Mommy's season opener

Today, the family and I got to see our first baseball game of the season. (Well, technically Mike's second ballgame this year.)

Oakland did not win (the game wasn't even close) but we all had a lot of fun.

After the game, Amelia and Diana told us their personal highlights of the day. Amelia loved singing "Take me out to the Ballgame" and the new and improved scoreboard dot races ("chip racing").

Diana's favorite thing was, of course, the cotton candy. And while I'm not normally a huge fan of cotton candy (Amelia passed all together) the four-color, four-flavor cotton candy at the game was pretty darn good. And while I wish Oakland had won the only game I'm likely to see in person all year, I was very happy that we went and I had a wonderful time with Mike and the girls.

Lisa

Disappointment

Things have been going well. Diana is going to school part time, and she loves it. Still, she was a little disappointed when the teacher asked her what song she wanted to sing, then didn't know the words to her favorite Disney song. Why Diana's teacher hasn't bothered to learn every song in the animated version of Hercules is beyond me.

Amelia and Diana were both disappointed when they missed an opportunity to throw a coin into a hollow stump and make a wish. You see, while riding a small train through a local park the train conductor announced the arrival of the "lucky tree" too late for mom to hand coins out to her daughters. Still, I did have the chance to toss one in myself with a swift throw over my shoulder.

When the train stopped, and the girls began complaining that they hadn't made their wish, I happily offered my lucky wish to the two of them. Amelia said that she wanted to use my lucky coin to wish for a new teddy bear. Diana, following her sister's lead, asked for the same thing.

Oddly enough, a few days later I was told that Amelia would need a stuffed teddy bear for class. Apparently students graduating kindergarten and pre-kindergarten normally bring home-made bears and collect signatures from fellow students as a graduation memento. I knew that the girls wanted new teddy bears, and my sewing machine was already up and running, so I agreed to make bears right away.

We got our bear pattern from school (a silhouette cut from a cereal box) and went straight to our local fabric store. Amelia chose a pink floral pattern and raspberry pink buttons for her bear. Diana wanted blue fabric with white polka dots (which I thought was okay, since her class wouldn't be signing the bear).

Amelia was excited to watch every step of the bear-making process. With dad's help, Amelia and Diana even stuffed the bear. Amelia wanted to bring her bear to Target and to lunch before I had a chance to sew her little stuffing hole. I finished the bear in the car, worried that she would lose all of her stuffing the first day if I didn't finish quickly.

Amelia's bear looks kind of funny and simplistic to me. The bear's legs are long and spindly and, like Hank Hill, the bear has no butt - no butt at all! But Amelia thinks her bear is great and loves the fact that we made it ourselves. In fact, if you ask her, she'll tell you that she made the bear.

Tonight, Diana's bear is almost complete. I will finish sewing the red, white, and blue bear tomorrow - hopefully before anyone loves the stuffing out of it.

Lisa

So who's the fool now?

I left Diana alone for a moment, and she painted her face. Don't I feel foolish?

Reminds me of something Amelia said to me this morning, "I'm sneaky, but I'm still pretty nice." Both of the girls can be sneaky, but we love them just the same.

I haven't been blogging much, because I have been worn out every evening. Many nights I stay up to complete online training for my part-time job. The training is mind-numbingly dull and drains me of my will to live. This is not the best mindset to have when I would approach the blog, which is supposed to be happy and friendly. BUT I'm pretty sure I have all of my really important online work finished, so I'd like to welcome my brain and my smile back and give a shout out to all my peeps in the world of Internet blogging.

Now for the news: The weather has been beautiful. However, the warm sunshine and spring flowers have driven my family indoors. If you can't fathom why lovely spring weather would be avoided, check out the pollen count data for Northern California on weather dotcom.

And speaking of numbers, some of you know that I have undertaken a quilting project. For those of you unaware of my domestic undertaking, I have undertaken a quilting project.

So now you know.

Weeks ago I found myself beaming with pride because I had completed the required 108 squares needed to assemble my daughter's twin size bed quilt. But as I began to piece the quilt together, I found that I kept running out of specific colored squares. Beginning to feel a tad frustrated, I took out a pen and paper and calculated the actual number of squares needed to complete my first, fairly basic, fence rail quilt. I came up with 186.

After taking my first quilting class I realized that quilting required a lot of intelligence and skill in areas such as geometry and math. Apparently, the author of my quilting book missed the math section, somehow. Still, the book I'm using is a good one and I'm willing to sit down and sew another 78 fence rail blocks if that's what it takes to get the job done.

Lisa