dear kid.

Hey E, it’s mom. So it’s frustrating that your idea of a cute photo is this:

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Where is the beautiful little girl I know and love? Why must she hide when the camera is seen? (sigh) Once in a while I catch a smile or nice face, but mostly you want to make weird faces like daddy does. I’m ok with that – just know that you can’t get mad when you’re older and wonder why there are so few ‘pretty’ pics compared to so many goofy ones.

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Also, don’t blame me if I try more with your sister who is currently in HAM stage. You say smile to little sister and she’s ON IT.

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Honestly, so cute.

Silly is good too… but cute will always get more scrapbooking face time so be warned.

Love you always and no matter how you choose to smile at the camera –

mom.

little bit ‘o tink

Elizabeth insists we go to pixie hollow 5x the next time we’re in Disneyland. HA! She wouldn’t even go near a fairy, but she says next time maybe she will. In the meantime, I’ve scrapbooked our photos + the autographs Rebecca got…

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Hmmm… how to fit it all in? (I love ‘in progress’ photos)…

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It’s simple but used up some old EK Success tink stickers, a clothing tag, and of course the autographs themselves!

Mystery reads:

So I never realized this but I’m a major mystery book fiend! I was chatting with Lainabout recommendations and that is when it hit me – the vast majority of my reading comes from the mystery section. Sure I enjoy a bit of paranormal, chick lit, suspense, and some romance too… but mystery is my home base.

These days I read at the gym during my 30-50 minutes of cardio. It keeps me focused on reading instead of complaining about my tired legs. Here’s the 3 books I read (and loved!) last month:

hounding-pavement

First up- hounding the pavement by Judi McCoy. The author is donating all her royalties to charity (a group that rescues animals) and when I saw that I grabbed it. I mean – mystery + dog + good cause? I’m in. It wasn’t the strongest mystery read ever, but it’s cute and I enjoyed reading about the heroine who can talk to the dogs she walks.

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I avoid series that have a ‘cutsie’ catch to them (like hobbies or baking or gardening or…) and yet I keep running across JoAnne Fluke in my book shopping so I decided to give her a try. Her heroine is Hannah Swensen, a single girl living in MN who owns a cookie shop. She stumbles across a dead body  (who was eating her cookies!) and she vows to help her brother in law solve the case. Not only is the mystery and heroine great, but I also totally love that she puts recipes in the book too. Yum + fun.

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This is #2 in the Hannah Swensen series and I loved it just as much as the first. I’m going to be working my way through them all for sure! You can see them all here: http://www.murdershebaked.com/ 

Oh, and for the record weight loss is nada for March. Yeah, went down 4 pounds then back up 5 pounds… I’m being good so it’s frustrating. I am ignoring scale and just trudging on my get fit lifestyle for now.

doodle.

note: below is my journal where I’m working out my next Big Picture adventure. It’s in the very early stages- but it’s very exciting. I just thought you might enjoy seeing a glimpse of the process + a fictitious letter I wrote to a cranky (unnamed) teacher…

Dear high school English teacher,

You made me rip apart novels. Talk about hidden meanings and so much jibberish I thought for sure I’d die of boredom. I fought back by getting A’s and also doodling when I should have been taking notes and paying attention.

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What would you say if I told you that my flower doodles are a vital part of my creative process? What if you knew that my swirly-do’s are used in my scrapbook pages and that they’ve been in published and class pages? huh? It’s true, my horses and landscapes aren’t getting any attention – yet – but all those flowers seem to be a skill I need today.

Life lesson learned: my doodle time + list making in high school was definitely spent well. Had I been listening more carefully to the dissection of Heart of Darkness or Lord of the Flies, would that really have benefited me today? I sure hope not!