i have nothing to write about!!!

yet i feel compelled to update. so, i'll start a new blog theme. it'll be called, "our lives today: a snapshot" and i'll just write about the trivial things that are going on in our lives, and in 20 years it'll all seem so dated and poignant. god, my genius astounds even myself sometimes.

today, nina is:
reading welcome to dead house, ghost camp, and scary stories to tell in the dark 3. she likes to play with her fur real friend sara but she desperately wants a real dog. her favorite games to play are kids on stage, stare, and candyland. she loves to draw pictures, especially of houses, people, birds, trees, rainbows, and leprechauns.

today, maggie is:
obsessed with the rainbow fairies series, which i hate reading, because i think they're awful. i did read the first few chapters of charlotte's web to her today, and that was fun. she likes to play with her ponies, especially a match up with the angry birds called "angry birds reverses ponies." she also likes to wash her toys and ponies, and have tea parties. she loves to draw pictures of ponies. i let her use the dry erase markers on the windows, and so our windows are usually covered with drawings of ponies, sometimes with wings, and sometimes holding scissors (a little scary? yes.)

i wasn't going to do nick or myself, but why not! nick is reading the given day and i'm reading the biography of catherine the great. the girls are sound asleep (maggie has a big of a runny nose), and we're just chillaxin'!

snow this morning!

unbelievable. it went from 80 degrees to an inch of snow! well, it melted pretty quickly, then it rained, then it was dry, then it hailed, then it was dry, and now it's raining again.

but we're not here to talk about the weather! the girls and i had some fun this afternoon playing with the new digital camera. nina was in an especially exuberant mood!






omg that took forever to upload. but great picture quality!

it's cold again!

waahh! i hope my tulips will be ok! it was 80 last week, and now we're supposed to go down to something like 20 tonight. fricassee!! (it's a curse word around here now). i spent all last week transplanting those purple flowers we have on the patio (for some reason i think they're hostas) and the orange day lilies along the patio's wall, and i'd hate to lose them.

yes, they are hostas. here's a pic:

and here's a photo of the day lilies:

well, hopefully they survive the transplant. they'll look really neat in their new homes.

anyway, it was so cold that maggie and i decided to bake some banana bread with her friend hattie. unfortunately, something was wrong with my baking powder (too old i think), and it didn't rise at all. i knew it was a bit old, so i added an extra half-teaspoon, which didn't help it rise and just added to that baking powder flavor. maggie was not a fan.

"do you like our banana bread?:" i asked.
"no!" she responded. "it tastes like dirt!"

thanks kiddo, but you could have just stopped at no. she was adorable yesterday though, when she was looking at some of the books that nina made way back at preschool and repeatedly exclaimed, "nina, these are so good! i'm so proud at you!"

awww! they love each other so much.

the spelling bee!!

what fun! mom and nick didn't win (their team was called the killer bees) but they did a great job. they went out on fricassee. the words in that bee were really hard! hossay, parerphernilia, catastrophe, balustrade... see, some i can spell, some i can't. fluorescent! i knew that one. well, i just typed it wrong (thank you spellcheck!), but i'm pretty sure i got it right last night. oh, and get this: i won a prize! not a top prize, but a minor prize for coming in second place (along with like, 10 other people) in the literary quotes competition. i knew pretty much all of those (except the name of the dr.seuess book that quote was from, and i missed the harry potter quote. guess i should have read those after all!). that was an audience challenge portion of the night: they read a word that we had to spell (1 point) (spell correctly of course. i missed at least 2 of these), then we had to name the work the quote came from (1 point), and the author (1 point). the other quotes were from a tale of two cities, the road less traveled (turns out there's just one L in traveled, but spelling in the titles didn't count. phew!), and twilight.

when mom called last night to tell us who won the bee (a team of teachers from our school. it was down to them and a team from lincoln academy. glad boothbay won it!), nick said to nina "we didn't win the lobster."
"i don't like lobster," said nina.
"mom did win a hat though," he said.
"i like hats!" enthused nina. "can i have it?!"

so there you go, a hat is better than lobster. i think maggie would disagree though.

