Girls After My Own Heart

Annie gets to check out a library book from school each week and at least half the time, she chooses a cookbook.  Last week, she chose some sort of Betty Crocker Fancy Party Treats and begged and pestered until I took her to the store for the necessary ingredients to make chocolate cupcakes in teacups with marshmallow frosting.

We finally made them on Sunday night and ate the last ones after dinner today, which was appropriate, because they looked like nothing so much as little cups of hot chocolate with insane amounts of sprinkles, and guess what it did today?

IT SNOWED.

So we switched up our tradition of having hot cocoa on the first day of snow and had hot-cocoa-looking-cupcakes-in-mugs instead.  I don't think they minded.

Jemma had the day off from school yesterday because of conferences, so she spent a chunk of the morning doing this

(and then spent the afternoon being a total whiner, just so we don't paint too cheerful a picture here).  Annie, on the other had, had the day off from school today, so we ran errands together and snuck in a stop at the bookstore, where I gave in happily to her request to purchase her own copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  It joins an ever-growing pile by the side of her bed, of which I am more than a little proud.

But maybe not as proud as when I catch this happening just before bedtime at night

or this

or this

on a Saturday afternoon.

After we'd been to Michael's this morning, and the bookstore and the grocery store, we had almost half an hour before we had to pick Jemma up from school.  And since we were juuuuuust across the parking lot from my new favorite store, I told Annie we were going to go in.  "It's beautiful," I said.  "You'll love it!"

Annie disagreed.  After learning that they didn't sell "things for kids," she insisted she was staying in the car.  I dragged her in, and we spent fifteen solid minutes oohing and ahhing over the obscene variety of gorgeous drawer pulls and the floor-to-ceiling display of embroidered kitchen towels.  We smelled every candle, touched every soft sweater, tried on sample Lolla hand cream, and chose imaginary Christmas gifts for nieces and grandmas and ourselves.  There is a gorgeous bed in the middle of the store, and just before we left, Annie looked at me and said, "I want to sleep in that bed and live in this store forever."