Invention?

They say that necessity is the mother of invention (right? don't "they" say that?) Well the lack of a hairbrush in the Lacroix household (don't think were that bohemian, its not that we don't own one, just I can never seem to find one when I need one) has led to a great discovery. Evie's quite fine and rather snarly hair, even after a nice bob haircut, gets these nasty tangles that are very hard and rather painful to sort out. The other day I couldn't find a hairbrush, so in a feeble attempt to make my daughter quasi presentable I reached for a hair curler that I bought many moons ago at the suggestion of my hairstylist and have yet to really use. Well they have a use now! They are brilliant for painlessly getting out Evie's tangles. Granted it takes awhile, but given how much time I used to spend fighting her protestations, I would say I have gained a good five minutes on my morning. Not to mention one less battle to be fought. Awesome.

Thanksgiving and more...

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner over at my parent's house. Lots of family and tons of yummy food.(My favorite as always was the mashed potatoes). After our nice big dinner we took a nap and then headed downtown to see Cirque du Soleil. It was a late night for Genevieve but she, just like the rest of us, thoroughly enjoyed it! As we were leaving we were all talking about our favorite part and when asked Evie told us her favorite part was "All of it". I'll take that as a good decision to bring her along. We went back to my folks house and camped out there for the night.

Patrick had volunteered to get up at 4 am and get in line at the one and only Kmart in Tucson to acquire 40 mp3 players for kids in foster care at St. Nick's here in town. They were on sale for $10 a piece and a first-come first serve basis necessitated the early morning land-standing fun. Somehow he convinced me that he just had to have my assistance and so I hauled myself out of bed too. We arrive at Kmart about 10 minutes until 5 am just as they were passing out the last of the fliers for the "super-deals". When the guy came past and said "Last coupon for the super deal on a camera" I just couldn't resist and took it. Patrick gave me a crazy look but hey if he was getting me up so early in the morning I was going to have some consumer fun too. So they open the doors and the mad dash to the electronics began. Some people were just a little too crazy but most were pretty nice (for 5 am). It was chaos getting into the mostly blocked off electronics section and when we did, the mp3 players were nowhere to be found. Patrick fought his way to the front to ask about the players (and get my cameras... uhh yes cameras) for me. When he eventually made it to the front the first guy told him he had no idea what he was talking about and the other said the sale wasn't until Saturday. Now Patrick had received his marching orders from very well-researched folks so he was pretty sure it should be Friday. I grabbed one of their fliers and found the mp3 player that was indeed supposed to be on sale that morning. Well armed with this evidence Patrick fought his way to the front again and sweet-talked one of the clerks into going to get it. Not just that but going with him to the backroom to count out his forty and get it.... Ahh nothing like persistence.

That experience was so exhilarating, and seeing how it was only about 6 am, we decided to go to the mall that was nearby just to check it out. We started in a favorite shoe shop of mine (I actually got Patrick to go in a shoe shop... clearly he needed more coffee or less adrenaline) where everything was 30% off. Then, having picked up some lovely new shoes for each of us, we wandered until we found Banana Republic where the whole store was 40% off. We both went a little crazy and must have tried on half the store (I can't remember ever trying on something that wasn't on sale there) and as our piles of stuff added up we looked at each other and pretty much simultaneously proclaimed our Christmas shopping for each other finished in one fell swoop of exciting new clothes. To top it off I opened up another credit card with them (I am a serial opener of these cards.... I have found if you open them, pay it off and then never activate the card you can go back about once a year and do it all over again...) which ended in a whopping 55% everything. Wahoo. Totally ridiculous.

We made it back to my folks house by 8 am and decided that we mine as well continue the day of gluttony by going to a movie and mom was amenable to watching Evie more so that morning we also went out to see the new Harry Potter movie. Too fun. We made it back home around 3 pm and everyone crashed and took a nap. Patrick ended up napping right until this morning.... about 17 hours... I guess all the excitement took its toll.

East Coast Fun

Last Wednesday we headed East to DC (and then Baltimore too) to visit with Patrick's family. I had veteran's day off from school and cheap tickets were found so we just couldn't resist the opportunity! It was a lovely time both in terms of the company and the weather! Evie now gets just as excited about riding on the plane as the trip itself thanks to a little (and oft reoccurring) holiday we call Plane Day. Plane Day involves complete attention from Mom and Dad, periodic presents and food that would not normally be part of the diet, what kid wouldn't get excited?


On Thursday I had the opportunity to meet up with friends from when I lived in DC and meet their newest additions. We chose the National Zoo as our forum and as is per usual it did not disappoint (although I didn't manage to make it to the reptile discovery center, my favorite part of the Zoo) Thursday afternoon I met back up with Patrick and Evie who were hanging out at Patrick's Mom's great new place in SW near the waterfront with Patrick's sister Vivian and our two nephews Pete and Dylan. That evening we took the bus (which turned out to be a bit of a long ordeal... long enough to merit a taxi ride home) to Georgetown so Patrick could show Evie where he went to school.


On Friday morning Patrick, Evie and I headed down to the mall (which we walked to from Nicole's place... how cool is that) and took Evie to the National Gallery. If you ask her what sort of paintings they have there she'll tell you "Pictures of Mary and baby Jesus" (We didn't make it much beyond the Renaissance paintings before it was time to meet up with the rest of the family) We then met up with the rest of the crew and went to the Air and Space Museum. We spent an hour or so checking out the planes and even took Dylan and Evie on a flight simulation. As soon as the door closed Evie freaked out and wanted out of the simulator. It took 3/4 of the ride for me to convince her that it was OK. Then, the moment the door opened she turned to us and said, "I wasn't really scared, I was just pretending." Awesome.


