Around here (a month ago)

I started this post a month ago and left it in draft form, full of pictures. For my own sake I'm writing about them so I remember these moments in time. 

Here's Laine, waiting in the hall for parent/teacher conference to start. She's even smarter than those glasses make her look. Her teachers had a lot of wonderful things to say about her work. She's a joy. Sommer's conference was right after Laine's. She had to bring a list of three goals that we figured out at home together. For her social goal she put something like, find a friend to play with at recess. As we were talking about this I started crying. The teacher, an amazing woman who has been teaching for decades, said that she wasn't aware and that having a friend at recess is important and together we figured out how to find a friend for Sommer to play with. It was all very sweet and made me feel better, though really, I shouldn't have been crying in the first place. Sheesh. 

At a nearby park the volleyball court is covered with mounds of sand that was never distributed. Of course this is Massimo's favorite spot, forget about the playground.

Cannon earned some awards at pack meeting. I think I mostly took this picture to show his height in relation to the other boys in Webelos with him and to the scoutmaster. As Eric always says, "he's growing like a weed." At the rate he's going he might outgrow me by next year. Yikes!

We brought friends to the park with us on one of our last gorgeous fall days. I love this picture because it captures a moment in time of everyone playing together, the start of a game, the joy of being with friends. It just makes me happy. 

At the Gap I often dress mannequins. (Have I already blogged about this?) Finding their outfits isn't hard because the company sends pictures of how they want them dressed and styled and positioned, taking most of the creativity out of the process. Lots of times substitutions have to be made so there is a little thinking involved but it isn't rocket science. Last month, the clothes to make up the outfits that the toddler girls were supposed to be wearing didn't come in time for our window change. I got to pull outfits from the new stock without having to rely on pictures or style numbers. Still not rocket science but it was a lot more fun for me to use more creativity in the process.