I wanted the teacher gifts to be fun and interesting and signify – in some small way – how great they’ve been. My son has loved his first year of elementary school. He’s loved (er, worshiped is more like it) his teachers.  I don’t think I’ve heard him utter a single negative thing about them the entire year.  And I can’t believe how much he’s learned from them.  It actually kind of blows my mind.  I can’t thank these two wonderful women enough for dedicating their lives to teaching kids, including my kid.  The best I can do to show my appreciation is to spend more than 5 seconds thinking of what to get them for a job well done.  You with me?

Anyway, this is what I came up with:

I found the fun notebooks and the timers at Anthropologie the other day (see here for the notebooks, which came in a package of three but that I split up for purposes of the teacher gifts).  I can’t seem to find the timers online but they were available in at least 4 different colors – orange, mint, white, yellow – for about $12 each).  The cost of each gift amounted to around $16.  I have one notebook left over that I think I’m just going to adopt as my own because it’s so cute and fun.  Note sure what I’m going to do with it other than ogle it and be happy.

I temporarily taped the timer to the front of the notebook (for transport and delivery), along with little note that I printed out and glued to a piece of cardboard card stock I already had.

I hope both of my son’s teachers will enjoy them.  The notebooks are cute and hopefully functional.  (Teachers need notebooks, right?)  The timers are adorable and I hope that they can either use them in the classroom or that they’ll look fantastic in their kitchen at home on the refrigerator or something.

I went ahead and got gifts for my daughter’s two main preschool teachers, too.   There wasn’t the same sort of need because one of the teachers is actually moving up to the pre-kindergarten class with my daughter so she’ll continue to be her teacher.  But, my daughter was all sorts of worked up that my son’s teachers were getting a present and her teachers weren’t, so I ended up putting together something for her teachers, too.

I found the little globes at Target for $10 each in this new little section they have over by the gift wrap.  I don’t know what it’s called but, if you haven’t checked it out, do.  They have all sorts of neat things over there, including these cool little globes.  They seem pretty sturdy, so I hope they don’t fall apart the minute they take them out of the box.  I typed up notes to them and then glued them on some hot pink card stock.

Thank you, teachers.  You rock.

My boy turned six.  Amazing, but true.

We decorated his room with balloons, just like we did with my daughter the year before (see here).  I had planned on doing something new and original, but the whole cupcake toy search (see here) messed with me and I didn’t have an ounce of originality left.  So, balloons it was.  

At least I found some balloons specific to the occasion.  There’s got to be an extra point or two for that, eh?

He was up and running around, excited by the balloons and the fact the OMG PEOPLE IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, at the crack of dawn. He joined me down in the kitchen for the things that I do before anyone else is generally awake (make coffee, feed cats, make lunch, fill the dog’s water bowl, wander around aimlessly wishing I was still asleep, etc.) and ended up pulling out his markers and writing a little note to his friend which, by the way, I think is just about the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

Then it was off to school.  I did the obligatory leave-work-in-the-middle-of-the-day-to-bring-cupcakes-to-school show at lunchtime. I failed to get any photos. Ooops.  Bad Mom.

After school/work, we went out to dinner at the restaurant of his choice.  We laughed.  We cried (not really).  It was great.

Then it was home to open presents in our pajamas.  (NOTE:  I think it’s hilarious that his little belly and belly button are showing through his shirt.  These pj’s are way to small for him, but he just can’t quit them.)  I’ll try to share a list of the winners and losers in the present department in the coming days…  we had some big hits this year and definitely a few duds. 

By the way, I love how – in most of the present-opening photos above – you can see that he has chocolate on his cheek from his decadent chocolate brownie dessert-y thing at the restaurant.  Because apparently we don’t have time – or the motivation – to wash chocolate off our faces on birthdays.  C’est la vie.

My in-laws were coming to visit us a few weeks back which meant we needed to stock up on coffee.  We knew we’d be going through a lot of coffee with four heavy coffee drinkers in the house for several days. 

I’ve explained before that we are coffee snobs.  And that we swear by Whole Foods Pleasant Morning Buzz coffee (see here) for a great cup of every day coffee.  But, in this case, I decided to pick up some coffee at the regular ole’ grocery store while I was there picking up some other things.

I got a pound of Gevalia Kaffe and a pound of Peets Home Blend.  Now, I’ve had Peets coffee before and it’s just fine.  Rather tasty, in fact.  Not as good as Pleasant Morning Buzz, but definitely better – in my opinion – than Starbucks standard coffee.  And, this time around, it did not disappoint. 

I’d never had Gevalia coffee (excuse me, Kaffe) before but I’d seen their commercials with their accented spokespeople and their claims of sophisticated, gourmet coffee.  And their bags are yellow and happy.  I was marketed.  So, I decided to give it a try. 

