Doesn't that just say it all?

Well, we all survived the first day of school. Romy LOVED it and has nothing but good things to say about her teacher, the other kids and all the things they've done so far. She cried again when I picked her up from daycare (aren't kids supposed to hate daycare?) but perked right up when I said it was time for school. Anything but home with mom, I suppose. haha.

Polly still likes me, though -- as long as I let her play "Dougie's computer" the whole time. She's figured out how to work the mouse and she's unstoppable. As for the computer thing, I think I could paint that thing hot pink and carve my name all over it and the girls would still call it that. Considering his generousity, though, I don't mind, but it still sounds funny. They think the whole world calls him (my sister's husband) Dougie but in reality it's only the name of a character he uses in some video game or other. Nevertheless, when a nickname sticks...

So it looks like only I am traumatized by Kindergarten. Today she just had me drop her off and she walked into the schoolyard all by herself and joined the other kids on the playground. It was a little too weird. A lady at work was joking about what she called "helicopter moms" (they hover, get it?) taking their kids into class every day and helping them into their chairs. I don't want to be like that, but still, as soon as she saw the open gate it was like ~~ZING~~"Oh yeah, bye mom."

Sorry, we sort of dropped off the earth there for a while! We all passed around one monster of a flu -- thanks, Jill ;) -- and are just now getting back to our normal lives. Actually "normal" is sort of relative there. Romy starts Kindergarten today. Yeah, I know. Crazy. But it's worse cause I was going to handle this really well and not freak out at all but now they want to put her right into first grade and I'm officially freaking out. SHE'S SO LITTLE!!!!!! And first grade is ALL DAY LONG!!!!!!!

OK, that said, things are good. It's nice to have everyone healthy again. Even though we had a pretty huge bummer of a weekend it's a relief to sleep again at night and even to get back to work and regular, comfortable life stuff.

Anyway, keep your fingers crossed for me. She starts today still in Kindergarten and I drop her off at 12:15. I'm going to try really hard not to cry, cause Polly will be with me and will tell EVERYBODY!!!! :)

Here are our girls with Jill's twins having a little pizza while they were here for a visit. This is about as much as we saw the kids ourselves -- hard to compete with Pokemon Nintendo games :) But it was really great to see the kids all together again and SO HUGE!!!! Romy, Connor and Aylish all start Kindergarten in a week or two and the babies are no longer babies. Below is a picture of Cayden, their baby, already walking and climbing like a true Chatterley kid, and we were thrilled to finally get to meet him.

Anyway, big kisses to Jill and Clark and good luck on the loooooong drive back to California!!!

OK, I've fixed this thing so now anyone can leave comments. You don't have to have a blog or get approved or have any sort of special permission or anything to leave me a message. And you should. It would make my day. :)

This is from a picture Romy drew for one of her friends at daycare. There's actually a whole page of these people she calls "the big hairs," but the happening dude in the yellow was too cool not to share!!

So not much to report today, just a quick hi to anyone who might drop by. I'm at work right now trying to get going on a new project even though I'm not entirely awake yet. I've got a huge pile of text to animate that's full of mixed metaphors and overly complicated graphics suggestions. Like "Create a graphic for this which shows two people sharing their feelings." Yikes. The favorite of those, though, around here was we had a writer ask for a graphic of "a young boy being compromised." It was supposed to be by another young boy and she was trying to keep it vague on purpose so it would be easier on us and everything, but yeah, maybe that wasn't the best way to phrase it! :)

As far as updates for the day go I took the girls out with Susie and their cousins to see the world's worst movie ever made. It was Baby Geniuses the Sequel, and before you make fun, we buy a whole season's worth of tickets at the beginning of the summer and it's sort of more of an event than a "Hey, let's go watch that really cool movie where the babies talk and have super powers!" type of thing. So anyway, Jon Voight, if you're reading this, and I think we all know you are, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?????!?!?!??!

So here's Romy modeling the Pokemon blouse I made for her. If her smile looks a little forced, that's my fault. I had to take like 20 pictures to get Polly to look at me instead of at Romy. I posted the one and only shot of that on the Village Photos site in case you want to see that, but here you see the shirt. Can't have it all, I guess, at least not all at the same time. :)

Taking the new blog out for a test drive here. Anyway, hello to you all, and just a quick tour of things here. I've got links to the right which lead you to some pictures -- mostly house pictures and odds-and-ends things on the Village Photos link, and the family site link is the very neglected family site I've had up for years now. It's still the same old Christmas picture, so don't bother with that unless you really like that picture and the same old graphics as before. :)

But here's to hoping I keep this one more current since I've been terrible about writing to people.

So anyway, hello and goodbye, and drop in again sometime. --Jenny