Stop the presses! I just got back from the grocery store, and I managed to leave the store using only my bring-along bags for $130 of groceries (after $50 savings). What an accomplishment, huh? In all seriousness, it annoys me to no end to have 10 or more of those plastic bags each week to add to my “collection”. When it was diaper central around here, I was able to do away with 3-12 plastic bags per day depending on what the critters ate that day. At times I even found myself running out of them before the next grocery trip. Now I’m lucky if I can actually use 2-3 per week. My cat-themed bag bag (a.k.a. plastic bag holder) is a joke now because it supposedly only holds 80 bags. Yes, I have well over 80 bags in storage here, and this is after taking several loads of plastic bags to the grocery store recycling bin.

Instead of this scene in my home (this is not my actual bag bag and no cats were harmed in the making of it.)

I’m starting feel like this is it’s starting to look at home.

Annie loves to draw pictures and then gives them to people. Her teacher has said that most days each child in class will have some “gift” from Annie in their cubbies by the end of the day. Mimi is the recipient of many of these pictures as well, and she has even gotten used to demanding certain qualities from these drawings. Yesterday in church Mike and I overheard a conversation. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this conversation, but it still tickles my funny bone.

Mimi: I want you to draw me a picture of princesses, of you and me.
Annie: Ok. (Annie promptly begins her assignment.)
A couple of minutes have lapsed.
Annie: Here you go. This princess is you, and this princess is me.
Mimi: I don’t want to be that one. I want to be this one.
Annie: No, Mimi. Look. This princess has shorter hair like yours, and the other princess has long hair like me.
Mimi: (Starting in with her piercing screeching sound that could put down a whole S.W.A.T. team.) I don’t want to be that one. I want to be this one.
Annie: (Always the peacemaker, unless she’s not getting her way.) Okay, Mimi, you can be the princess with the long hair.
Mimi: Good. I like this one the best.
Mimi: (Mimi then shows me the picture.) Mama, I like this princess. She’s the princess with the one eye.
Mommy: Wow, Mimi, that’s a fabulous reason for wanting to be like someone. Because she’s got one eye. Can we call her Cyclops?
Mimi: ??

The other time I heard a conversation similar to this was while we were out to dinner with some friends. Annie, once again, drew a picture of princesses. This time there were 3 of them, Annie, Mimi and the friends’ daughter, Z. Apparently, Z chose to be the same princess as Annie, and an argument ensued. About a minute later Annie was tattling on Z to me for not choosing the princess Annie drew for her. How do I respond to such an injustice?

Not much in the way of excitement around here. Mike had/has a cold/cough. Annie was kept home from school yesterday to clear up some cloggage. And Mimi is still Mimi, loud and as off-key as ever.

I did take some quick pics of the growing garden upstairs. All the plants are prospering and flourishing. We even sampled some of our lettuces for salad the other night. Tasty! We are a little disappointed, however, with some of our greens not being reds yet. So far all the lettuces are still green, but we can’t complain since they are all edible and delectable.

The tomato plants are growing nice and tall. Mike had to tie them up because they were getting awfully droopy.

The peppers are a bit slower at sprouting, but they seem to be growing healthily.

These are the smaller lettuce leaves that we left to keep growing.

What was considered salad-worthy now resides either in our intestines or in some waste depository. Nice visual, huh? See the cuttings?

Can’t wait to be able to add some ‘maters to my salads. Mmm, love me some ‘maters.

Last night Mike and I finally got around to syncing his iPod to our Mac. Up until now he’s just been stealing my iPod if there are new songs he wants to listen to. So now he and I have the same music on our iPods, and there will be no more excuses for him to abscond with my precious, music player. He’s also gotten into the nasty habit of snatching my iPod fm transmitter for the vehicle even though I bought him one of his own for Christmas. In his defense, his fm transmitter requires some installation procedures. I told him last night that a goal for this week is to install his transmitter into his truck, so that I can permanently keep mine in my own car. In fact, he still has it in his truck.

Anyway, the point of bringing this up is that I synced my iPod after we got Mike’s all set up. All of the junk that was on his iPod is now on mine. I just happened to look at mine before putting it away and noticed a picture of Mimi on the preview screen. This piqued my interest, and I quickly discovered that syncing my iPod with Mike’s resulted in a bunch of old, home videos now being on my iPod. I was nearly brought to tears when I watched Annie and Mimi when they were wee ones. I can’t believe I had almost forgotten about those videos. I also can’t believe my children used to be such young babies. Here’s the video that really pulled on my heartstrings last night. Maybe it’s the baby fever I’m forced to feel for the next 2 years, but I just couldn’t stop watching this. Oh, I must apologize for my baby voice. Boy, do I sound like a 13-year-old, or what? Annie’s voice sounds like a chipmunk, so cute! I couldn’t help but laugh at how Annie steals Elmo from Mimi while being the doting, big sister. Notice how Mimi eyes Elmo for the rest of the video while probably thinking, “Give me back that chew toy! If I could get out of this thing, you would be in big trouble.”

Meet Sam. Over a year ago Sam began his growth but was soon bagged in favor of other projects. The girls, Annie especially, have been begging (or bugging) me to finish making him on a monthly since. When I discovered the sack in which he resided while cleaning out the craft room he looked so sad, lonely, faceless, and in pieces (literally). I decided at that time that he needed to be completed. Fortunately, there wasn’t much else to do other than make his legs, tail, and cheek puffs and to assemble him. The job only took a couple of hours of my time. Now look at him. Sam is a happy, healthy, stuffed cat that can’t hold his head up on his own. And the girls love him to pieces (figuratively). Mimi has been carrying him around ever since, and Annie is demanding another kitty so that she has one to carry around, too. Isn’t Annie such a wonderful big sister to not even question that the first kitty would belong to Mimi? The only complaint I have about Sam is that he was like trying to frost a chocolate cake with white icing. That white stuffing shows up everywhere, and Sam is a lint trap.