A Wonderful Princess Day...

I’m not even sure how they first came to be named “Princess Day” in our household.... but today was another one of them. Princess Day can only occur when there are school holidays and Nick still has to leave the house. It then falls upon us girls to lounge about in our jammies for most of the day and do silly stuff, games, crafts, baking etc.

On a Princess Day, Mommy only takes phone calls and leaves her computer off unless there is an unforeseen emergency with a client, so it is a change of pace for me as well. Sometimes, though not this morning, they even sleep in. This morning, Bethany had a nightmare about people trying to steal her, so she crept into our bed as soon as she heard Nick’s alarm go off.

Once Nick was out the door, we made low-fat blue berry muffins with enough extra frozen blueberries in them to turn the batter purple. We lounged about and played for a bit then tried out the new Harvest Moon “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the Game Cube. The girls had fun naming the puppy and cow as we started out to build our farm and the graphics are spectacular, but right now they are very much hooked by the action and danger involved in the Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. It wasn’t long before they were pleading with me to switch games and we had great fun learning how to soar off a cliff using a chicken as our glider! The only hard part is that neither of them are interested in mastering the controls yet... so guess who has to be doing the actions? The only problem is that whenever I make mistakes (as you sometimes do with video games) I get this chorus of “Oh MOM!!” in stereo!! At one point in a tunnel, Erin was screaming “no... go right... go RIGHT!” so loudly in my ear when I got turned around that I made them turn off the game for a break. Since it was close to lunch, I taught them how to make their own mini pizzas using English Muffins while I made myself some tuna melts. Bethany discovered that she loves tuna fish (which Erin cannot abide) and took great delight in telling Erin how much she loved it... but it set them both off on a round of quoting the Lilo and Stitch movie. “Do you know what tuna is? It’s fish!! If I gave Pudge a Tuna Fish sandwich, I’d be an abomination!!” (Try to picture an almost 5 year old with no front teeth say the word abomination! My sides still hurt!)

The only mishap of the day was Bethany chewing a hole in her jammies during a scary part of the Zelda game, so we are ending Princess Day with a run to the store to buy some new jammies for the smallest princess. Luckily we ran out of time and Nick came home before we got to the part where they styled my hair with all the little hair clips they own!!

Growing Pains...

I’ve been sifting through piles of paperwork again today and hating every moment. I have finally come to the conclusion that it is time to pick some of the tasks that take me the longest to do (ie. accounting, inventory etc.) and contract some of it out or delegate. Erin will be 9 in a few weeks and I am sure that once a month, she could sit there and check the stock that I have made up or start to help with batching orders for distributors. I have a few leads on accountants in the area that know small business needs... but will they understand mine? It is hard to find someone to work with that way, but it is time!

Everyone in the house seemed grumpy today for some reason. I think we are all still tired from the weekend’s chaos. I’ve been trying to get my work done earlier in the week because there is no school on Thursday or Friday. We’ve just had report cards come out, so tomorrow after school and Thursday are parent/teacher interviews and then Friday is a professional development day. Since Nick will need the car, I have decided to send Bethany to daycare tomorrow and keep her home on Friday. We girls will stay in our jammies and have a “princess day” while Dad is working. This time that means snacks, crafts, drawing sessions and playing our new Harvest Moon “It’s a Wonderful Life” on the Game Cube. Dare I hope that they will sleep in a bit?

Spring... Hah!

We celebrated the first full day of spring yesterday with 10 cm of new, white, fluffy snow. It was actually the kind that in December makes you want to skip around and sing carols... because it fell in soft, white, whirling flakes and clung to every branch and twig.

But now that it is the end of March, I have had a taste of warmer weather and I am hearing from people further to the south who are already gardening... I think I am ready for the lovely white stuff to melt away.

We had our big goodbye party/birthday celebration yesterday as well. It was bittersweet as any parting is. I suppose the true test of any friendship or relationship is whether or not you are willing to invest the time and energy to keep it going.

Today I also got down to the business of tidying my office and cleaning up e-mail, trying yet again to get a response on two Russian sites that are hosting my patterns illegally. I did manage to get one of them closed down... but I don’t know if they have just moved it or realized that they were doing something wrong. The second site is being more stubborn. I suspect that this is someone who KNOWS they are breaking the law and just doesn’t care. I have been writing to the people who run the site, but they are far harder to deal with that Yahoo or MSN.... possibly because of the language barrier. Sigh! Those were hours I’d much rather have been designing. Thank goodness for stitchers who can surf around and let me know about sites like this. If I was trying to police my own stuff out there, I’d never have time to design another piece!