) so after the girls hit a morning RAC camp, I surprised them with a McDonald's picnic at a park before going to buy school supplies.

On this school supply shopping trip, we wandered through the toy aisles and I discovered that my exact Strawberry Shortcake doll from childhood is now celebrating her 35th birthday and was in the 'vintage' toy section. Oh dear.

We hit another park (this one at J's school) on the way home. American Ninja Warrior continues to change the way my kids play at parks. It's all about climbing and scaling structures now.

On Wednesday we needed some time at home to knock out some projects. It took me the entire day to clean out and re-organize all the kitchen cabinets. Things were a hot mess up in here. Not pictured: the 10 loads of laundry I also did on this day.

The girls are into trying to repair toys with tape and such. Actually, they think they are playing doctor when they do this. The most recent adventure is to purposely break off a Barbie's legs and then try to tape them on. Adrienne performs a lot of this 'surgery'.

On Thursday, I bit the bullet and we headed to the shoe store to get all the shoe buying out of the way. We emerged 90 minutes later with 2 pairs of shoes for each girl, plus snow boots for Jillian. I have learned over time to pick my battles, and that's why I let Adrienne walk out of the store in these flashy little sneaks. Sigh.

Yep, they light up. Everywhere. Super flashy.

The other big news related to shoes is that Jillian finally learned to tie her shoes!! She picked out some adorable New Balance sneakers that I'd actually like to wear myself and then became determined to learn to tie them. She did it in one night, and we continue to practice each day so that she can tie them quickly and tightly. She plans to debut the shoes publicly at meet the teacher later this week. 

Jillian has been asking to do some more cooking, so on Saturday morning she whipped up some mini blueberry muffins from her princess cookbook. I probably need to back off and let her do more alone because she is getting pretty savvy in the kitchen.

It finally warmed up Saturday afternoon, so we did a little painting and reading outside on the deck while Matt mowed...

...and then tried out some new hairstyles (side ponytails) and lip gloss for a family dinner out.

We drove through Flapdoodles on the way home, and Matt had fun teasing the girls that he was eating their sundaes.

Ah, the Flabbermast at Flapdoodles is a wonderful thing. Sailing our ice cream boats home for a big delicious treat.

Sundae time on the deck. Pretty sure they ended up wearing more than they ate.

And always watching out for Daddy, who loves to sneak bites

Oh, also this week--Matt got a new wedding ring. I find this hilarious. After Jimmy Fallon's degloving injury, men are apparently freaked out, so are ordering these cheap rubber rings that will not injure their fingers. Matt decided to get one, especially to use while weightlifting and traveling. I wish I would have known 14 years ago that I could have skipped 2 years of payments on his platinum band and sprung for the $20 rubber option. Too funny.