M.I.S.T.A.K.E.  Yuck.  Super yuck, in fact.  I knew as soon as I opened the bag and poured the beans into the coffee maker that we were in for a bad pot of coffee.  The beans were so lightly colored (almost yellow) and weren’t fragrant at all.  And when I took my first sip of the coffee, my fears were confirmed.  It was a bland, tasteless cup of coffee. 

My husband didn’t know that I’d busted into a new bag of coffee.  But, as soon as he took his first sip, he demanded to know what the heck was wrong with his coffee.  I think his exact words were “What’s wrong with this coffee?  It tastes awful.” 

There you go.  So much for the happy yellow bag and accented spokespeople.  Gevalia, you fail.

And you know how you know you should never, ever take them up on it because * well * they are canvassing the neighborhood looking for business which means that they are not getting enough business on their own?  Like, if they were busy with projects, they wouldn’t need to canvass the neighborhood looking for business.

But, then, you feel a little bad for them because their job is to canvass neighborhoods for business.  And you do need a new roof and you’ve started collecting quotes so why not collect a quote from this guy, too?  I mean, who knows?  Maybe it’s meant to be.

So, you decide to take him up on his offer of a quote.  And you make his day.  And you feel good about yourself.

And, then two hours later, he is still sitting at your kitchen table showing you shingle samples and gutter guards and roof vents and talking about all of these meaningless certifications that the company has (we’re a certified this and a certified that and, wow, aren’t you impressed?) and how their roofs are oh-so much better than everyone else’s roofs even though this all looks exactly like the same stuff the three other roofers showed us but how it’s not because their roof will last for something like 412 years (guaranteed!) because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then you put the kids to bed and he’s still sitting there, writing up a quote while your husband cleans the kitchen.  Even though you politely suggested he just email it to you.  Oh, no, that’s ok. It’ll only take me a few minutes to write it up.  Right.

And then he finally gives you a quote for like $10,000 more than any other roofer who has come by to give you a quote.  And he offers you 10% off if you sign up today and you almost laugh in his face because he’s already wasted 2 hours of your life and you feel like you might end up having to make up the guest bed for him because he’s apparently never leaving. Hey, kids, this is your new uncle Mike.  And guess what?  He’s a roof canvasser! How cool is that!  And you just want to put your pajamas on and drink a glass of wine and catch up on the Bachelorette because the kids are in bed and this is the only time you have all day to relax and unwind and not be worried about kids or work or, well, roofs.

And then he finally leaves.  And you celebrate…

Until you discover that he’s left his monstrous gutter sample behind on your kitchen counter.  Which means that he will have to probably come back.

And why we apparently now find ourselves as unexpected caretakers of a bunch of turtle eggs.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?  Meet Mama Turtle.

Do you see her there in the middle of the photo?  With the brown and  yellow shell?  We’ve concluded – without any real certainty – that she is an Eastern Box Turtle.

Mama Turtle was hanging out around our place on Saturday afternoon.  She started out in the backyard and then made her way over into our neighbors’ front yard. Only to return to our side of the property line and spend a good part of the evening exploring our front lawn.  She was a busy little bee and we had a grand old time watching her go about the surprisingly fast business of being a turtle.

At around 9:00 pm, once the sun had gone down, she started digging a hole in the corner of our front lawn by the driveway.  A big hole.  Her entire lower half fit down in that hole.  And we were like “Hey, Turtle Lady, that’s our lawn you’re digging up.  What goes?”

And that’s when it occurred to us that this little lady was probably not being destructive for the sake of it, and was instead laying her some eggs.  By the next morning, she’d covered the hole back up with dirt and was hanging out under the front wheel of our car in the driveway, monitoring her good work from afar.   Thank goodness we didn’t run her over.  That would have been some really bad karma, for sure.

And so we did some Internet reading on turtle eggs and herpetologists.  (Right, those… I did not know what a herpetologist was before we started looking up what to do about turtle eggs laid in our yard.  Now, I’m feeling a rather kindred spirit with the herpetologist community.  I may have missed my true calling…)  We are definitely feeling a great sense of responsibility now for these turtle eggs and we want to make sure that Mama Turtle does not regret choosing our front yard as the place she wanted to lay them.  I mean, I don’t want word to spread among turtle society that we aren’t a welcoming bunch.  Because we are.

The kids are very excited about the prospect of some baby turtles hatching on our property. Although from what we can tell, the babies tend to be really small and rather undetectable when they are first born so we might just miss them altogether.  Oh well.  According to my new best herpetological references, we’ve got 2-3 months before we’ll find out for sure.

The life lesson on tap?  The CONGA LINE!

