52 Weeks of Cookie: Week 21

 And they called it puppy love
Oh, I guess they'll never know
How a young heart really feels
And why I love her so











Love,

Cookie

Sweet 16/2.

Today Lauren turns eight years old, inching ever so closely to ten. Seven didn't bother me so much, but eight? That's crazy talk.

This year, instead of having a kids party, we decided to have just our immediate family celebrate with us. I got away with this because I agreed instead to a series of sleepovers with various friends. I decided it would be wiser to spread it out rather than have 7 or 8 screaming second grade girls ransacking our home for one night.

Lauren asked for an "under the sea" party. The special guest star on the table is Julie, Lauren's goldfish.

Lauren loved that she got to decorate the dining room with her various stuffed sea creatures. And trust me, she has plenty of them.

We made these cute jellyfish out of paper bowls.

And you got to have fishy snacks!

Lauren was very specific that she wanted figures on her cake. Grandma Bruno got her a cake with figures on it for her third birthday, and it must have made a big impression. I got this at our local grocery store's bakery, and I have to say that they did a fantastic job.

Lauren was so happy when she opened her presents. Lots and lots of smiles to go around!

 

And here she is getting ready to make her wish. I'm pretty sure that she wished for a mansion because she told us today that when she is a teenager, she and her best friend are going to live together in a mansion and that we'll need to give her a thousand dollars so they can buy one.  They don't call them wishes for nothing...

Bring Your Child to Work Day 2013

Last Thursday, Lauren got to spend the day at Daddy's lab for Bring Your Child to Work Day.




She had such a great time. Daddy taught her how to make a microscope slide and took her to get Chinese food for lunch.

 

So now if you ask her, she wants to be scientist when she grows up. She was particularly impressed by the fact that Daddy gets to do whatever he wants to at work. She also told us that even though she looks like me on the outside, she's more like Daddy on the inside.



Here she is proudly holding her souvenir from the day: an immunofluorescent image of a mouse liver that she helped make. And here my company only gave out frisbees stamped with our company's logo...

Speaking of my company, you have to be ten years old to come to my office, so for now, she'll have to wait a couple of years before she can take the financial world by storm.

52 Weeks of Cookie - Week 20

Did I ever tell you about my good friend, The Other Chubby White Puppy? We have so much fun together! I just love to chase her around the house! Sometimes when we are playing, she does this thing where she rolls on her back with her feet flailing in the air. When she does that, I like to jump over her! And sometimes, she makes this really funny sound when she opens her mouth and let's all the air out. I've never heard another puppy make that sound before. It sure is neato. And see how she's giving me a high five in this photo? Yeah, me and The Other Chubby Puppy sure are tight.

Love,

Cookie

52 Weeks of Cookie: Week 19

There's nothing better than watching some sports with The Big Guy! The canine drama of athletic competition! The thrill of victory! The agony of defeat! Although I have to admit that sometimes it would be nice to spend some time together painting my toenails pink.

I wished that my prince charming would come.

Last week, Lauren had to write a report about grasshoppers. Her teacher told the class that if they would bring in the insect that they were writing about, they could get extra credit. So after she finished dinner, she went outside to find a grasshopper.



Instead, she found this little guy sitting in our window well.



Mark rescued him. I would have done it myself (I have no problem touching cold, warty animals), but once I got into our deep window well, I didn't think I could get back out!

 

Lauren quickly got a box and built him a temporary hotel for his stay, complete with a luxurious, memory grass bed and an honor bar of dandelions.



Lauren just adored him. I don't blame her. When I was her age, my dad brought home some toads for me to temporarily keep. When I was handling him, I felt like a kid again.



So of course she was devastated when we told her that she would have to let him go. But given the season, we would hate for a Mr. or Mrs. Toad to miss their mate!

52 Weeks of Cookie - Week 18

I just can't get enough of my food! It's so crunchy and yummy and good! The Big Guy has been feeding me a lot because My New Ma says that I'm too bony. I think My New Ma is just comparing me to The Other White Chubby Puppy that lives with us. It's all good though - it just means more food for me. Yay!

Love,

Cookie

New Ma here. This would be The Other White Chubby Puppy:



Coconut and Cookie love to play with each other, so we think that either Cookie thinks Coconut is a puppy or that Coconut thinks that Cookie is a cat!

52 Weeks of Cookie: Week 17

 

This week, I got a spiffy new harness decorated with pretty colorful flowers! I was so excited to show it off to the whole neighborhood. The Little Girl is always running around there with her friends. They look like they're having so much fun! I wish I could go too, but My New Mom says I'm too little. Will I ever be big?

Love,

Cookie

Bonus photo:

Glo fish.

 

As if a goldfish, 2 guppies (one of which is expecting), and a pond full of fish weren't enough, Lauren now has a tank of glow fish. So now we just don't have a school - we have an entire university!

Happy Easter!

So here we are at the close of another holiday! We celebrated last night with our family and friends, so today was a lounge day. I recorded last night's airing of the The Ten Commandments, and spent a good part of the day on the couch watching. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I got to see the whole thing! It was great.



Lauren and I baked a lot of cookies this year. Not quite as many as for Christmas, but it was close! Lauren suggested that we used neon food coloring, and I have to say that I don't think I'll be going back to the regular kind because they turned out awesome. Although I should have taken an accompanying photo of my matching dyed fingers...

 

Last Christmas, I discovered the joy of cake mix cookies. The pink is flavored with strawberry Jello, the yellow with lemon pudding and the green with pistachio pudding.

 

It's an easy way to make a whole lot of cookies at once!



It's become a tradition that we have an egg hunt in our backyard the evening before Easter. This year, we invited several of Lauren's friends to join in. We had 104 eggs in the hunt, and we think that there's a least one somewhere out there in the yard. I wonder if it will sprout Reese's cup flowers?

I wish I had family pictures to share, but my hostess responsibilities seem to grow with each holiday, making it increasingly difficult to play the role of photographer as well. On top of that, for the most part Lauren can't stand to have her photo taken. If she's in the right mood, I can occasionally coax her to pose for me, but for the most part, she wants nothing to do with it (In fact, I had to beg her to hold that basket over her head, and with all the sighing and eye-rolling I got, you would have thought I was painting her portrait for hours rather than snapping a few photos that took all of five minutes.). I realize that I have only myself to blame for it, so I try not to pester her about it.

Which brings me to something I've been thinking about - the blog. Between our increasingly busy lifestyle and the fact that it's difficult to document our family's daily life when a third of our family has adopted a no photo policy (And I might add, the part of family who has the most going on), I've been thinking about what to do going forward. First off, I've decided to quit doing Project 52. I actually finished through week 6, and while I could handle the assignments from a skill standpoint, I feel like I'm doing way too much assignment photography, which is taking away from my desire to do personal photography. I am going to continue with the 52 Weeks of Cookie because her adorableness needs to be documented for the world.

So while it may sound like I'm preparing to announce the end of The Ross Family Equation, I'm not. Actually quite the opposite. I want to revive it to be what I first intended it to be - a way to document the everyday goodness in our lives. I just have to figure out a way to make it work!

In the meantime, I added my Twitter feed to the sidebar. I've gotten in the habit of tweeting photos from my 365 days project, so there will be new content there on a fairly regular basis.