Such lovely proof that summer is not quite over... ... do you love her outfit? Nothing says "I will never trust daddy with a hose" like wearing a bathing suit to help wash the car....

.. and you didn't miss the perfect pairing of the black cowboy boots did you? Which brings me around to mentioning that the other day, when I was dropping Brielle off at preschool and didn't have anything scheduled, I asked her what I was ever gonna do without her during class. She thought for just a few seconds and then replied, "Maybe you should just go shopping .... and buy me a whole bunch of shoes!" Had to ask!

And since you asked (okay, 2 of you asked!) Breje titled her poster "centered around a great oak". The oak represents how her family is her center, her ctr ring and her torch represent how important her faith is and standing for truth and righteousness. The tent symbolizes how much she loves camping and all the flowers represent her closest friends. The muic notes represent her love of music and the lightbulb represents her glorious brain! The cats represent her pets. Whew!

School Projects

I think I need to dedicate this post to my mom, in honor of all the ridiculously complicated school projects that she helped me complete in the wee hours of the night, because I either forgot all about them or just couldn't face them until the last minute. Mom, remember the miniature log cabin which counted for half of my grade in Interior Design 305? Remember helping Jody and I (yes, I was a grown married woman for crying out loud!) glue individual floor boards on until 4:30 in the morning? Even Cody helped me with that one -- his Styrofoam chimney rocked!
At least Breje has given me some advance notice so far, this year. She had me puzzling over how to create a scale model of the earth's crust for at least a week. Here's what we came up with.... ... yep, that is an enormous brownie, covered in several flavors of chocolate chips. Leave it to me to make a science project out of chocolate. Breje and I were carefully placing chocolate chips until early the next morning, and yes, that's to scale baby!
The next week she gave me the entire weekend to help her with her project for English -- a poster decorated with at least five symbols that represented her. She even convinced her friend MacKenzie to come help. I figured it would be a piece of cake.

Clearly, during all those late night creative sessions, my passed along her "seriously this is not problem and it'll be done in no time and we can still make it way cooler than any one else's" gene. At some point I convinced Breje that it'd be way easier to build a tree out of packing paper and silk leaves than to draw one. It spiraled a little out of control after that, but the good news is that she did get manage to get both projects turned in on time and received w A's! We make a great team.

Preschool

Brielle finally got to start preschool this week. It is her new favorite thing. She had butterflies and nervous giggles for an entire night before-hand and woke up with explicit instructions as to her attire and hairdo. (Not a control freak at all!) She begged for lunch at 9:00 because she knew she was supposed to go to school after lunch. She couldn't wait for pictures--apparently this is the official "I am old enough and cute enough to go to preschool" pose. Maybe Sienna taught it to her?! She went in with hardly any hesitation and gave school glowing a review when I picked her up. She told Breje that the only time she was "nuhvus" was when they did "that scout thing, with the flag, you know, the plex a burlegence"! I guess we'll be practicing that one at home for awhile!
Since she's getting so gosh-darned old these days, I find myself hanging onto her more naive moments. One of my favorites was when she demanded curly hair for our Labor Day party. When I finished she said "People are going to say that I am so beautiful, but (noticing my straight hair) they might think you just didn't do your hair!"