some of this n' that...

life lately...
catching up on this:
doing a lot of this:

shopping, both in stores and online...
hunting down the perfect board shorts for Powell! (found 'em!)and a bunch of other stuuuffffff...
enrichment was incredible last night! christie did awesome, as always... and as an added bonus, alison barber spoke too! two of the most incredible mothers i know... i learned a lot and came home feeling re-energized in my calling of "mother".
last night, lynn came into our room... we heard her crying, but we get a lot of that "girl emotion" when they are over-tired. so, she came into our room and starts to tell us why she is so upset. we are expecting some offense or other assult that ashley was the culprit of, but instead, we got: "i----... and then it turned into a language and sound that only the animal kingdom might be able to decipher. we told her to come and snuggle with us and we could talk about what was bothering her. after we got her to calm down so we could sufficiently understand her, it came out...
"i don't want to grow up. i don't want to leave this house. i want to be with my family forever. i don't want to get old and i don't want to die."
she was pretty upset and it took a while to calm her down. we told her that while we are sad to have these things happen, they are good things. growing is good. i also got to bust out one of alison's sayings from the evening, "it is called the plan of happiness... we are supposed to be happy!" she's been okay since... she came up with the solution to not living here when she gets "old" and the problem of not living with her family... she'll just move in here when she gets married, and then she and her husband and all of her kids can live here too!
i must mention (because i am so proud of myself... and merrill's happy too ;)...) i can now fit into 3 new pairs of jeans!!! here i come favorite jeans... here i come...