Things Got Busy!

The cake before. Does Madeline look excited or what?

Things have gotten quite busy! But, let's rewind back to a couple of weeks ago. My big girl turned eight!!! She had two requests for her birthday. One request was to decorate her own birthday cake, and the second one was to go to Kings Dominion. We haven't made it to Kings Dominion just yet, although it is on the agenda, thanks to a certain hurricane. Thank you very much Irene. We lost power for a few hours, but other than some heavy rain and wind, we were just fine. Back to Ms. Maddie's birthday. She did decorate her own cake, recieved some amazing gifts, and had not one, but four cakes. Uncle Josh and family came into town, and we had a little celebration with them, Aunt Jen had a little cake with her while babysitting (I was in training), Ralph and Shirley had a cake for her while babysitting (I was in training, again), and we celebrated another time in honor of all the August birthdays (Maddie, Kent, and Dawn) over at Blake and Jen's. Whew! That's a lot of cake!

She requested a shell border and for me to put her name on it, but that's all I was allowed to do.

Trying out her new skateboard.

Little girls! Lots of em!

Besides Hurricane Irene, we had an earthquake, on Madeline's actual birthday, no less. Pretty amazing, really. I thought I had left earthquake country behind, but apparently I have not. I was at a teacher training in a high school at the time, and besides some confusion, things didn't seem too bad. I was surpsrised to come home and find several pictures knocked from shelves, some open drawers, and this spilled vase in the bathroom.

A picture from the August birthdays party. It's a bit dark since it was evening, and the camera is still without a flash.

And, I got new glasses. And, I started my job. I haven't had a full day with students yet, but the county has kept me so busy with training after training that setting up my room and actually planning lessons has kept me at work until 6 lots of days this week. It seems there is never enough time for everything, but that is nothing new. We'll have some first day of school pics this coming week. Should be exciting and exhausting!