if you had joined us today then you would have seen a few little girls giggling and oh-so happy on the front porch of aunt judy’s house.  the precious faces looked something like this:

what prompted such merry looks?  why because the papa/uncle ricky was putting on a grand puppet show for all his favorite little girls.  it went something like this:

our happy ladies watching:

family vacation is all about family time.  and i sure am loving every minute i’m getting.  i sat for awhile with two little sisters on the streets of new york city while all the babies and parents were entertained in a toy store today.  much fun was had during our moment of sitting.

i picked up a new hobby today.  it’s called skim boarding.  you throw a wooden board on a bit of shallow water, chase after it, hop on board, and cross your fingers that you stay up.

i didn’t.  this picture is a complete deception of what actually took place this evening at the ocean.  my backside might be rather sore tomorrow from the amount of tumbles i took.  but, it was incredibly fun.  i shall try again in a few days!

(with their wonderful grandson, jackson edward)

it’s been filled with lots of swimming, boating, and adventuring.

and babies.  lots of babies.

and being with family.  and my two youngest darling sisters.

i have a rather disgusting obsession with a girl name julie grey.  she’s pretty much the coolest thing ever and daily i find myself wishing that i could be a tiny bit as thrifty and awesome as she.  so, when i saw her with cutoff shorts last night, i was instantly inspired.  it doesn’t matter that cutoffs are as old as the sun and  it doesn’t matter that i’ve never wanted them before — she made them cool and i knew that i had to get me some.

that “need” lead me to a 4am wake up where i proceeded to dig out a pair of jeans, hack off the legs, and make my own version of her cutoffs.

only slighty obsessed.

11pm.  i leave at 6:30am tomorrow.  what am i doing still up?

well, waiting for my laundry to be finished to put this and the rest in a bag:

chasing buggers like this on my floor to slay them:

chattin’ on the phone with the sister in LA:

hello beautiful.

hello wonderfulness.

hello world through the eyes of the three year old nephew.

hello crazy person.

hello new colors waiting to be made into something.

hello happy evening.

i went to bed at 10:30pm last night.  it was such a treat and i woke feeling so good that i decided i should really start doing that more often.  so, these daily picture posts shall [hopefully] be coming earlier in the day.  are you terribly bored with these silly little entries?  only a few more days until my commitment is finished.

in three days i leave for a week long-ish vacation.  because of that, there are many things that i’m quickly trying to wrap up.  when i realized that my backside was asleep from sitting in my office chair i glanced up at the clock and was surprised that i had quickly gone past the 8 hour mark and was still going.  those kinds of days are not my favorite.  vacations mean so much work beforehand!

i may or may not feel like this right now:

my try-to-be-healthier kick was pretty lame this past weekend, but i did well this evening with my dinner.  hello fresh green beans, tuna, and homemade whole wheat bread!

a kitchen cleaned, now writing this, and in a few minutes i’m going to go spend my evening with her.  have you ever loved somebody so much that you can’t remember what your life was like before they entered it?  that’s her to me.  for almost three years we have done everything together (work, travel, play, lead a small group together — to name a few).

and if you would like to feel loved, become her friend.  i’ve never been so loved.

want to know what i dislike most about myself?  my knees.  i dislike them immensely — always have and probably always will.  they’re chunky and lumpy and don’t even have the normal ugly knobs that most have.  my knees are just blobs in the middle of my legs.  so it’s only right that if i was to, say, injure myself and have one part of my body swell, it would, of course, be my knees.  that way they can be even larger blobs and i can dislike them even more than immensely.

whatever rumor of a funny story you might have heard following today’s church service is true — i did the one thing i have nightmares about (seriously).  i tripped in front of too many people while holding my two year old niece and took the full force of the fall squarely on my knees (falling with a child in my arms is the nightmare — not the landing on my knees).  yes, child was fine.  she smiled at me as we laid on the floor and after i got up she promptly put up her hands for me to hold her again.  and yes, i was completely embarrassed while acting cool and trying to laugh it off.

i console myself by saying that it’s just one more “louissa fell” stories to tuck away for moments when people want entertainment.  ever hear about the time that i fell on the dance floor of a wedding reception?  the real embarrassing part is that it was a very empty dance floor with only me on it and everyone else seated in tables surrounding the dance floor.

but we don’t really need to get into that.

the point of all this is that i must be in need of learning a lesson about wasting energy on such vanity as disliking my knees.  i’m seated with my legs elevated right now and will go get ice for my swollen and even more ugly than normal knees right after this.  it’s all such silly nonsense — this tripping and falling and swollen knees and the wounded pride especially.

you shall not get a picture of the bruised knees.  i haven’t been able to get past my obsession of hating them quite yet.  instead, i’ll give you the loveliness of my youngest niece during our poolside afternoon.  we love our claire to pieces.