We were upstairs getting dressed for bed and, for some reason or other, I had that conga line song going through my head.  And then it occurred to me that this was a real opportunity.  A real opportunity to teach them something truly valuable and important.

So, my friends, let’s get this party started.  The hallway shall be our studio.  And let us go where the music takes us.

I first worked on the basics with them one on one.

And then we put it together for the grand finale.

It’s time like these – when I can pass on something so fundamentally important to their future survival skills – that I feel like I might have truly crossed the line over into parenting greatness.

Weddings and Bar Mitzvahs and awkward office parties will thank me for years to come.  So, you’re welcome.

And, then a few years ago, people started with the whole cupcake topper thing and, if you were super cool, you had some sort of a stick with some sort of a medallion sticking out of your cupcakes.  And if you were super super cool, you also had a special cardboard wrapper that went around the standard wrapper that complemented your topper.

But then everyone was doing cupcake toppers (including me) and so it was no longer enough.  So, people started putting favors on top of the cupcakes.  Big plastic rings are particularly big these days, as evidenced by the fact that my kids are coming home regularly from school with big plastic rings.  It was FILL IN THE BLANK’s BIRTHDAY TODAY!  Yay!  And I got a ring because FILL IN THE BLANK’s mom is super cool.  Look at my beautiful new ring, Mom!  

{And there’s also some sort of sticker on a stick trend going on right now in cupcake world that my son insists is pretty much the coolest thing and the kids with stupendously cool moms send cupcakes with stickers on them.  Apparently I am not a stupendously cool mom because I have the faintest idea what he is talking about and I can’t find a photo online that helps me figure it out.  Anytime I search for “cupcakes” and “stickers,” I get cupcake stickers. Which is apparently not what I’m looking for.  Oh well.  Moving on. }

So, the other day when I started talking to my son about what kind of cupcakes he wanted (what color cake, what color frosting), he made sure I understood that there had to be SOMETHING on top of the cupcakes that the kids could take home with them.  A sticker (what in God’s name are you talking about?!??!), a ring… something.  Because if not, then it wasn’t even worth bringing cupcakes because he would be laughed out of the school cafeteria for having like the least cool mom in town.

Seriously?!?!

So, I starting pondering what to put on the cupcakes.  At first, I wanted to do a little Lego minifigure on each one because I thought that would be super cute and fun.  I was picturing chocolate cupcakes with red frosting and a classic minifigure standing on top.

But then I priced out what it would cost to buy enough minifigures for 27 cupcakes and quickly decided that was not a workable option. I love my kid and all, but I wasn’t about to spend $100 on toys for the tops of his birthday cupcakes.  No way, no how.

So then I hit the party store in town and wandered through the party favor aisle to see if I could find something that tickled my fancy.  I almost got a package of gold “coins,” but then came across packages of these little die cast cars for $9.99 each.  Sold.   I ended up making vanilla cupcakes with green and orange frosting, and set one car on the top of each cupcake.  (Even after nearly two years of blogging, I forget to take pictures of these sorts of things so I don’t actually have any photos of these car cupcakes… sorry.  Life gets in the way of blogging sometimes, so forgive me.)

They were a big hit at school.  After the kids finished up their cupcakes and licked all of the frosting off the bottom of the car, they each had a little working die cast car that they could take home with them (to add to their collection of  15 million other die cast cars, no doubt).

My kid was thrilled. He told me that the cars were the best thing that had ever been brought on top of birthday cupcakes.  Ever.  Mission accomplished.

But, back to the I Don’t Get It part of this post…  well, I don’t get it.  What happened to sprinkles and a candle?  Believe you me, as a working mom, it’s hard enough to get the cupcakes made.  Add figuring out something creative to put on top and then actually going out and buying said creative thing and you’ve nearly sent me over the edge.

And I don’t even want to think about what’s next in this apparently never-ending battle to outdo the other moms in the world of birthday cupcakes.  I’m thinking it involves fondant and batteries.

{Links to photos here, here, here, here}

These are two times when my daughter decides – almost without fail – that she needs to use the potty:

(1) 3 minutes after she gets into the bathtub; and

(2) About 90 seconds after our food arrives when eating out at a restaurant.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer that she tell me that she needs to go the bathroom when she is in the bathtub rather than just letting go in the tub.  I appreciate that.  My son (who still takes a bath with his sister) particularly appreciates that.  But getting her out of the tub and onto the potty – all with an incredible sense of urgency, it seems – is always, well, wet.  And annoying.  So, we’ve implemented a new rule:  potty first, then bath.  So far, so good.

The restaurant thing drives me nuts.  Because she doesn’t do it before we order, or while we are waiting for our food, or as we are wrapping up.  It’s literally only after our food has arrived and I’ve taken maybe one or two bites.  Mom, I need to go potty.  Really?  Now?  It can’t wait?  No, I think I’m going to pee in my underpants.  Oh joy.

