Partial to the bean…

These pictures are amazing.

Much to Alice’s chagrin and depression, today is the end of summer. Tomorrow is back-to-school, Wednesday is back-to-ballet, and the weather clearly indicates that the Dog Days have passed. *sigh* We had a pretty good summer break — went to New Hampshire, Rehoboth Beach, Dutch Wonderland… We only hit the pool about 8 times, but by the end of the season Sammi had started to get the hang of swimming a little, which is awesome. We hung out with friends, got a lot of reading done, saw some really good movies (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Inception were probably our favorites — Alice and I went back to see Inception again last night, and enjoyed it just as much the second time). Each kid had a birthday celebration that seemed to me to be just what she wanted. We honed our Goodwill skills to the point that we have now identified the best ones in the area, and both kids have greatly augmented their wardrobe with quirky and well-constructed second-hand items. Alice got her babysitter’s certification and has really started to build up a customer base for her sitting/mother’s helping business. We all spent a lot of time on Facebook. Heh.

So what’s up for the fall? Well, school, obviously. Alice is going into her last year of middle school (8th grade, I guess, although our school doesn’t really “do” grade levels). Sammi is going back to a greatly-changed lower school: enrollment in the l.s. dropped by more than half from last year, so they lost one of their teachers to keep the 5:1 ratio. It’s going to be a very small, very intimate, and hopefully very agile and flexible school experience for her. Hopefully Sammi will be able to move past the fact that most of her best school friends won’t be there this year, and enjoy herself anyway.

Alice is taking ballet again — her 9th consecutive year, and her 4th(?? um, 5th?) year at the dance school down the street). She’s been offered the chance to go en pointe, but has so far declined, with my support. I love that she has this extracurricular that is enjoyable and physical for her. We both gripe a lot about not being able to just come home from school on Wednesday and relax, and of course the end of the dance year is always a little bit exhausting with the dress rehearsals and the buns and the whatnot, but I hope she keeps going with this as long as she still enjoys it.

As I mentioned above, Alice is trying to build a business, and doing pretty well with it. She has a solid “3 hours, twice a month” job starting in a few weeks, and will probably have another similar job lined up soon. Those are both mother’s helper gigs, which of necessity are generally scheduled on weekdays when moms are home alone and need an extra hand or two. Two regular mother’s helper jobs will pretty much fill her calendar up, since she only has one day/week when she’s available. Once we see how this (school + ballet + mother’s helper) works out, we’ll see if she has enough energy to also try to find some babysitting jobs on evenings/weekends.

Sammi’s got speech therapy starting next week, which I hope will be really good for her. She’s at a point where she gets frustrated and angry when people can’t understand what she’s saying (she has major trouble with the -er sound, and more minor difficulties with -ng), so it’s definitely time for a little help. The timing of her appointments is pretty nice, giving us a weekly excuse for an early dinner out and maybe a little shopping between school and therapy.

I’m looking forward to A Quiet House again, something I have not had since May. I’m also looking forward to the kids being out of the house so I can surreptitiously declutter large quantities of Stuff without small people protesting, “no, not that thing! I looooove that thing!!!” every 38 seconds.

Oh, and one more thing that’s happening this fall: Anth’s MS ride!! Please consider donating!!!

Anth is biking 50 miles on September 25 to raise money for the National MS Society. Please consider donating! No amount too small (or too large)!! This link takes you straight to his donation page, where you can use a credit card. It would be wonderful if he could meet his goal of $1000 raised!!!

I’ve reached the point in the summer when I’ve completely lost track of the date and day of the week. It doesn’t help that the girls and I just got back from a couple of days at the beach; vacation always unmoors me a bit from the calendar.

Unfortunately, even without my vigilance, time marches on. Today marks:

- Anth’s last day at his current job (he starts a new job after Labor Day)

- 3 days until the local public school kids go back to school

- 4 days until our start-of-year conferences, when we find out what the new school year is going to look like (I predict it will look markedly different from previous years, due to decreased enrollment)

- 11 days until school starts

- 12 days until ballet starts (note to self: get Alice to try on her shoes, in case we need to go buy her new ones)

- 13 days until our 15th wedding anniversary

- 14 days until I have to drop off my items for the big twice-yearly consignment sale; I have not yet started sorting or pricing said items, unfortunately

- 17 days until Sammi starts speech therapy

- 18 days until we go to the York Fair

- 29 days until Anth’s MS Ride — still plenty of time to support him with a donation!!

