pretty good day

tonight i'm writing my first blog for 2009. as claire said tonight as we were changing into her jammies "i had a fun day mom!" it was a good day.

i got a whopping 10 hours of sleep last night which was desperately needed. i hadn't been feeling

myself lately and when mike wanted to go to bed at 9:30pm last night, i thought i'd join him or i knew i'd be up on the computer or watching reality tv until midnight and regret it. i woke up at 6am and got tickled when i saw the time on the alarm clock b/c that meant i had another hour of sleep before i had to get up and go to work! sweet :)

i work half days on saturdays at Safe Connections facilitating our social programs. Today was Craft Circle. We were lucky enough to have an Occupational Therapy Professor from SLU and one of her graduate students come to show us how to make mosaic tile trivets. If i can figure out how to upload a picture, i will be showing it here...

I must say I had a really hard time choosing a 'design' b/c the size of the trivets weren't that big and the variety of the tiles was pretty big and we only had an hour and a half to finish the project and oh yeah - i'm a perfectionist - there's always that. it would have taken me FORever to choose a design, much less place and glue it properly. so i opted not to have a design at all and go all abstract. i kinda like the result. i definately like the colors. we had 5 women show up for Craft Circle and that's twice as many as we usually get so i was thankful we had a really special craft prepared for them. they seemed to really enjoy it and i wish i had pictures of their trivets b/c they all turned out beautifully. and the mosaic process was so easy, i think i might try it at home.

claire and i laid down for a nap after I got home from work so mike could have a break. i mostly read the new book i started, The Constant Princess, by Phillipa Gregory. I finally rented "The Other Boleyn Girl" the other day and have since been obsessed with starting the series of books. I'm not reading them in the order they were written though, but their chronogical order b/c my brain needs to work that way. so far, so good. the only way i could have survived during these times would have been if i were a princess. A Constant One. so i can really relate to catherine of aragon.

after naptime, mike took us to steak 'n shake before he had to leave for his gig tonight at Main Street Bistro Claire was very, very good at the restaurant, which doesn't always happen. They gave her a cool, pink '57 chevy to put together and play with lots of decals and she ate most of her dinner. so she got a 'treat'. we had a coupon for a free hot fudge sundae so we were all about that. claire was psyched too. the waitress brings it to the table and claire promptly starts...having a temper tantrum! it didn't look EXACTLY like the sundae on the picture (namely they were out of cherries) and she refused to eat it. she is obviously not my offspring.

claire wanted to make cookies about 30 minutes after we got home b/c she was 'hungry'. of course. i couldn't resist b/c hell - it's fun making cookies with her! she gets into it! she loves the sprinkles! we made sugar cookies b/c she ' likes them'. we decorated them with chocolate chips and leftover halloween sprinkles.

here is a picture of claire concentrating on the sprinkles.









we changed into our jammies while they were baking. she was really freaked out the timer was gonna beep before we could get changed. "hurry mom - they gonna burn!"

As soon as they came out of the over she exclaimed "oooh, yummy in my tummy mama!" i don't know where she gets these expressions i tell you!

"TA-DA!"
Finally, we got comfy on the couch in our jammies with our baked cookies and Claire randomly asked to watch "E.T.", which we have taped on our DVR. she LOVES this movie, but hasn't watched it in a few months. she was totally getting into it, asking tons of questions. then during the scene where eliot says goodbye to E.T. she absolutely bursts into tears! i mean, racking sobs, tears streaming down her face, burying her face in my chest, crying. it was fairly traumatic and i think mike has an identical story when his mom (not dad) took him to see E.T. in the theater back in '82! it was so pitiful, i had to hold her for a while before she calmed down.

all in all she was right though, it was a pretty good day...