The worst is when I am out alone with the kids in a restaurant.  Because then I have to take both kids with me to the bathroom and then first deal with my son’s aversion to going into the women’s restroom (see here).

But, Mom, that’s where the girls go and I’m not a girl.  

Right you are, young man.  However, I can’t go into the men’s restroom and I can’t leave you out here by yourself so you’ve got to come with us to where the girls go.

But, Mom…

Believe you me, kid, this is not my idea of a good time either.  

And, once we’ve gotten through that hurdle, I get to stand there while my daughter makes comments about all of the other people in the public restroom.  Mom, is that lady going potty too?  Mom, who is that?  Mom, did you hear that toilet flush?  All of this while my food is getting cold… and while my son is still complaining that he is being forced to hang in the God forsaken women’s restroom.

And then there’s the strong likelihood that our food will actually get cleared off of the table while we are off on our bathroom adventure.  Because that’s happened.  A couple of times.  Getting back from a not-ideally-timed restroom break only to discover that your food – the food that you only got to take a bite or two of – has been taken away.  So not cool.

I’ve recently gotten into the habit of asking someone at a table nearby to stand guard and wave off any over-eager restaurant table-clearer.  It takes a village, you know…

You may recall that, awhile ago, I took my camera around the house one night and took a photo of what everyone was doing to give you a real-live glimpse into life in my house (see here).  Well, last night, I decided to do it again.  So, here you go – 8:15 pm up in my crib.

I was baking cupcakes in the kitchen.  My son’s birthday is on Tuesday and he has 27 (good golly!) kids in his class.  Which means baking and frosting 27 cupcakes.  The idea of doing all of that on a Monday night after work, in addition to wrapping up all of the boy’s presents, caused warning bells and visions of 2:30 am to dance in my head.  So, I decided to get a jumpstart on the process and bake up the cakes last night.  Leaving time for frosting and present wrapping tonight.

(By the way, while I was baking cupcakes, I was also cleaning up from dinner.  We made this Creamy Tuscan Pasta Sauce that I got from Mel’s Kitchen Cafe (see here) last night and it was divine, so give it a shot.  It really is only a 20 minute recipe, although I dirtied up quite a few pots, bowls, colanders, etc. while making it so it did take quite a bit of time to clean up.)

The kids were coloring/word seeking in the kitchen with me.  In their jammies.  They’d just finished their bath and had a little time to kill before bed.  Batman rocks a word seek, in case you were wondering.  The other one just likes to scribble a few things on a page in one of her coloring books and then move on to the next page.  While she half-dangles out of her chair.  And reports to me about every three seconds about what she is coloring now and what color she is coloring it.  Mom, I’m coloring the butterfly’s wing purple.  It’s going to be so beautiful!…Mom, the cloud is going to be red because it is the silliest cloud ever… Mom, the flower is yellow.  Yellow is sometimes my favorite color.  Except that it’s not because my favorite color is pink and purple sometimes too.  But not yellow.  

My husband was doing something in the office/piano room that involved a piano, an iPad, a pencil, and a score.  I’m not sure.  I didn’t ask.  But it looked serious.

The dog was stretched out and relaxing on the floor.  Always.  Except when he’s not.

I found both of the cats asleep in the living room.  I was able to snap this photo of Tuck, lounging away on one of the chairs.  I wasn’t able to grab a shot of Nip because, at this point, my daughter was following me around wondering what I was doing.  When she saw me taking a photo of Tuck, she asked me if I was also going to take a picture of Nip and, as she asked (shrieked) this, she promptly flung her entire body at Nip (who was sleeping on the couch) and this sent Nip (who doesn’t like being anywhere in the general vicinity of my daughter – because she frequently shrieks and flings) sprinting out of the room for his dear life.

Not anymore, apparently.  Thank you, my dear.  Now please go back to your coloring.

and a lot of that:

And we took pictures to document our silliness.  Of course we did.  If a tree falls in a forest…   (I seriously have about 20 photos on my phone  right now of my son and me making this face.)

I don’t know what started it.  I guess we were feeling a little saucy.  And it was making us laugh, so once we started, we couldn’t stop.  We’re kind of like that.

I even found myself doing it at work a couple of times yesterday because it had kind of become second nature.  Thank goodness I was able to stop myself.  Because I admit that it’s a little odd.  Especially at work.

It’s things like this that make having a nearly 6 year old kid fun.  We can have running jokes (that are actually funny, versus the sort of mindless dribble that keeps a younger kid amused… over and over and over again).  He has a real developed sense of humor.

Not that hanging your mouth open like this is the sign of a real developed sense of humor.

But, dang, it was cracking us up all weekend.