Summer Sales

The ony good thing about the end of summer is the sales.

Here are my recent scores:

J.crew dress that I have been eyeballing for months I maanged to score it on clearance with an additional 40% off.  It makes me irrationally giddy.  I adore a well made dress

I saw these cute little shorts in the Anthropologie catalog back in April for $49! I became obssessed with trying to find something simailar at a cheaper price.  Luckily for me I scored them on the clearance rack. The best feature are the cute wooden buttons near each leg opening.

I lost a decent amount of stomach weight this summer. I owe my weight lose entirely on the ten minuite hula hoop excercise on Wii fit. I'm not kidding, I'm lazy enough to resort to using a video game to get in shape. In my search for a flattering bikini that would mask my problem areas I found this Kenneth Cole one at Macy's.  The skirted bottom draws attention away from the stomach and it has great mom butt coverage.  At it's sale price for $21.99 for the top and additional $21.99 for the bottom I had to pass on it until I saw marked down to nearly nothing a month later ($9 for top and bottom).  Mine is Teal and I will need to do a lot more than wii fit to look as good in it as the model does.

 

Sweet, Sweet, Summer

Bela, our little old lady, happy as can be at Mission trails

Nick, our neighbor, and Andrew, aka Tom and Huck

Our new rope swing that it is getting a ton of use by our family and all the kids in the neighborhood.

Andrew being Andrew

Amelia adores Andrew and he loves her right back

Wannabe Mormons

Tonight Andrew had his bud Jackson spend the night. While playing ping pong the boys lobbed a ball over our neighbor's fence.  It didn't appear to be a big deal.  We have a zillion more.  Apparently they thought it was a bigger deal than I did.

A few minutes later Andrew came inside wanting to know if we had a Mormon bible.  Despite the fact that we are not Mormon, randomly, we do.  A short time later Amelia and Jackson came down the stairs dressed like this:

After nearly dying of laughter I got them to explain why they looked like Mormon missionaries.  Apparently they hatched an elaborate scheme to distract our neighbor by knocking on his door and pretending to be Mormon missionaries.  Meanwhile Andrew would sneak into their backyard and retrieve the ping pong ball. 

I suggested that it may be easier if they just asked for it back

 "That wouldn't be as fun."

In case anyone is wondering, I didn't let them go through with it.

The Littlest One

So far my summer has been consumed by all things Amelia.  Jacob is visiting Grandma in Chicago for a few weeks and Andrew has a new best friend that lives next door, so Amelia and I have been spending lots of time together. 

Everyday Amelia comes up with creative things to do. She has a very imaginative little mind.  We have had countless tea parties, stuffed animal picnics, dress up play, treasure hunts, and lots, and lots of arts and crafts days.

A few weeks ago Amelia drew portraits of everyone in our family.  They are hilarious.  I'm the one with the messy hair on the top right. We cut them out and pasted them onto black construction paper.  She drew one of Bela as well but it tore a few days ago.
   

After a visit to Costco today Amelia constructed her own TV from the cardboard box our groceries were placed in.  She made herself into a human TV and is now insisting that we save her creation for Halloween.  I'm not sure how I feel about my child being a TV for Halloween but I have plenty of time to change her mind.