maggie was considered by many to be the highlight of the evening. the first time the killer bees took the stage, she cheered very softly "go grandma! go papa! do your best!" (do your best! how cute!). then, when they were spelling catastrophe (m-a-g-g-i-e, that's how i would have spelled it), she was trying to yank one of those giant gym floor mop/brooms that they use at the school down on her head. i had to dart over to pull her away. and then, when they took the stage to spell fricassee, she yelled "GO PAPA! GO GRANDMA!! WOO HOO!! GO!!" and it was so, so cute. she sounded just like a little cheerleader. i had a quick moment of fear, because you can never be sure what that kid's going to say when she has everyone's attention, but she was perfect. whew!

hey, stay tuned for more pictures. we just got a new digital camera!

a funny maggie story i had forgotten to tell!

on tuesday, i took maggie up to damariscotta for a la leche meeting. it didn't happen (long story), so one of the moms and i took the kids to the lonna bunting playground (vanessa and erik, they took down the old, amazingly fun, head-bumping, splinter-giving, wooden playground, and replaced it with some modern plastic stuff. nice that i didn't have to pick out any splinters, but sad to see such a fun playground gone). anyway, maggie was dressed sweetly in a skirt and t-shirt, and at one point pulled out her pony notebook (it's a notebook filled with pony sketches. that's pretty much all she draws) and began to draw--you guessed it!--a pony! this one was named happy bat. picture it: she was up on a higher landing by a slide, lying on her tummy, drawing--her beautiful curls lit up in the late morning sun. another mom who happened to be at the playground with her little boy came up to maggie and asked,
"do you like ponies?"

"GO AWAY!!!" maggie yelled at her. you can only imagine her tone of voice.

ohhh, i was so embarrassed. i apologized, and the mom said it was ok. i made maggie apologize too, and she did.
"i'm sorry i was rude," she said sweetly to the mom.
"that's ok," said the mom, and patted her on the head.
"HRUMPH!" grunted maggie, storming off with a scowl.

i apologized again. that child! she looks so sweet, but i tense up every time she opens her mouth.

oh yes, and afterwards we went to the hannaford there. she was so good and helpful at the store, and i told her so when we were done shopping.
"so you don't hate me?!" she asked, loudly.

where does this come from? at least no one there knows us, and can't report me to child services.
(and of course, i told her, for the millionth time, that i never have and never will hate her, etc, etc, but i'm sure she'll say it again. she tells me every day in a sweet voice that she hates me. and it's opposite day. and she doesn't hate me. and it's opposite day. and she loves me. and it's not opposite day... she can go on and on for hours.)

82 today!

oh me oh my. i was trying to transplant some of our flowers today, in advance of our new patio going in (yay!), AND IT WAS JUST TOO HOT! oops, i didn't mean to turn caps lock on, but i think it was quite the apt accident. i moved a few clumps of dirt, and i was just boiling. you don't realize just how strong the maine sun is in march until it's bearing down on you through a cloudless 80 degree sky. hopefully tomorrow i can do some more, it should only be in the 60s tomorrow (only!).

you can tell that my weight lifting is beginning to pay off, by the way. i have only mild blistering on my hands after nearly a week of transplanting. you might not recognize me the next time you see me!

today was a pretty typical thursday. maggie and i hung out around the house, playing ponies and other such fun, then dance dance dance after school and a mad rush home and quick dinner. today was quesadillas with leftover chicken and tomatoes. the girls loved them. i have to remember to make them again!

don't expect a post tomorrow night--we'll be at the high school, cheering on mom, nick, and the third teemmate (i gess dad and i just arnt good enuf spelers!). kros yur fingres for temh!

80 degrees today...

so, we went to the beach!

what a lovely day! the breeze coming in off of the water was pretty chilly, so nina and i needed jackets. maggie was fine without one, of course. both girls dipped their toes in the ocean (and so did i, but only because i had to rinse out the buckets and shovels). it wasn't too bad. hendrick's head is really, really shallow, so the mud bakes in the sun for about 100 or 200 feet during low tide. it really heats up the water. it was probably mid-50 degrees.

it was quite sunny!

nina and some of her girlfriends

maggie brushing sand off her hands while she waits for me to take a picture

a photo of me, courtesy of nina

rinsing off in the water wagon at home. our fun summer alternative to a bath! (that's a cheese stick in maggie's hand)

we're supposed to get more of this again tomorrow. i love it!