I’m so close, so very very close to finishing up 2009 in pictures. This batch brings us through the end of October, and there’s only a few more to go! Gosh, I wish that we weren’t more than halfway through 2010, what with me still not quite done with 2009’s pictures yet. *sigh*

Whew! And thus ends the first week of Alice’s teenaged life… I haven’t had the time or the energy to blog, because we’ve been having too much FUN (and stuff)!! Let me see if I can remember everything…

Sunday was Alice’s actual birthday. We went out for a nice brunch at a local restaurant, and Alice had Crème Brulée French Toast. She opened a series of lovely presents, and we went to The Melting Pot for a really stellar and special dinner.

Monday we had a LLL meeting in the morning, then a special lunch followed by cupcakes.

Tuesday I took Alice to the mall with a friend and let them roam around for a few hours, and then we all went to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World with a friend of mine.

Wednesday Alice had a babysitting gig first thing in the morning — 4 hours with 2 boys, which she handled with aplomb.

Thursday Alice had a mother’s helper job after lunch (a “get to know you” visit with a new customer, who wants to hire her on a regular twice-monthly schedule), and then she and I went to see the Rifftrax Reefer Madness event, which was awesome!

Friday and Saturday we had festive house guests, with ensuing meals out and movies together.

And now here we are today, one week after Alice’s birthday, and we haven’t done a damn thing all day and we’re all feeling logy and unproductive. But I guess we earned it after the past seven days. Being the mom of a teenager is tiring!! Heh.

Okay, so… Today Alice turns 13. Sammi is 8, Anth is 39, and I’m 40. That means that:

• Anth is three times Alice
• I am five times Sammi
• Sammi and Alice are 8&13 (heh, Anth)
• The sum of our ages is 100

Aren’t numbers fun??

…I became a mom. Happy happy happy happy birthday to Alice, my lovely girl, my beautiful young woman, my first daughter. I love you so much. I hope your teen years treat you well, sweetie.

Today is 8/13, a day of great and mysterious importance to my husband.

Click to see the rest of our swingin’ (yuk yuk!) pictures from the York Fair, plus bonus pictures from the roller disco!!

Anth is biking 50 miles on September 25 to raise money for the National MS Society. Please consider donating! No amount too small (or too large)!! This link takes you straight to his donation page, where you can use a credit card. It would be wonderful if he could meet his goal of $1000 raised!!!

Pretty much all of next week will be subsumed into a celebration of our nascent teenager. I haven’t bought her very many presents, because I’m expecting that August 15-22 will be nothing more than a parade of pleasures and amusements for the birthday girl.

So this week has been more of a Taking Care of Business kind of week, most notably in the Back to School arena. The girls don’t go back until the day after Labor Day, but one does still feel the drive to shop as August progresses. We got new backpacks, new lunchboxes, and a new water bottle for Sammi-girl. Then we embarked on the hunt for school clothes. Most of our clothes budget goes to Alice, because Sammi gets hand-me-downs, while Alice is constantly (constantly!!) growing into sizes that we’ve never bought before. Last year’s jeans are 2″ too short for her now. *sigh*

(All of this focus on Alice: the birthday, the clothes, etc. is wearing on Sammi. Hopefully she’ll have some special-Sammi time when she goes away with her Daddy for Labor Day weekend.)

I have many small things to talk about, none of which merits an entire blog post on its own, so maybe if I pile them all together here, that’ll qualify.

Movies first: Alice and I went to see Inception last weekend and really really enjoyed it. I absolutely love movies that mess with your head and make you think and leave you wondering, and Alice seems to have inherited that taste as well. We had a very fun and spirited conversation on the way home! Then a few days ago, the girls and I saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which we found fun, if a bit long.

Calendar-wise, today is 1 week before Alice’s birthday, 1 month before school starts, and would’ve been my dad’s 59th birthday.

Speaking of school starting, here’s a new batch of pictures which includes the first day of school ‘09, the Hay Creek Festival, and half of the York Fair pictures.