Baby fat

There are oh-so-many reasons why it's hard to lose weight when you have little ones at home. Here's another reason: they like to eat ice cream. Yeah sure I could buy the girls ice cream and pass on it myself, but then I wouldn't be Lisa, would I?

I have never seen the girls make more of a mess with ice cream than what I saw today. See, Amelia's always asking for ice cream in a cone, so I thought I'd get cones instead of cups for the girls this afternoon. What I hadn't anticipated was that the girls would set their ice cream cones on the counter to eat them instead of holding them in their hands. The cones came with handy "drip catchers" and plastic holders but that didn't prevent the girls from making a huge mess by knocking the cones over again and again. One time, Amelia's bounced down her shirt and pants and landed "splat" on the floor. (The girl working the counter gave her a new cone - upside down and in a cup.) Diana never EVER uses a utensil to eat anything (unless she's prodded to do so), yet today she insisted on eating her ice cream cone with a spoon causing it to continually tip over. Ugh!

But melted ice cream wasn't the nastiest mess we dealt with today. Luckily, I didn't see much of this take place, but after Amelia and Diana came in from playing in the back yard Amelia told me that she and her sister had been turning snails into slugs. Yuck! I bet that wasn't too successful an operation.

Believe me, I do my best to teach the girls to be nice to all of God's creatures... even the snails and slugs. I don't know where they get these ideas. Diana has no fear of bugs, and this makes her mother crazy. In one day she destroyed some snails, picked up a dead bee and stood on a trail of ants undisturbed that they were climbing all over her legs.

Yes, I tell her that ants bite. Darn good thing these aren't fire ants.

And if you've been following our adventures to the historical markers of California, here's a photograph of the girls in front of the Burbank home in Santa Rosa. The funny thing about the Burbank House is that it doesn't have an official plaque like the other sites we have visited. So maybe it's impossible to get photographs in front of all of the actual historical markers throughout the state. But we'll keep taking these side trips and see how many places we can see. The girls enjoy the adventure, and so do I.

Lisa