Weekly Quote 9/30/11

"J'ai faim! J'ai faim! J'ai faim! J'ai faim!"

This was from L'Argent de Poche, or Small Change, a movie I watched a thousand years ago in high school french class. There was this awesome scene where the parents left this little girl at home while they went out (maybe to a restaurant? Like I said, it's been a while since I've seen this) because she was being a brat about it. Instead of going hungry like her parents intended, she pulls out a megaphone and shouts "J'ai faim! (I'm hungry!)" out the window. The neighbors all feel bad for her and send food on the clothesline. It's hilarious. Maybe my description is poor. Or my memory is bad. I noticed it's available to stream on Netflix, so maybe I'll watch it again one of these days. You should, too.

New quote up!

Sold!

We closed on the sale of our house today.

How do I feel about it? Awesome! And sad. But happy to be done! But really depressed when I think about the dollar amount we took to the table. Holy smokes, that's a lot of money. And then when you factor in the amount we had in equity. . . wow. We lost big. But, that wasn't a surprise. We knew it would be this way. Clark has compared it to waiting for someone to punch you in the stomach, and when they finally do, it still hurts, but at least you aren't waiting anymore. It's just over and done with and you can move on. So, it's time to move on.

Speaking of moving on, I suppose it's time I update ye olde blog header. No longer is this blog about the adventures of a St Georgian. It's all Michigan now, baby!

And before you ask, let me tell you that it's going to take quite a long time for us to recover from this mis-adventure in real estate. A very. long. time. We won't be buying a home for, oh, years. But we are finally moving forward instead of standing still!

Big Bike

I don't think it was mentioned on the blog, but Julia's trike was a casualty of the move. We moved to Michigan in November, when it was much too cold to be out biking. Then we hunkered down for the winter and let all the boxes in our garage sit in our garage untouched. Come spring, we decided to look for the trike. It was no where to be found. I don't know who was more heartbroken, me or Julia. OK, that's a lie, Julia was BY FAR the most upset about it. Near as I can tell, it made it onto the truck, but not off of the truck. Or it came off the truck in Missouri instead of Michigan. But since it was so long after the fact that we finally figured it out, there wasn't anything we could do.

Except for buy a new bike! A two-wheeler this time. With training wheels, of course. When we first got the bike for Julia, she couldn't pedal or steer. Those things are kind of essential to bike riding, in case you didn't know. So we worked on pedaling. And then steering. And now, we've got a bike riding fiend!

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But we do have to tell her to watch out for drains. She'll ride right down the slope to the drain and then never make it out. And she does need a push to start. But the progress! It's astounding!

And now, winter shall commence and bike riding will cease. Sigh.

I'm on the phone, Mom!

Ell has been obsessed with the phone lately. Anything with buttons is immediately pressed to her cheek as she says, "Hi!" And when she is granted the rare privilege of playing with my phone, or better yet, actually calling someone? Oh, wow, it's like Christmas.

Of course, she doesn't see my phone as a rare privilege. She sees it as her God-given right. She is, and always has been, entitled to access to my phone. Any time she wants. Even if Mom is already talking on it.

I'm trying to limit our phone time (who thought I'd be saying that already?).

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First Day of School

This girl has been excited about preschool for months.

MONTHS, I tell you!

Today, the first day of school finally came. Julia woke up this morning and said, "Today's the big day. I am going to go to school! And I'm going to play, and eat a snack, and do art projects, and then you'll come pick me up." And that's about how it went. Her favorite toy? The hair station (a mini-salon). And the dolls.

No tears here. Just a happy Julia!


And while I'm talking about my firstborn, let me fill you in on a little something. The child is learning to read. We were sitting at a stoplight on the way to school, and from the backseat she says, "No. Turn. That sign says no turn, Mom!" The sign did, indeed, say no turn. She picks things up fast, this one. And, she has taken to checking out non-fiction books from the library. Last week was penguins, this week we've got a book about spiders. You should ask her about penguins or spiders, sometime. The stuff she has learned is incredible!