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Bee starts ballet class tomorrow and here she and frankie are practicing! Frankie is ready for modern jazz I think! On other fronts our garden is doing pretty well. Our tomatoes have tons of flowers and our eggplants are about a foot tall (not the eggplant itself, just the plant!). I think a rabbit is eating our basil, but the oregano is going strong, and same with the chives. (I will admit our neighbor gave us the chives and oregano and all I had to do was transplant them!). Its our italian garden.

Just as an aside, I learned today (from my mom) that for a girl, if you double the height at 2 years old you get the approximate adult height. Frankie measured in at 32.5 inches, which would make her 5’5″ as an adult. that is exactly my height! weird! I just looked up Bee’s height at 2 years and she was 35 inches… so i dunno that makes her 5’10″….. that would be from the barton side I would guess!!

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Happy Birthday Frankie!!! Scott and I keep saying I cant believe Frankie is already two at the same time we keep saying, she feels like she has been 2 for about 6 months now! Go Frankie! Frankie had a really nice birthday! We gave her a choice of pizza or fishies and frenchfries for supper and she picked the fishies and frenchfries. After we went out for that we took a family ride to owasso and stopped at the “king kone” for icecream, and then came home for cake! We made this cake from scratch, but because I only wanted to make a small cake, we used our camping bowls for cake pans, so the layers are a little thin!

>frankie’s been vomiting with explosive diarrhea
bee’s hangnail got infected
markie crapped on the floor (again)
scott left for nyc for work for a few days

Calgon take me away…

But seriously, since I was home from work today, Bee and I made peanutbutter cookies with bittersweet dark chocolate chunks and they turned awesome.

On other news, the crabbies are loving their new sand and conch shell, and the flowers Frankie and I planted are growing like crazy – just call her green thumb! Im gonna take (or give) markie a summer buzz cut (pictures promised!), and after literally 10 loads of laundry we are caught up!! (no one can change their clothes now for a week!).

And now, our sweetie bee. She handed me the camera and asked me to take a picture of her. this is how she posed!

>they are renovating the 3rd floor of erickson hall (where my office is), and Im sitting here trying to get some work done and all i can here are the middle age men banging things and talking really loud. Then all of the sudden one of them broke out in the Sound of Music “The Hills are Alive with the sound of music…”. I have to say that was pretty funny!

>this weekend a friend of ours had a miscarraige and had to spend 12 hours in the ER. When Bee heard scott and me talking about it, she came to ask me if we could make brownies for our friend and take them to her to help cheer her up. I thought it was really nice that she immediately thought about how to help her. Im really proud of Bee and the young girl she is growing into!

>The hermit crab experts say that you should let your hermit crab out of the terrarium once a week so that they can get lots of exercise. I can appreciate that. So last night franks and I put the crabbies out on the library floor and Cho Cho was off. that crab did a few laps of the room, tailed closely by Frankie. Im not sure who was having more fun, Cho Cho or Frankie. I actually think that Cho Cho and Franks were communicating with each other. Balla just sort of sat there, and took the whole thing in. she crawled a few steps, but seemed to appreciate the view her freedom allowed more than anything else. We then gave them a good dunk, some crabbie food, and set them up in separate coconut shells on either end of the tank. this morning, I found them snoozing together in Balla’s pad.

>We went to our neice’s track meet yesterday and right before her race (the 3200m) they called the meet due to impending severe weather: Parents report to your cars. Students report to the locker rooms. So we went to our car and turned on the radio and they were forecasting a severe thunderstorm with winds over 70 mph and hail. We live only 20 miles away so we thought we would just go home. We were driving home and the rain was coming down hard but it wasnt as bad as predicted. Until we hit east lansing. Holy cow, I felt like Jim Cantore on the weather channel driving through a hurricane. the rain and wind was so hard – the trees were blowing sideways and you couldnt even see in front of you. Frankie was screaming/crying at the top of her lungs “NO MORE CAR WASH pleeeeeeeeaaaaaasssseeeeee”. Poor thing. It was hilarious, except she was crying and scared. Of course it didnt help that Scott, as he was driving, was saying, we have to watch out for falling trees! Honestly, we had not seen a storm like that since Texas. Needless to say we didnt finish putting in the garden last night!

> Here are my garden helpers! Yesterday night we were transplanting our tomatoe and eggplant seedlings into the garden. Bee was helping me dig holes in the ground and all by herself, starting gently putting the plants into the earth and covering them with the soil. She is such a caring, gentle person. Frankie was sitting in the soil, playing with whatever creepy crawlies she could find. She was screaming in ecstasy when she realized the worm she had grabbed was moving in her hand! After we finish the garden tonight or tomorrow (depending upon the weather) we will take some pictures! And for the heck of it, here is my movie star!

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so we took a vote and fire hydrant red won for koompa’s nails. We got three done and she had enough and got up. we tried to follow her with the polish but she kept running away! Poor gal!

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