Canning, Cross-dressing and Cookie Cutters!

I am going with a "C" theme today as you can see from the title of this post. Let's start with canning.

Mither would be proud!!! I remember mom doing spotlights on me for young women activities several times while I was growing up. Each time I remember her bringing up the time that I canned peaches all day long with her at 8 years of age. I suppose it must have been such an incredible experience that I did not do it again for 21 years. :) So, the day after my 29th birthday I decided to try my hand at it again, with a little help of course.

Jenn and I each had a small box of peaches and I had a box of pears. We started with the peaches last Saturday. Tamara was kind enough to let us use her steam canner and teach us what to do. She was very helpful and the tips and tricks she gave us were invaluable. Finally about 3 hours after we began, we had 18 quarts of lovely peaches and a very messy kitchen. It was GREAT! It was so great in fact that we did it again last night and ended up with 15 quarts of pears and 4 more quarts of peaches. I was surprised at how much I actually enjoyed it. Not that I loved pealing the slimy fruit or working over a hot stove, but I loved looking at the bottles all lined up and filled with beautiful fruit and knowing that I had accomplished something. It was awesome!

The second of my "C's" is cross-dressing. Not that I have taken up the habit, but my son certainly has. For the last several months he has wanted me to put the sparkly lip gloss on his lips like I do for Emma. Likewise, whenever he finds a hair clip he won't rest until I put it in his hair for him. He had donned both of these very manly things this morning, so of course he had to have a shirt to go with it. We were going through some clothes a friend of Janice's gave us and he saw a pink shirt with a kitty on it and had to wear it. That wass it, his cross-dressing career had officially started. I suppose however, the outfit would have been somewhat more complete had he been wearing his sister's sparkly pink shoes as he was in the previous post. Fortunately those were put away, so he didn't have the option. At any rate, here are some pictures. I love his hair falling in his eyes.

Speaking of hair falling in eyes, that brings me to my last "C" for this post, Cookie Cutters. This is a child's hair cutting place. After looking at the pictures above of Matthew's long hair, I decided to call and get an appointment to have both him and Emma get their hair cut. Emma's hair turned out about the same, just a little trim for her. However, I have not often had the opportunity of explaining what I want done with Matthew's hair. I told him I wanted the sides very short and that I liked to comb the top over. Here are some pictures of what we ended up with.

Here is Emma's "cheese" smile again! Her hair looks pretty standard.

Here she is showing her pink balloon that she got from Cookie Cutters.

Matthew on the other hand had his hair butchered! When I went to tell the lady what I wanted done with Emma's hair, I cam back and the gentleman cutting Matthew's hair had cut the top so short! It was not a good length, so he asked if I wanted it shorter. NO!!! I did not want it shorter, but it looked dumb the way it was, so I told him to go ahead and cut it shorter.

Matthew ended up with basically the same haircut that the guy who cut it had as did the little boy who had his hair cut before Matthew. Maybe that guy just liked this particular hair cut. Or maybe I just didn't communicate what my preference was very well. At any rate, his hair is quite short now. Oh well, at least it grows fast. :)

Preschool and random pics!

It's been a while, so I decided to just throw a bunch of random pictures all together in one post. Here goes!

First off, Emma started preschool last Wednesday. She was so excited to start school again this year. She was especially excited that she would be doing karate this year, which is interesting since she has no idea what karate is.

I totally spaced things for her first day of school. We were all ready to go to get there early and I suddenly realized that I hadn't purchased a single piece of school supplies, nor had I put anything in her "All about me" bag for show and tell. Don't ask me where my brain was, but it definitely was not anywhere near at the time. I ran frantically around gathering things for show and tell and we ended up in her classroom 5 minutes late. I was glad that at least I had remembered the camera until I went to take a picture and realized I had not remembered to put the memory card back in the camera. So, these pictures were taken after her first class.

Emma was lucky enough to get a pink pencil with her name on it. Pink is her favorite color! And here she is with her "cheese" smile. It's a little difficult at this point to get a normal smile out of her. :)

Here she is at her table. Unlike her shyness last year, she was quite excited and not the least bit sad to see me go this year! *sigh* I guess that's a good thing!

Here she is at home after school. She had a great first day!

Here's a picture of Emma throwing a fit! She gets in these moods sometimes where she is so bugged, but she doesn't want to loose a privilege by yelling at us, so this time, she ran and buried her head in the chair. I couldn't help but snap a picture of her cute little bummie in the air! :)

Oh what a manly little guy! He's got footballs on his PJs and he's playing with a train, both very boyish things. However, take a look at his choice in footwear. He loves to wear Emma's pink sparkly shoes. At least he is secure in his manhood.

Here's another shot of the fancy shoes. He also loves to say "cheese" when anyone points the camera at him, and this is the face he makes.

I don't know if it's the bows, the sparkles or the color of the shoes, but they sure do get him in touch with his feminine side. Or perhaps it is just his sweet little personality and lovingness. Either way, he loves his teddy. Here he is at the breakfast table giving his teddy "loves."

He also loves his "baby." His little spotted kitty that he originally called "kitty," but changed the name to "baby" when he heard Emma calling her kitty, "baby." His spotted kitty has been "baby" ever since. He enjoys giving loves to "baby" at the breakfast table as well.

I don't have a picture, but he has recently started asking for "bacon" as well. He started asking for bacon every time I got him up in the morning, an odd request since he didn't like bacon very much. It took me about a week to realize that "bacon" was his word for "blankie." Now we all refer to it as "bacon" because he is just so cute when he asks for it!