Flowers for Friday.

It's Friday! This weekend I'm going to...

...eat lots of food that's bad for me like pizza and ice cream
...get my hair done
...watch lots of baseball
...work in my sketchbook journal



Here's my little flower picking partner. She likes going bare-pawed in the grass.


I

I had to keep shooing mosquitos away from her. If you look closely, you can see one feeding off of her ear.



Looks like Cookie's plans for the weekend involve a whole lotta nothin'.

(Side note:  I fixed the settings so now I can post larger sized photos. So your eyes are not deceiving you - they are bigger!).

One big knitting family.

I'm feeling under the weather, but I wanted to get at least one blog post in before January comes to a close. I've been keeping a fairly hectic pace this week between work and Girl Scouts, so I must have worn down my resistance and caught myself a cold. It was only a matter of time, since I always seem to get sick in the months of February and November. forgot that the blog celebrated its 5th(!) anniversary on Friday (January 27th). I even knew it was coming up and was planning to do something special to celebrate it, but it slipped my mind in the midst of everything else that was going on. Oh well.

After spending a couple of years nearly forgotten and untouched, my Knifty Knitters have been getting a real workout. I had planned on making a hat and scarf for myself, but as soon as Lauren saw me knitting, she was immediately hooked (Pun intended) and wanted to make something too. So we jointly set out to make her a scarf.



Here's the finished product. The yarn we used was super pretty and soft.



After the scarf was completed, we went to the store to pick out yarn for her next project. There she saw a knitting board (A long loom), and immediately wanted it so she could make a blanket. She finished it that same evening, and even managed to take time out to teach Daddy how to knit too. You know what they say about knitting - I family who knits together stays together and never lacks for a scarf. 



And on that note, I'm going to make like Marcus and get some rest.

Duly noted.

Grandma gave Lauren some Post-it notes to play with. She's been using them to let me know her desires. She hands it to me, explains what it says and then walks away. It would be a very efficient means of communication...if I was her secretary.



This one means she wants a drink.



This one means she wants a drink and a meatball sandwich.



And this one means she has to go potty.



It could be worse. At least she didn't draw a car.

Sunday as usual.

I have a love / hate relationship with Sundays. On one hand, any day off is a good day off. On the other hand, a perfectly good day off is ruined by the fact that I have to go to work the next day.

Today we had the 90 degree weather than we have been missing (NOT!) this summer. The weather has been so mild, that this is only the third time that we filled the pool for Lauren.



And it was just the right weather to have a squirt gun battle with Daddy.



Yesterday, Lauren begged us to get her this stuffed shark at the dollar store. Although you can't see him too well here, he is super cute, so I couldn't resist. I told her that she had to pay me back by posing for a photo with him. She begrudgingly gave me her best toothy shark smile.



While that was going on, I was inside doing my daily work-out with EA Sports Active. Mark gave it to me as a birthday gift, but due to my mysterious leg issue, I only tried it out recently. It's much more demanding and structured than Wii Fit which I really like. Since the game comes with a resistance band and is compatible with the Wii balance board, the exercises are also extremely varied. There's everything from traditional exercises like running, squats, and shoulder presses to sports such as boxing, tennis, and basketball to some unexpected exercises like in-line skating and aerobic dancing. One of the downsides of the game is that you have to wear this blood pressure-like cuff on your leg while you play, which is a bit of a drag. If I'm able to keep at it though, I think that I'm going to see some results.



When she came in from swimming, Lauren wanted to practice her letters. After she writes the word, then she draws what is says. She struggles a little bit with getting some of the letters like "D" and "C" facing the right direction, but otherwise, her writing is amazingly legible.



After lunch, Lauren then had the idea of making paper boats. I had never made a paper boat in my life, but thanks to the miracle of video on the internet, I am now quite the master shipbuilder. While I was skeptical about their sea worthiness, they made it out to sea just fine. Speaking of our fish, after having such a rough time earlier this year with the pond draining and all, I'm happy to report that we spotted several babies this week. Life carries on for them just as it does for us.

Except they don't have to go to work on Monday.