As my daughter likes to say, "Whew-fta!"

Now we have located our camera battery, only to find the charger has gone missing! As Kaisa likes to say, "It's disappeared!" Everything lately, from her stuffed doggy to Olivia, has "disappeared." Oh, woe is me! I guess I will just have to be descriptive to draw the picture that I am unable to take.

My three-year-old and I have taken to tea parties every afternoon. And we have fun. We send the last school girl out the door at 11:10a.m., potty the dogs, tuck the baby in for a nap, and we settle in for a candle light, fancy ol' tea party in the kitchen...minus the tea...and minus the fancy, actually. Except for today there was green tea for me. On the menu today was, green tea for me, apple cranberry juice for her, buttered wheat toast, and steamed fiesta vegetables. I liked it. She was a little leery about the veggies. First, she was keenly interested when she saw the kidney beans and thought they were jelly beans. Then she tasted them. Then gave em to me! Needless to say, with such of a skimpy tea, we had to add more food within a few minutes of its completion. For me, a 3 Muskateers bar. For her, peanut butter/honey on potato bread toast, and more juice. For this week our house has become exceptionally messy. What we do then, to escape having to look at it, we avoid the dining room table. We clear this old butcher block cupboard we have in the middle of the kitchen for a center island (for now. We move it back and forth, for variety's sake, as it so moves us, from under the bay window in the kitchen to the center of the kitchen as a center island), wipe it shiny-clean, and lay out our spread. It usually takes about 1.5 minutes and we're set! I've taken to drawing lately (I've been blessed with too many inspirations lately..first the home care business, then the ideas for a kids' book finally materializing after years of bubbling on the back burner of my mind...I even had the title, just wasn't sure of how I was going to write it...now suddenly I've rediscovered my passion for drawing and would love to illustrate my own book...which, I might add, will probably take me years to actually complete, and I'm perfectly content for it to be that way). Kaisa tells me to draw friends for her (poor deprived girl...she has to be by herself with no siblings to fight with for a couple hours every day) and we chat and chat and chat! I've discovered that she is a very, very tenderhearted little girl, despite the fact she has been driving me insane since the baby was born with her sudden demanding ways. I've really come to enjoy her and her very, very good sense of humor and bubbly belly laugh! We ignore the phone (unless it's Joni, my hubby Eric, or Becky...or my sister Kaisa or friend Eija...maybe, maybe if it's someone else...for the most part we let it go). We ignore the dogs...we usually have one at each doorway, staring at us eating as dogs tend to do. And Kaisa has learned to ask for "dinner" along with our tea party.

So has been our life in our busy little household of 8 people, 2 dogs and a telephone (to connect with those that we aren't already tripping over)!

And now, off to "window shop" into other people's blogs to catch up!