It has been awhile since I've written anything and I've been trying to stockpile stories. The weather has been nice lately so we've been spending as much time as possible outside. Luckily, for now the park is right outside our front door and there are always lots of other kids to play with. We are kind of the veterans around here for several reasons. The first is because we have been here for 6 years. That means that the law students that started when we did finished and were replaced by another cohort who will finish at the end of this year. We've outlasted two entire groups. The second is that with three children we outnumber every other family around and collectively the Rigby girls can swing any playground vote. It isn't exactly that fair because Rosy usually doesn't know what she is voting for but until she starts to say otherwise she'll stick with her sisters. And the third is that even though Rocky is one among a bunch of kids her age, she has managed to establish herself as the leader of all games (unless Aeryn or Mohamadu are around in which cases she will defer. Aeryn is 11 so it makes sense in her case but I don't know the magic spell that Mohamadu has her under. Yesterday I heard her actually say the "he is the boss." I wish I could understand his powers because she won't do a thing I ask her.) The trouble with her leading the games is that they always require a role that nobody wants to play. She firmly believes, and rightly so, that every story has a villain and she is always trying to assign it out to the smallest or sweetest kid on the playground. She'll try and tell them that it is super fun to be the zombie/vampire/dragon/stepmother and they agree until they realize that the game consists of all the other kids running away screaming when they appear. Daisy has the same instinct except that she tries to make the other little girls play the role of prince. I've tried to convince them that they can imagine a villain and/or prince but it has done little to improve the situation. Lucky thing usually around 5:30 Brandon comes home to ease the tensions a little bit. He gets to play the meanie for a few minutes. This is in stark contrast to my role which is to be the actual meanie all day.
I haven't taken any pictures of it, but on any given day there are usually at least two or three little girls who insist on wearing ballerina leotards all afternoon. I'm sure you already know that Daisy is one of them. She stands out in the crowd because even though she won't eat from a bowl or drink from a cup that isn't pink she prefers the black leotard.
This picture exists because one morning she got out of bed and insisted that she couldn't eat her breakfast until I took a picture of her and The Last Rainbow Unicorn.
Rocky wanted one too and it turned out to be just as valuable because it was the final photo with her baby bottom teeth. Spoiler Alert! Now you know what is missing.
The dentist had to pull them because the baby teeth were growing in behind. We have the sweetest dentist and she was really excited but she also got a little bit woozy on the way home.
I wasn't sure what I should write about the next picture so I asked Rocky if she had any ideas. She said, "Umm...let's just say, yes."
For those of you who have been wondering, Rocky's restaurant, Chef Cuzine, is still up and running. When the weather is nice they open up the verandah and serve seaweed al fresco.
As you can see, business is booming.
Daisy is very specific when she has her photo taken. This one was with Pinkalicious Girl Pig and she made me take a second one because she forgot her scarf in the first.
The Baby Dragon is still up to her crazy ways. She never stops. She is constantly in attack mode and is as shrewd as she is stubborn. She is independent and quiet which means she often goes off the radar. One second she'll be happily working on a puzzle and I'll turn my head for a second and she'll be brushing her teeth with my toothbrush or pouring out a box of uncooked pasta. I'm pretty sure she found this cracker underneath the fridge but I was just relieved that she was standing still for a second.
All I can say is that she'd be in big trouble if she wasn't so cute.
I don't know if you guys know this or not but once in awhile I actually leave my house and associate with people who aren't my children. Last Friday was one of those moments. I went with my Hot Mamma friends and we had a night in downtown Eugene. Sarah found a Groupon for one of those ghost tours. I've seen advertisements for them in other cities but never before in Eugene.
The tour was a complete wash except for the fact that the ridiculousness of it made it extremely fun. It turns out that the reason nobody ever did a ghost tour around here is that there aren't any ghosts. The girl who led it was like 19 and mostly told us about serial killers from other places. We were walking around pretty lively streets with sticks that were meant to help us commune with spirits. The sticks were made of wire clothes hangars and pipe. We each had two and if you held them up they were supposed to sense the electromagnetic energy in the air. Just picture it...a bunch of giggly moms walking around with these sticks. Oh and there was one battery operated sensor that would light up and beep if you were around a ghost. The girl leading us had no theatrical skills and told us about people being brutally murdered with a smile on her face and a nervous laugh.
At one point she said, "Just imagine you were walking down this alley and you found an arm. Wouldn't that be weird? Now imagine that you were walking down another alley on the other side of Eugene and you found a body that didn't have an arm. Don't you think that would be gross? I'm not going to say that something like that happened in this alley, but I'm not going to say that something like that didn't happen in this alley."
Then later on in the tour we went into another alley and Abbey said that a murder had happened there. Our guide's eyes got really big and she asked, "Are you sensing something?"
Abbey said, "No, I read about it in the newspaper."
That was the closest that we got to any ghosts. There was a mention of a haunted house. This is the info we got, "I heard that place was haunted and I emailed them and they sent back a really defensive letter that said it was most definitely NOT haunted and then I knew that it had to be because they were like SO defensive."
It was the best. I am still laughing about it.
It was especially good because I love the ladies I was with. It was also a notable night because on the way home Abbey used her phone to play the grossest song I've ever heard. I won't tell you what it was because there are some things that you can't un-hear but I will say that at that moment it was kind of the cherry on top of a night of hilarity.
So what our night out was missing in the fear factor it wholly made up in laughs.