Friday evening Patrick and I took Dylan and Evie on the train to Baltimore which was a lot of fun. It felt like pretending we had twins for a few hours....two quite well behaved ones I might add. That night in Baltimore Dylan introduced Evie to his favorite babysitter and we went to the Baltimore Museum of Industry for a benefit. On Saturday we went out to a wonderful brunch at Uncle Eric's restaurant and then down to the harbor for dragon boat rides and fun. Before we left I tried to do a photo shoot of the kids with their cute matching outfits we bought in Georgetown but failed pretty miserably at the great Christmas card shot. Better leave that to the professionals in the future. Although I did get one really good one of Pete. (I'll send them along to you Vivian) (You know, having tried to take photos of the cousins before you'd think I would have learned my lesson) By 2 it was time to hurry back to DC to make a dinner and see my old boss Jay and his wife Carol and Patrick's good friend Cameron. The next morning we were up bright and early for another round of "Plane Day" It was a whirlwind tour but a fabulous one!

Ohh Groupon

About a month ago I finally jumped on the cool-kid bandwagon and signed up for groupon. Up to this point my purchases have been pretty practical, movie punch card for Casa Video and a family membership to the Desert Sonoran Museum. Last week I made a decidedly impractical purchase, a coupon for Build a Bear. This purchase was motivated as much by my own curiosity as a desire to provide my child with another stuffed animal. So on Sunday we printed the coupon (Evie carried in her purse) and headed off to the mall for a bear-building extravaganza. I must admit it was pretty fun. Evie got to pick a bear, put a heart in her, give her a giggle sound and then press the peddle to fill her with fuzz. Once fuzzed she took her bear, now named Suzianna, to the wash station and then, and this was clearly the best part, to pick out an outfit. No great surprise, we now have a Cinderella (complete with glass slippers) bear residing in our house. We then filled out the birth certificate, put Suzianna in her box and headed home. On the way out to the car we were talking about how Evie just made a bear all by herself and she commented "Wow, Mommy that makes me like god."

Digits

One of the first things I remember from after Evie was born, upon discovering that our baby was a girl, was a totally sleep deprived and deliriously happy Patrick commenting in his best Texan voice, "Well I guess I'd better get a gun." I remember chuckling to myself, too tried from the whole birth thing to protest.

Well a firearm has yet to be acquired (and its OK Gerry, no Christmas gifts required :) but the boys are already knocking. Yesterday when I picked Evie up from school she ran up to give me a big hug, and then before we could leave rushed back to the table and grabbed a little piece of paper. The teacher told me that a little boy named Michael at her school had torn a piece of paper out of his notebook and then came running up to her for a pen. On this little slip of paper he wrote out "his number", gave it to Evie and told her to call him. Apparently (I learned this from Evie on the way back home) the two of them hit it off because he has a boy bear that matches her girl bear and they need to arrange a marriage between the two bears. Oh my.

Woodland Adventure

Last week was quite the fall break. We went up to the cabin (I only stayed until Tuesday because I had too much work to do and an exam... why can't U of A take a break like preschool?) with, at max capacity, three other families. At one point, I wasn't there for this beautiful chaos, there were 9 kids on the Blue ranging in age from 3 weeks to 8 years. Needless to say Evie was in heaven with so many kids to share her woodland kingdom with her. There were hikes, beach parties on the banks of the blue, much zip-lining and a few trips up to the lollipop shop in Alpine. (One of which, apparently, ended in Evie purchasing a lollipop the size of her head... you see the madness that occurs when I am not around?!) In the end it was a whole lot of fun and quite the way to say goodbye to the cabin for the next four months.

Happy Halloween

For the second year in a row we had a mini-gathering of friends over to our house for a little potluck and some trick-or-treating fun. I didn't manage to get any pumpkins carved this year but did find some bat wings to make a costume out of and, lucky for Evie, her Mina made her another fabulous costume. The trip around the block yielded much candy... not quite sure what to do with it quite honestly. I am also happy to report that for the first year since we moved into this house there was no 7:05 emergency run to Walgreen's because we ran out of candy. (I also opted out of the hippy stuff this year, and went for plain old chocolate...I am sure the neighborhood kids were happy for that)


There were some pretty great houses this year and Evie got scared once or twice. By the end though she was proclaiming herself a big brave girl and self-assuredly strolled up to what was the kicker of all scary houses last year... our neighbor puts on this great ghoulish costume and just sits on his step...very...very...still. She was not quite brave enough to face that one outside of between my legs. At another house each kid was required to tell a joke. Evie had to think about it a bit, but here is what she came up with:
-Knock, Knock
-Who's there?
-Nobody...
It made me laugh, but I am pretty biased. Evie got pretty into the joke idea though and started asking the kids who came to our house to tell her a joke before she would divulge any candy. She was so into her costume that she took it off to drink water and eat candy (she came back out of her room totally redressed herself, not to bad, the shirt is about 2 sizes to small and was on backward but other than that...) At the end of the evening Evie told Patrick that that was the best "hike" she had been on all week. I tend to agree, hikes with periodic stops for candy are pretty hard to beat.