More images "before and after"

Today was payday for mommy. I'm sure this seems an odd day to be getting paid, but mommy has an odd job.

Something I have been waiting to do, due to a lack of funds, is get haircuts for myself and the girls. Diana has been wanting her hair to be a bit shorter, and Amelia desperately needed to get her bangs out of her eyes. Both girls got their hair done this morning, and both of them now look prettier than ever.

When we arrived at the hair salon this morning, Amelia and Diana headed straight for the hair cutters' chairs (which, in this case, are actually cars). Diana was a bit faster than Amelia and scrambled into a red hot rod before anyone could ask her to wait her turn. Luckily, someone was available to cut Diana's hair. Even more fortunately, there wasn't a lot of protest or other difficultly when I asked Amelia to get down off the side of her Hummer and wait until someone would be available to give her a trim.

I guess this means I'll have to stop calling Amelia "Joey Ramone" and "Chrissie Hynde."

And while I've been putting off paying for haircuts, I've also been postponing making my blog updates. Most importantly, I haven't listed two new California Historical Markers.

Marker #436 is located on the edge of a park in Ripon. We often pass through Ripon on our way to and from Fresno, but this is the first time we actually exited Highway 99 to visit the town. Ripon seemed like a nice little community, and the park's playground was a fun spot for the girls to run around during the long trek through the valley.

Historical Landmark 915 is located outside a gift shop that also sells admission tickets to explore California's only petrified forest. In fact, if my memory serves me, I believe this to be one of only three petrified forests of its kind in the USA. The odd thing is I'm pretty sure I have visited a petrified forest before somewhere in either Arizona or New Mexico. I was a teenager at the time and not especially excited about the trees of stone, but I do remember my trip to the "Old Country" (Oklahoma) as a pretty memorable adventure overall.

I do wonder how much the girls will remember about all of these excursions into and around California. If they forget a lot of what we have seen together, will they look back through the photographs of all of these plaques and think their mom was a bit of a nut? I guess only time will tell.

Lisa

P.S. Yes, that is Diana's coffee. She asked for some of her own when we went to Starbucks - so I got her a decaf. latte. This girl is going to be a big bundle of bad dietary habits by the time she's five if I'm not careful.