Foto Friday: Week 38

The theme this week is TRAVEL. 

Every now and then I peruse blogs of friends who are traveling. Or blogs of people I will never meet, who rave about their latest trip to who knows where and how it was so fabulously out-of-this-world.

...and it all sounds so lovely. 

But my life is solidly grounded in reality right now.

My reality, my life.

Which doesn't include much travel. At all.

So once again... I compensate.

 Last week I found two maps at the thrift store for a dollar a piece. 

They were huge: one of the world, one of the United States. 

I put the United States in The Pirates' room and then marked with little blue hearts, all the places we have lived. We look at it all the time.

I put the world map in our office.  It helps when I read the news.

And it's great inspiration for our someday.

Hilary

Rosemary

Kristyn

Meg

Robs' birthday is halfway through the summer- and she'll be starting a new school in the fall so we decided to throw an early birthday party with her school friends. But last week was busy- and this week has been too. I generously topped the invite list at three school friends and three other than school friends.

So she took three invites to school and quietly put them in three cubbies.

And then apparently all heckity-heck broke loose.

One of our sweet little invitees told all the other girls in the class about Robs' party-

and several of those girls cornered Robs and asked why they hadn't been invited. 

(Which I thought was perhaps a little bold.)

My oldest pirate told them the truth: that her mother didn't want that many girls in the house.

I was proud- seeing as I'm not sure I would have thought to say that.

And then I hopped on the train headed for a nervous breakdown.

I doubted my decision to top the party at six.

I had visions of Robs being bullied.

I went through sixteen different scenarios in twenty little seconds...

And then realized I was crazy. 

Because if I'd invited all 20,000 people then most likely I'd be trying to figure out what the heckity-heck I'd do with 20,000 people.

I told Robs I was proud of her for being honest.

And then we went outside to play.

Honesty and simplicity are such beautiful little inventions.

Graduation.

Robs has been singing a song about "Grandma's Featherbed" for weeks, 

and yesterday we finally got to hear the live performance.

A KINDERGARTEN FINALE!

They sang songs about Chicken Little too... 

and recited poems about being nice to each other and choosing good friends.

It was darling.

And then they walked across the stage and shook Principal Huxton's hand. 

Robs had been talking about shaking his hand for weeks too... 

and how she wasn't going to be scared. 

And she wasn't.

She was pretty excited though. 

We had a whole assortment of family come to watch. 

(We're completely spoiled with family- and I don't think I'll ever get over it.)

Robs basked in all the attention- and it made my 

ancient "Mother-of-almost-a-first-grader-heart" pretty happy.

Congratulations Robs!

Campout.

On Friday Steve and Enriqueboy went on their very first campout. Ever. 

Steve has been waiting on this one since FOREVER. 

It went well. 

Enriqueboy fell asleep in Steve's arms as they were sitting around a campfire- and then Steve had to call it a night too.  Which I think is darling. 

They're quite the duo... that li'l father and son.  

Robs, Squish and I stayed home. My sisters came over for a Girl's Night. We had big plans that boiled down to dinner and A Little Princess, the movie. We bawled our eyes out at the end of the movie. Like we always do. 

The next morning Steve and Enriqueboy were home by 9:00 a.m. and we swapped stories.  Enriqueboy and Robs compared stories on how late they got to stay up- and we talked about how the next camping trip would be with all of us. 

And how the next bawl-your-eyes-out movie would probably be next year. Same time.

twenty-one and twenty-one

On Thursday we had a party. 

(A wild party with wiffle balls and turkey sandwiches.) And cake. Especially cake.

Jen had asked for a white cake. Shelle had asked for an ice cream cake. 

I had them close their eyes for the great once-in-a-lifetime reveal...

And then we sang "Happy Birthday!" while they opened their eyes to all twenty-one plus twenty-one blazing candles.

We looooove these girlies.