Crazy 8!

Last friday my sweet girl turned eight years old. EIGHT. That is old. It feels weird to have my youngest be eight. I kept my freak outs over her age to myself and we had a really nice day. I brought her a special lunch to school and sat with her and her friends. Then we all got to go have recess together. I love these little moments- getting to hang out with her in her daily life with the people she chooses to spend time with. Later we had a visit from some favorite out of town cousins and dinner at The Cheesecake Factory- her choice (she loves their deep fried macaroni and cheese balls- wow! What and idea. Deep frying the fatiest fatty food! They are ,of course, delicious!) She loves how big and fancy it feels. The wait at TCF was 90 minutes (!! at 5:30!!!) so my husband casually mentioned that we should go take her to have her ears pierced. That is not the type of thing you can mention to an eight year old and then go back on. We went and watched a couple of girl's get their ear's pierced and she promptly changed her mind. I didn't really have an opinion either way so we bought cheesy accesories for her and her cousin instead. She thought about it all night though and as soon as she woke up the next day she told me that she was going to get them pierced today! So after a particularly exciting baseball game where my son hit two home runs (he was tagged out at home in an exciting slide/late catch on the first one so he came back at next up and hit it a bit farther so he would be sure to make it that time!) we headed to the mall and she did it. For being as whatever about it as I felt, the second the peircing guns went off, I got all choked up. I hadn't expected to feel that way at all but in the end it did feel sort of mile-stoney. I get choked up a lot this time of year though. The end of the school year is always a tough one for me- moving on- the feeling that things are just moving way too fast.

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At any rate, I always like to make something for her for her birthday. She had asked for Felicity - the American Girl Doll. She is a girl who doesn't really ask for a lot of things so my Mom and I went halfsies on it. I do have to say I love the AG books. It is a nice way for her to learn history from a more resonant perspective. In fact, I found the greatest book on Amazon to go with the doll . She hasn't read it yet but both my husband and I have read it. It sort of sucks you in with lots of great details and photos. Well, Felicity needed a quilt so I dug through my stash to see what I had to make a Felicity appropriate quilt. A friend had given me a bag of scraps last summer and in it was a half finished embroidery piece. About a million french knots later, I finished it and used it for the center of the quilt.>
My daughter loves it and I was happy with how it finished up. I think the pink stripe was a scrap from a garage sale a couple of summers ago. I love embroidery and it is so nice to be able to have a portable project that you can just have in a bag and pull out where and when ever. I have one more half finished panel that if someone wants it, I would be happy to put it in the mail. You have to enjoy making french knots though!

Finally done!

We are finally done with the kitchen re do! We are really enjoying it. We took out a soffit and made the window over the sink bigger so it is much lighter and brighter now. I love the new window because now I can see so much more of the backyard. We have a 60's tri level and there are really deep overhangs on this level so we don't get as much light as we could. The window helps a lot. Our old kitchen was original to the house and the drawers were literally falling apart. We had half of them nailed together and the silverware drawer back had to be taped to the front. Pretty. Plus there was a big hole in it that things would fall out of. That was annoying.

I love the countertops- if you enlarge the picture you can see there are little sparkly bits in it. My husband actually chose that and we both love them. See the dog at the bottom of the photo? He matches the new kitchen so perfectly!

Here is the backsplash tile. It is recycled green glass. I love the way it looks which is good because I have enough leftover in my garage to do a whole additional room due to my poor math skills.

Here it is close up- it has a little irridescence to it.

These are the lights- another favorite. It is swirly glass. I love them . It took a long time to find something I liked that I could afford. Lights are so expensive! I am really happy with these and everyone comments on them so I think they are a hit. I am glad we are done and all in all it was a fairly pleasant experience. We usually do the work ourselves but this exceeded our combined skill set by a lot so we had help. I am glad I love it because it has to last us another 40 years!!


I actually managed to get one little photo of our babies the other day. This was a few days ago and already they all have hair and are a bit larger. They are all white with black spots- so I know enough about Mendel and his pea plants to safely say that Nibbles, the white mouse, is the Mama. I should say is the birth Mama because they both seem to be lactating and are really taking turns with the babies. I think that is so sweet.

There are six of them so we might be needing some good name suggestions. Any ideas?

Baby mice update

These are not our babies but this is the supreme cuteness we can look forward to. I have to say that I feel like I am living some deep seeded childhood fantasy because I have baby mice in my house. I just always wanted baby animals and tons of pets as a kid. I had a dog and a cat and a bird with a nervous habit of pulling out all his feathers but I wanted more. I also vowed frequently that I would, in fact, eat Freakies for ever meal and not just the once a month or so that we got them. And now they don't even make Freakies anymore. So I guess it feels nice to live out one childhood fantasy. Our babies don't have hair yet but they will get it in the next few days. I am pretty sure they were born on the 31rst of March as we saw them on the 1rst and they looked pretty new. As one neighbor put it, "They look like meat" which they sort of did because they were so darkish pink. Now a few days later, they are still pink but nice lightish pink and they have spots on them indicating where the hair will be black or another color. We only get tiny glimpses at them here and there with a flashlight as they are tightly sequestered inside their nest. The sweet thing about mice is that they are excellent community parents and the two original females have been helping with the mom duties. One lady at work commented "My mice have two mommies" and they do and I think that must be nice to share those responsibilities because if I had to breast feed six new borns all day I would want help too. I say six but it is a guess according to the tiny peeks we have had. We have been reading up on how to sex them so that when the time comes, we can seperate them before we are in this position again. As fun as this is, I don't think we should keep breeding mice. We are going to

keep a baby or two (females) and give the rest to good homes. So that is the update. I can't wait to see our own babies and see what they look like. We might get a feeling for who the mom really is once we see what colors they all are. Oh- I was looking for the mouse picture and this file is "Baby M" so I figured it was the mice but it is my sweet daughter. She is so cute I am leaving it up. Of course she is almost 8 now but still cute! Her baby hair stuck up like that for several months. You couldn't get it to lay down. Then it all fell out eventually and she became a blonde. Her cardiologist called her "Porcuspino" because of her porcupine hair.

A visit from the stork!

I never thought this would happen. Especially on April Fool's Day. It took me a long while to convince my husband of the blessed event, given the day. The kids and I were getting ready for Dad to get home so we could go out to eat, given that the new counters were installed today and we have to wait 24 hours for setting. All of a sudden my son comes running up the stairs absolutely frantic yelling, "The mice had babies! The mice had babies!!". Let me remind you that we have had these mice exactly one week and they are both female. For a minute I thought this was surely an April Fools joke but I realized rather quickly that my son is not that good an actor. So the three of us went downstairs and, sure enough, a writhing little pile of pink mouse babies. He had lifted the little hut off to get his mouse to play with it and discovered the pile. He left it off so I carefully placed it back and took my freaking out children out of the room and promptly called Pet Smart to figure out what the $#@!*&!! I was supposed to do. I put them in my office so that they would not be disturbed and that is about all I need to do, except give them food and water once a day. And no cage cleaning for 10 to 14 days. (!!!!!) My office is going to stink. I will say that we can't see the babies now because they are tucked nicely in their nest but they make these tiny little squeaking noises. We are all pretty excited. I can't wait to find out how many babies after all. I was too shocked to sit and count them but I am still marveling at how all those babies fit in that tiny mouse. I still don't even know who the Mama is but they both seem to be caring for the babies so that is good. So there you go. Lots of mice for the price of one.