Chore Girl

Even though we haven't talked about Santa with Evie, she's leading us to believe that maybe the whole naughty-nice thing is somehow inborn. It seems right after Thanksgiving, after the tree went up and the nativity scene appeared again on the mantel, Evie June took a serious interest in housework. Witness below.



She's also really into carrying her dishes to the sink--though one of us has to be there to spot them as she slides them up onto the counter. And she loves tossing things into the toilet, unfortunately what she throws in is rarely toilet paper. She loves to help, but even if she didn't she'd still be on our nice list all year.

Jen

PS: Her helping extended to stacking and sorting these! They're my Advanced Reader Copies for my novel. Even though the book isn't out until May, they print up these paperbacks to send out for reviews. Pretty fun!

Just One of the Boys

Evie and I returned last night from five days at my sister's house in Alabama. Now I'm deep in laundry, staring at an empty fridge and fretting about other work that I pretended didn't matter for the last five days.

Which is why I'm blogging now.

We had a fabulous time, but if the getaway has a theme, its probably that Evie June spent a lot of time embracing her inner tomboy. I've never seen the girl climb more, flip around more, or scratch herself in odd places as much as she did while hanging with cousins Logan, Harrison and Hayden. And I loved every moment of it.

Here, Logan uses Howard to demonstrate the right way to go down the slide--upside down and backward. Evie progressed to the unassisted belly slide thanks to Logan's instruction.


Evie learns the finer points of lounging around in front of a football game with her Uncle Derry.


And why just play with NASCAR hotwheels when you can read about them too?


But perhaps the best lesson Evie learned from cousin Hayden (other than how to drive your parents crazy by giggling in the dark way past your bedtime because you're sharing a room) was the importance of maintaining a secret identity when facing bad guys.






Jen

Treat!

"We need a scarecrow," Angie said to me a month ago.
"Pardon me?"
"For our costumes for Halloween. We need a scarecrow. Evie's our scarecrow," she explained.

Our dear friend Angie is not a person you want to say no to very often. Its always more fun if we just go along with her ideas. Evie was certainly happy to oblige.


She even left the hood on most of the night. Her main concession was that George be allowed to come along. But for that he needed a costume.


We didn't think about making him a flying monkey until later. Either way, Evie kept a tighter grip on him than she did on her treat bag. Here she makes good time between houses to increase mommy's (er, I mean her) haul.


After our rounds, we headed to a harvest party at our church. Evie tried to swim in the duck pond, wouldn't cake-walk, and Jimmy wouldn't let her root around in the big pile of hay for candy. Mainly because I was already in allergy mode and needed to come home and enjoy some little pink lovelies I like to call Benadryl. We stayed just long enough to snap a group photo. Evie's companion's on the yellow brick road are her "like-cousins" Peyton and Logan as Dorothy and the Tinman, and their real cousin Gus as the Lion. Then there's Angie as the wicked witch (all the more reason to agree to her plans!), Troy as a Munchkin, Kim as the good witch, Cassie as Aunt Em, and Jimmy as the mayor of Oz and me as the Great and Terrible (and sneezy) Oz himself. Except people didn't know what I was when we were out trick or treating. Out of context, I have to admit I looked more like a sloppy cabaret singer than anything.

Jen