The Ma Family

With Rylee’s hair growing so quickly we decided it was time to attempt pulling it back with something other than a barrette.  Barrettes don’t seem to stay in very long and therefore have been abandoned.  Much to the delight of the teachers at daycare.

Yesterday I bought a bunch of bands that are so small I swear they are the colored version of what I used to put on my braces.

I came home and decided to make my first attempt at putting two in Rylee’s hair.  I had no clue what a struggle this would be.  Have you ever tried to put in a piggy tail while the hair you need keeps moving from side to side?  Rylee wasn’t very interested in cooperating at all.  That said, here is our first attempt.

Although they are cute and we kept telling Rylee how pretty she was she didn’t like them.  Well, she didn’t mind them unless she touched them.  Every time she’d touch them last night she would start to cry.  Bill and I found this very amusing and felt badly when we’d giggle while she cried.

I’m going to attempt a whale spout today.  Here’s hoping the test subject is still be sleepy enough to sit still while I do it.

So I recently had to buy a new mouse from an online retailer. They offered free shipping, so as always, I said what the heck, and picked the free shipping option.

Little did I know, they were going to ship it via some service called FedEx SmartPost. Well, more than a week later, it’s still not here. Doing a little tracking online shows that my mouse took a slight detour. Instead of coming from West Virginia to Pennsylvania via Maryland, it took a nonsensical 2,700 mile detour via Texas.

Just got giggles, here’s a map of the circuitous route my mouse has taken so far:

Here’s to hoping it’ll be here tomorrow. It’s definitely not going to make it by FedEx’s estimated delivery date.

Update: It arrived on October 10th, six days after the estimated date.

Competition: If you can’t beat them, untie their shoelaces.

GIRL!

Rylee is going to have a little sister in February.

Bill and I are pretty excited.  We realize we should probably start saving for proms and weddings now though.  We hope the bathroom they will share will be big enough for two girls to get ready for school at the same time.

I don’t have a sister so I’m very excited for Rylee to have one.  I think they will be best friends as they will only be 21 months apart.

Right now if you ask Rylee where the baby is she will either point at her own belly or point to her baby picture on the mantle.  At least she understands ‘baby’ but she doesn’t quite get the rest of it.  Oh well, she’s got five months to get figure it all out.

Here is a photo of the front of our house when we moved in just over a month ago.  When we looked at the house we knew that many of the shrubs out front would have to go.  There really were entirely too many of them and they were all big.

Fortunately we have a landscaper who lives a few houses down and he’s really good.  He’s the one who actually put in the all those shrubs for the original owner.  Not surprisingly he told her that her plan had too many shrubs and that they would grow too fast.  She didn’t care, so that is why the front of the house looked like the developer got a great deal on shrubs.

We have since moved four of the shrubs to the back of the house.  They replaced what was a weed garden.  Evidently the people who rented the house for the past two years thought it was a wild flower garden because a lot of the weeds had purple flowers on them.  Nice, especially when you consider the guy who lived there worked for our landscaper.

We replaced the four red shrubs with five plants of knockout roses.  The reason we decided on these is that they are low maintenance and will give us great color from March til November.  Perfect!  In front of the shrubs against the railing we are going to plant a lot of tulip bulbs so that we will have even more color in the spring.  I still need to talk to Randy about what else to put in there to give color once the tulips are done.  It’s still a work in progress.

And now that fall has arrived I couldn’t wait to get my typical fall decorations.  Here’s a current shot of the front door area.  We went with wheat swags this year instead of cornstalks.  They are a nice change, but I think next year we’ll be going back to cornstalks.