The Graduate

Ally has officially graduated from preschool. And this is the face she decided to make when she got her diploma from Miss Stacey (the greatest preschool teacher in the whole world).

The eight kids in her class all wore their paint shirts that they decorated and wear on field trips and when they do messy art projects.

Was she most excited about being done with school and starting kindergarten in a few months? No. Her favorite part was this napkin that said "Congrats Grad." She couldn't stop talking about it.

I caught her eating a second cookie. She's trying to turn around and hide it. Not fast enough.

Fast-forward three years and I'll be sending the other one to preschool graduation. Sigh.

May's Twelfth Dozen

I've been meaning to do this for a while, but just haven't gotten around to it. My mom saw on someone's blog that they take a few pictures the same day of every month. Then each month you can see how schedules and kids and your home have changed. So, without making any promises to do it every month, here is our very first twelfth dozen. (Get it-- a dozen pictures on the 12th day of the month? I thought it was clever.)

Crit ate a banana for breakfast. And yes, he is holding a doll.

Ally ate cinnamon toast and milk for breakfast. And she's holding a doll too. I don't really know how the dolls both got invited to breakfast, but they didn't eat anything.

I found them playing "doctor's office" in Crit's room. He's got giant band-aids on each leg and one arm. Apparently he was the patient.

I swept the kitchen. Can you tell I've got two kids?

They played "roller coaster" on Crit's rocking chair. Don't ask me why.

We watched the lawn guy mow the lawn. This is Mike's favorite part of Wednesdays.

I cleaned the kitchen. And no, it didn't look like this 10 minutes later.

The kids rode the broom to the kitchen when I called them to lunch. Again, don't ask me why.

We walked Ally to school. Crit loves the stroller ride and Ally loves the scooter ride. I don't really enjoy the walk as much.

I folded a basket of laundry. Those are Ally's favorite pajama pants on top, thank you Hammy.

Critter had a nap. (Hooray!)

Mike came home, changed into his "comfy pants" and used our new super-fast internet.

So there you go. Twelve pictures of what we did today. Maybe next time I'll be in a couple of pictures instead of taking them all.

Best. Install. Ever.

Mike's sister is remodeling her kitchen and mentioned on Sunday that they needed to sell their one-year-old microwave. Knowing it was stainless (and would match our new oven perfectly), we saved them the trouble of posting it online and bought it ourselves.

It sat in our living room (and survived my kids using it as a bench) until Thursday when we decided we had enough time to take the old one down and figure out how to get this one up. Mike started unloading the cabinet above at 6:30 and then we got it down. He measured the bracket, the holes, and then announced, "I think we just got really lucky." We put the new one up on the old bracket, used the same holes in the cabinet, and screwed it down at 6:42. How many people can say they installed their microwave in 12 minutes? Well we can.

Doesn't it look nice above my new oven? Now we just need new cabinets, a big ol' slab of granite, and some paint. But that's another post. And a couple of years. And why don't I ever wipe all the fingerprints off before I take a picture?

We've also got to give credit to one of the barstools we also acquired that day courtesy of Melissa's project. We couldn't have done it without it.