Reminders

Reminders.

They are everywhere. A few weeks ago I had a brilliant idea to create a little makeshift vanity table so that I'd no longer have to apply mascara in the land of rubber duckies and frog potties. Luckily I happened to have a beautiful sewing table gathering dust in the craft room that seemed to be dying for some love and attention. One mirror from Target later and voila, I had created a bit of space just for me.

Well, me and Dora and Swiper and some other random lady I've not been properly introduced to.

Plus Nuala seems to be fairly smitten with the new arrangement and I keep finding her little finger prints all over the mirror and pretty much everything else the table has to offer. Nail polish bottles, eye lash curlers, tubes of lip stick and mascara.....she is fascinated by all of it. In the beginning I assumed that it was just because of the novelty, but I still find her at the mirror at least once a day.

We have a quiet house for the next few weeks as the older kids are all away on various adventures with various grandparents. It's always strange to have the household whittled down to only 3 children.

Reminders, yes they are everywhere and what could be a bigger reminder of childhood than a melting popsicle? We've taken the whole popsicle thing to a whole new level around here this year and I can't buy them fast enough. Plus, no body likes the purple ones (I can occasionally persuade Saoirse) and so there are at this very moment about 3 half empty boxes in the back freezer that have been raided of all their orange and red treasures and about 50 purple popsicles laying around loose and lonely.

***See this face? Happens when her Dada gets home from work each afternoon.***

I can't blame her. He is pretty wonderful.

Have I mentioned that I'm training for a little thing called a marathon? Did you know that training for such an event will eat up pretty much any and all free time you have? I'm not sure about you, but over here in the land of 100 Fingers 100 Toes, we're not exactly swimming in oodles of free time to begin with. Brendan is being an absolute gentleman about the whole thing and holding down the fort each time I go to lace up my running shoes and hit the road. I would never be able to do any of this without his support.

And I'm not even going to make a fuss about how at less than 5 weeks out from the marathon I am now nursing an IT band injury that made it impossible for me to finish 4 lousy miles yesterday. Nope. I'm just going to remind myself how amazing this whole experience has been so far and stay focused on the positive.

Of course the only way to up the popsicle ante is to choose a flavor and select a cone.

"WHAT DID YOU SAY TO ME?", Nuala all but bellowed at the nice little ice cream scooping teenager behind the counter when asked which type of cone she'd prefer, making it rather obvious that we have not in fact sampled many of the 31 flavors recently. I think it was maybe our second time there in her entire life. She's getting the hang of it though.

I stood there watching them, ready to interrupt at any moment, ready to swoop in and "help" the situation along because how on earth would a 3 year old be able to communicate with a teenager after all? Nuala just gave me a look that said, "back off lady I'm handling my business" and then pointed to the regular cone with one very casual wave of her hand. Oh of course. How silly of me.

And you know the little sister wants to be just like her.

Played around with my ISO and White Balance, holy yellow skin batman! Oh well, it's fun to play and it's usually the best way to learn something new and by now we all know how lazy I am about editing, so yellow skin it is. Life is a work in progress, yes?

Had another play date yesterday. Reminders of how important family is and just how lucky we are.

***Every time I see Ethan he is grinning from ear to ear!***

Meanwhile Saoirse was having conflicting emotions, poor bunny.

Reminders. They are in fact everywhere, you just have to decide what it is that you are looking for.