Susie's Leaning Tower of Chocolate for 2018 March

Maggie tried to pull “I’m eleven!” on me and I pointed out she would be if she hadn’t been so late. I will enjoy holding that over her head for nine days every year for the rest of her life.

Sienna and Arthur were playing outside today when Arthur fell into a rose bush in the landscaping. He scraped up his arm and I had to pull some thorns out of his hand. Then I did what any reasonable parent of a toddler with an owie would do - I put his coat on so he couldn’t see the scratches and would forget about it. It only partially worked. He carefully held his hand to his chest the rest of the day. And when I took his coat off so we could paint rocks with friends, he held his arm behind his back so he couldn’t see his owies. Poor guy.

I got a call to pick up sick Maggie from school today. She was very pale and her stomach hurt but she had not yet thrown up. I brought her home and tucked her in and went back to school for a meeting. Immediately upon seeing me, one of her friends informed me that they began studying body systems today. Maggie seems to have neglected to mention that fact!

Rachel, Brett and Theo came to visit and Leonard and I stayed in Morro Bay with the kids so we could attend the Sip n See. We had a few hours to kill so we did a bit of a whirlwind tour of the city.

On our way into town, we drove up to Moonstone Beach to look for sea glass, then further to the Elephant Seal viewpoint. We also saw Hearst Castle and the zebras from the road.

The next morning we hit the future Morro Bay Maritime Museum (currently a couple cool sea vessels in a parking lot), the Strand beach with Morro Rock viewing and sand dollar collecting, and the Brown Butter Cookie Co in Cayucos. On the way down to Aunt Pat's, we drove through Morro Bay State Park, and stopped at the natural history museum there -$3 for adults, and the kids were free. It was a neat little museum with lots of hands on activities, a beautiful view, and some cool whale bones.

Sienna’s school book fair has a poster board full of dum dums. You can pick one for a quarter and some have prizes. I had a dollar, so we had two extra quarters. We gave one to Sienna’s little friend, and then convinced a new Japanese kid in their class (who barely speaks English) to take the other. The next day, she brought a little thank you note on origami paper and a little set of hello kitty stickers for Sienna. Sweet little exchange.

I had a dream I was at the beach and I saw a sea turtle and picked it up (don't do this in real life). Except it was more like a cartoon sea turtle. And really heavy. In fact, as it clung to me, it sort of felt like a toddler sleeping on my chest.

My kids were not interested in the school talent show, and who has time for that? But they were asked to be announcers, because you know the LDS kids can speak in front of people. There were a handful of announcer kids, dressed up as circus performers, with little scenes to do between each handful of talent acts. Dalton was a magician and pulled bunny Maggie out of a hat. He did a great job remembering his lines and being nice and loud. Maggie also did a mime routine, and I was very impressed with how quickly she picked up the concept. I was backstage orchestrating announcers going out, and costume changes for the announcers. It was lots of fun (even though I was right: Who has time for that?)

Afterwards, we stayed and helped put chairs away and clean up. I couldn't believe the amount of trash left lying around, but I was pleasantly surprised by random families (not just the usual PTA and LDS crew (it was held at the Stake Center)) who stayed to help.

Maggie had a belated birthday party at the gymnastics place today. She invited the four boys in her primary class, and four girls from school. I made cupcakes and picked up Taco Bell, and that’s it. My kind of lazy party.

The kids had a great time. I’m so glad she has such nice friends. Even the boys have tamed down quite a bit over the years.

Maggie got a big variety of gifts. A LEGO set, a book, drawing stuff, stuffed Pokémon and a dragon beanie boo, trapeze class with her bestie, a funny board game, Pokémon cards, squishies, erasers, and candy and money. Score!

Arthur spies Sienna’s ring pop: treat!
Sienna: this is healthy
Dalton: no it’s not
Sienna: but it’s green apple flavor
Arthur comes to me whining: healthy! Healthy!

This morning was a bit crazy. I sent my kids off to school in western wear, a twin outfit, with piano books, a swim suit, goggles, and 100 plastic eggs. All the things happening today.

Last night was our sixth annual flashlight egg hunt. We had nearly 100 kids - 50% more than last year. It was that many more eggs to hide, and we did flameless candles to exchange for prizes, instead of numbered eggs. It made the field look magical.

It was a lot of work, and I was annoyed at people who showed up and didn’t know you were supposed to donate eggs. But I tried to chill out. I’m working on being more generous and gracious.

We had a lot of friends help set up, donate more than their fair share of prizes, help distribute prizes, offer to clean up, it really warmed my heart and reminded me of why we really do it. We love the community, and it was so fun for our kids to have all their friends there.

Today was $1.31 cone day at baskin Robbins so i took the kids while John was at Priesthood session. Their credit card machine was down, and they were operating cash only. Amazingly, i actually had cash. While we were outside eating our cones, a father and son came biking up, went inside, and came back out, clearly looking for a credit card friendly alternative. So I offered them money. The dad tried to refuse, and would only take enough to get his son a cone, but was very grateful.

Five minutes later, Sienna accidentally throw her cone at the dad, and he caught it. Luckily there was no ice cream on the cone because she was tired of it and shook it off into the trash so she could eat the cone. My kids are weird.

*I can brag about this because it’s my blog and no one reads it. Maggie commented that it was a nice thing I did, so I’m glad she noticed my kind example.