So What's A Girl To Do...

when she goes to Biggby with a bogo coupon...and she's all alone?  Yeeaahhh, you guessed it.  She buys one, she gets one free, and she drinks them both.  Hehe...I'm not a Starbucks girl, and I really missed my favorite coffee shop while I was in Muncie last week.  Combine that with the reality that I'm ready to pop some toothpicks in my eyelids while I try to finish a pressing project, and it's a coffee lover's perfect storm.  I'm pretty sure I just blew the lid off of any calorie reduction I was attempting today, but now today has run into tomorrow (or was it yesterday...I need some sleep!), and we're starting all over again.  I will try to stay away from the calories and the caffeine later in this day, but with a drive to Columbus and back in the early afternoon, I can't make promises.  :-)

Let me share a note that Alli passed to us in church last night.  I love reading "phonetic" writings, and it cracked me up to see her attempt at my name.  I'm not one to spend much time with my kids educationally before they start school (I figure there's enough time for all that in grades K-12), so she wouldn't have had a clue how to spell "Stephanie." 

She is so much fun right now because she is willing to try anything.  She's always pounding out something on the piano, spelling words aloud, or sounding things out and it's just something new every minute with her.  Love this stage.  The other day I noticed that she was playing the same note over and over on the piano, but she was frustrated because she couldn't get the timing right.  I wasn't catching onto what she was doing, but she finally asked me to help her cause she was trying to play the "wedding song."  Then it hit me...the prelude notes leading into the Bridal March...so we worked on that for awhile.  Not sure why it was important to her to get that figured out, but maybe in a few years she'll be able to add the rest of the song to the first three measures.  ;-)  While the other kids were sick, she was going a little stir crazy in the house.  She changed costumes multiple times per day, and danced and pranced all over the place for hours.  At one point she came to me with a veil over her face and asked me if I had worn one like that.  I told her no, and she said, "Well, that's how REAL people get married!"  Ooookay! 

Now that my baby is growing up, I find myself relishing every innocent word and action.  All too soon, she'll no longer want daddy to "tickle her awake" on Sunday mornings.  She'll decide that she can tuck herself into bed.  And her favorite meal won't be ice cream.  Now, that could pull some tears.  The days are passing quickly...

Since it's all of 1 a.m. (yeah, too much coffee), I think I'll have to quit tracking my parents' flight and catch some sleep.  They're covering a lot of ocean right now, and it's safe to say that I'll be a little more comfortable when they crawl into the van with me tomorrow, er, today! 

(And to think...I came this close to joining Money Saving Mom's Early to Rise Challenge this month!  What an epic fail that would have been!)