I Love Fridays!

Avee learned about teeth this week. Holy moly! She is on fire about keeping her teeth clean and eating healthy. She's always been an excellent brusher, but now she's going after those "little bugs that hide" armed with floss and a mission.

Bo brought home bags of popcorn that the older kids at school sold for Haiti. Avee held her bag up and asked, "Is popcorn hellfee? Oh yeah, it is. There's nothing on it. If there's stuff on it, then it's not as hellfee."

From the bathroom Bo replies, "Well, that's true. But everything tastes better when you put unhealthy stuff on it."

Dang that's funny.

I had Avee's parent-teacher conference at preschool. I love those conferences. There was one drawback though. I hadn't eaten all morning because I went straight to the grocery store and from there to get Aves and after feeding her lunch, took her to her afternoon preschool, then rushed Bo's forgotten lunch to him just as he was walking into the cafeteria, then zipped over to Avee's conference. I did grab an apple though. Well, Me+Empty Stomach+Running Around+Fibrous Fruit = Not Pretty.

Halfway through the conference I started praying for all parties involved. It made for a less than enjoyable experience for me, but I can say that we all made it out alive. So, that's good.

TMI? Yes, I think so.

Anyway. I made the comment, "Aside from the very poor practice of comparing your children, I am pretty sure this conference is going to go differently than Bo's, two years ago."

Avee's teacher looked at me kind of funny and said, "I don't remember a lot, but I do remember Bo being quite smart and doing very well on the evaluations."

That's when I kind of looked at her funny.

Of course I think Avee's smart. But she does what she wants, when she wants. And that has left 13 and 14 interchangeable, the letter J left out of the alphabet and "shiny" rhyming with "cloud".

Her feedback form was almost identical to Bo's. Probably a few more notes of "and then some!" or "and backwards!" even. When the teacher pointed to the part about rhyming and how Avee scored perfectly and also made up her own rhyming words, I asked her to repeat it. It wasn't even 2 months ago that I had a crazy an unproductive conversation about rhyming words. And now she's setting the curve? Seriously.

It's me. I make my kids think, "You're on my toe" is just one of those things people say, and that counting in order is optional. It has to be me.

In other news...
I have no other news, but I feel compelled to write more.

Recently I moved to a cash only system for budgeting purposes. It's done a few things. It's made me very aware of how much I nickel and dime with a debit card. It's removed all motivation to go to the store to "grab a couple of things", and I usually end up spending $70. I realize that I have to get the money out of the envelope, I have to be sure it's enough, I have to make sure it won't leave me high and dry for the rest of the week....it's been very good. So far. I started yesterday. Just kidding.

I also wanted to grab a hamburger at McD's for Avee, her friend, and Daniel so that I could have time to put away the groceries and change my clothes before I had to run them to their other school. I really had to stop and weigh the pros and cons because I had to think of what envelope it would come from and if it was worth the $4.78 in cash I'd be paying.

It's just insane to me that I would have swiped the card for $13.78 without batting an eye, but making it tangible cash has made a difference.

It was totally worth the $4.78 by the way. And it came from my "Incidentals" envelope. If you were wondering.

I'm so glad I didn't stop writing earlier....