Message to Kent...

The kids and I have had great fun seeing you on Saturdays and giving you lots of honey-do lists. But I fear now we are competing with
and
and I know we are losing the battle.

Just wait until you see your honey-do list in December...

Flowers

Meredith is studying all about monarch butterflies in school, so she was happy to see one at our house - and I was even able to get a picture of it!
I am loving our autumn blooming clematis. I've been babying it all year long...

and have waited...

and waited...

for it to bloom.

And finally it did!

Paperclips

Who would have guessed that a paperclip container would keep Jesse occupied for half an hour?!?
As long as I keep an eye on him and watch that he doesn’t put them in his mouth, we’re good!

He just fell off his little chair while holding the paperclip container. Was he worried for himself? Was he crying because he hurt himself? Was he concerned that he fell on some toys? No...his only concern was for the paperclip holder!

Love the Roomba

This summer we got a Roomba, and I'm in love with it! If you've never seen or heard of a Roomba, it's a small robotic vacuum that does your vacuuming for you.

You put it in a room, turn it on, and come back half an hour to 45 minutes later and it has vacuumed the whole room! Of course you have to make sure things are picked up off the floor - like toys, the stray hair band, electrical cords, etc. Not only does it vacuum your floor, but it is also good family fun! (Yes, we do have a life, but just not a very exciting one!) Check out Jesse with the Roomba - watch how the red ottoman is his "home base"!

(It sounds really loud in the video, but I don't think of it as being extra noisy. In fact, I sometimes vacuum my bedroom or Meredith's bedroom while Jesse is napping, and it certainly doesn't wake him up even though it's right beside his room.)
For those of you who don't like to vacuum, and consequently don't vacuum frequently, I would highly recommend the Roomba. You need to empty the dustbin and clean the brushes every few times you use it, but to me that's a little price to pay for not having to vacuum. Small disclaimer though: make sure you block the doorways well before turning it loose. I set it to go in my kitchen (yes, it cleans linoleum and hardwood too) and the kids and I went outside to play for almost an hour. When we came back inside it had pushed a chair out of the doorway and got loose on our first floor. We could see where it went from the tracks that it leaves, and it had taken a few swipes in the living room, a few swipes in the office, and was busy cleaning the bathroom when we found it!

Home Sick

Yesterday morning Meredith fell asleep in the play kitchen area of her kindergarten classroom...you can imagine that her teacher was wondering why a normally rambunctious little girl was sleeping during school! As it turned out, Meredith had a temp of 101 - even though she insisted that she felt fine! She said that her eyes hurt, but that was her only complaint. Of course I went to pick her up as soon as the school secretary called me. As a special treat, we went to the library to get a few movies for her to watch while she was home sick. We got the movie Enchanted...

Meredith and I absolutely adored it! We loved it so much that we watched it in the afternoon and started it again in the evening! Yes, I admit that I'm a sucker for musicals!

Speaking of musicals, Meredith and I are totally thrilled to go to the Broadway Musical Hairspray when we are in New York in 2 weeks! We got our tickets, and will be sitting in the front row of the mezzanine section of the Neil Simon Theater to see Tracy Turnblad and the Hairspray cast!

Meredith is at work with me today. She has made herself a cozy little nest and is watching a movie on our portable DVD player. What movie is she watching, you ask? Of course, it's gotta be Enchanted!