life in these parts

life is moving along at a fast clip around our house. i don't know how you other mothers feel now that school has started, but i feel like our little world has just sped up. elise is loving kindergarden which makes us all happy. i love going to pick her up every afternoon and see her little self standing outside waiting with her little backpack on. she looks so small and yet so grown up all at the same time. mostly, sending her off hasn't been as sad as i thought it would be. not that i don't miss it, but she loves school & seems to enjoy her time there. and ian & gracie and i have fun at home. but i have moments where it hits me. on friday i just sat down on the floor in merry grace's room with she and ian and felt all blue that elise wasn't there, too. i just wanted to hug her. but when i start pondering on it too much it makes me too melancholy. and that's no fun. so i just try to enjoy the goodness of it.

we went to the ice cream place after school on friday & had a blast. we all branched out (well, except for ian) and tried some new flavors. elise got a scoop of cookies and cream and a scoop of banana pudding. cory got blueberry and i got a scoop each of cake batter & pumpkin pie. ian went with his staple of cotten candy. its actually a pale blue color, but its borderline green and he calls it green which is his favorite color. so that's all he'll eat. (we kind of tricked him into this because he wanted the mint chocolate chip b/c it was green, but he didn't like the sample. so we conned him into the cotten candy....) anyway, it was lots of fun.

then we bought a movie off of cable, the chronicles of narnia. i thought it was great, really well done. i thought it was a little grown-up, though. ian was a little nervous about it before he fell asleep, as was elise, although not as much as ian. and they typically don't get scared by stuff like that. i think some of it was that we had all the lights off and the music was intense. the mood really affected how you felt about what was happening. even i jumped a time of two. cory made his famous homemade popcorn (mainly for elise who loves it when he does that.) it was a fun night. plus, elise came and slept in our bed last night which i loved. its such a sweet snuggly thing & i miss her doing that. so i was glad she wandered in.

cory went to the unc vs. VA tech game which his heels lost. but he had fun. any UNC game is fun for him. i spent the day "boring organizing" as elise put it. i've been cleaning, throwing out, and straigtening up our closets. i've finished elise's and gracie's and am about 90% done with mine. it feels so good to have it neat and in order. i love it.

after cory came home, we went out in the yard and played for a while. elise practiced cartwheels, ian rode the tricycle, we jumped on the trampoline, played on the swingset, and even did a little tball and kickball before heading inside for baths. elise also went across the monkey bars all by herself several times & was quite pleased with herself. as well she should be!!!

so life is going fast, but we're happy and loving it. so you can't ask for much else.