Little Pieces of My Life

I have a cold. I guess life is catching up to me. I should slow down a bit.

I am currently listening to wise council from Blue October. "Life's like a jump rope. Up. Down. Up. Down." True that. But sometimes I think it is more like double dutch. Life can be up and down at the same time. The trick is to not get your feet tangled up.

Today is a bit of a phone dump. Time to get all those pictures squared away and taken care of. Let's start with that science project that Robyn made. I forgot to take pictures before she took it to school, so I went to her classroom a week later because I was worried it would be destroyed on the way home. (I ended up stopping by right when Robyn was picked to debate micro organisms. I love catching snippets of school life.)

She worked very hard on her project. The assignment was to research a swampy habitat and document an organism from the 5 kingdoms. Robyn chose to make a diorama, which is right up her artist alley.

She researched the Brazilian wetlands, known as Pantanal. Then she began assembling her diorama, once piece at a time as she drew them. Here is the finished product.

Can you see her eagle flying? It has a poisonous snake it its mouth. Her tree has fungi growing on the side. Here are some detail shots. I love her jaguar and orchids.

Her otter is eating a fish and if you look closely, you can see the algae below the water.

She is very creative and I was thrilled that she didn't leave it until the last minute. That gets extra credit in my book.

Let's talk about lunch for a minute. I make the kids lunch almost every day. Last year I took Tuesdays off and made them all eat pizza at school, but this year I decided to suck it up and make lunch every day. I'm surprised that June doesn't want to eat lunch at Jr. High. It seems they would have better food, but she has shown no interest, and I just keeping making lunch. It is possible that she gets home lunch because she likes the designs on the bag. My mom used to make a different design on my bag everyday and I have continued the tradition.

It is hard to be creative everyday. I have added in jokes on some days because it is super easy. The joke is on the front and the answer is on the bottom. I never document the bags because it seems crazy to try and keep pictures of hundreds of bags, but I have taken a few pictures in the morning this year, because June leaves after the others and sometimes she misses all the designs. (Although Daisy likes to save her bags when she likes the pictures. That makes me feel good, but eventually I have to throw them away.)

Here are a few that I took pictures of so that June could see them when she came downstairs. This was right after I made Smelephant.

Can you guess all the princesses?

Sometimes it is easier to see the bigger picture when the lunches are all together.

I can't even imagine how many lunch bags I have done over the last seven years. Hundreds easily.

Speaking of Smelephant, I finally got that picture of Daisy with Smelephant...while she was awake.

Halloween decorations are up around here. (Have been a while.) The little pumpkin people are still a hit, even with the teenager. June set them up the other day and it looked like some weird convention or seance. Are the ghosts in charge? I am just not sure.

One more story. This one is pretty funny in my opinion. I'd been thinking for a while about getting my hair done. Tyler doesn't want me to dye my hair because of the crazy upkeep at the roots. But I thought I could do a melt or balayage since it is at the bottom of the hair and it could keep growing with no upkeep. For those of you who don't know what a balayage is, it is when the hair gets lighter towards the end. So a brunette could have dark on top which changes to blond at the tips. Some people call it ombre. There are plenty of pictures on Pinterest if you are confused.

I set up an appointment and went in on a Tuesday. My friend Kellie does an amazing job, but she was worried about going too extreme, so she did caramely colors and not so much blonde. It was very cute, but not very noticeable. I told her Tyler would probably not notice. Hair wasn't really his thing. But no one in the family said anything...not even Robyn who knew I was going to get my hair done that day. I was not satisfied. I didn't spend money for results that only I could see. Kellie was happy to have me come back in and put in more blonde. So, Friday (carnival day, egg drop day, leaving for Idaho day) I went in and she put more pizzazz in my hair.

It was perfect. I loved it. The kids noticed right away. I was excited to see what Tyler would say.

When I first saw him, he was wearing sunglasses, so no go. But as we dropped off children and went to run errands, he took off his sunglasses and I could tell that he hadn't noticed. We dropped off his Grom, we stopped by the library and picked up books, we went to the school carnival. No go.

I should have just said something, but now I was curious to see how long it would take. To be clear, I was NOT annoyed or mad at him. It was just fine that he didn't pick up on it. But to me, it was very noticeable.

Later that evening, we drove to Idaho. We had lots of time to talk and I mentioned Kellie a few times. (After all, I spent a LOT of time with her that week.) He picked up on that.

"Why were you at Kellie's this week?"

"I can't tell you. I have a bet going with myself."

"Oh no. I was supposed to notice something, wasn't I?. Did you get your eyelashes done? No. Haircut? Did you dye your hair? I can't win. I am in trouble now."

All guesses. Poor guy. And the car was dark and he couldn't see anything.

He was not in trouble of course. As soon as we arrived in Idaho, he figured it out. I know in the future to just tell him when I get something done to my hair, no matter how noticeable I think it will be.

I took this picture in the car when we were coming home. I really like the balayage. Thanks Kellie.

p.s. Tyler always notices when I get new clothes. He is just attuned to different things.