Underwear Hat = Typical Mia

We say that Mia dances to the beat of a different drummer, but often have difficulties with specific examples that express exactly what Mia does to make her so unique. Well tonight we have a great example. As the girls were getting ready for bed Jennifer told Mia to put on her pajamas and clean underwear. Tonight Mia said she did not want to change her underwear. Well this was not an option, so Jennifer insisted that Mia do so. Jennifer started in a little bit with the "good hygiene" talk, but Mia interrupted and said, "If I have to put on new panties, I am going to put them on my head!"

So that is exactly what Mia did. She put on a nightshirt, new panties and also a new pair of panties on her head. For the rest of the night, Mia walked around with an underwear hat.

Perhaps it is not so unusual for a child to put underwear on their head, but Mia's reasoning just seams a little unusual.

I guess that is what makes Mia, Mia. Of course I grabbed the camera so we could have a good memory, but other than that, life went on as usual. The girls had a little snack and relaxed watching a little tv before brushing their teeth and going to bead.

Of course Mia did not go right to sleep, but that is a different tale.

Party at Grant's Farm

Over the past weekend Mia was invited to a birthday party at Grant's Farm. The party was for her two very good friends, Hunter and Walker.

Hunter and Walker are twins, Hunter a girl and Walker a boy. Mia likes them so much that she often spells her own name M I A H W. For some reason Mia and Walker have really become good friends at school. I think they make very cute friends.

The party started with feeding camels,

then lunch and cake and ice cream,

and then time to walk around the park to feed goats,

and look at the rest of the animals.

All in all a wonderful day. You can view all the photos from the day as a Gallery or a Slideshow.

Brunch at L'Ecole Culinaire

Brunch at L'ÉcoleCulinaire!

Olivia's brownie troop was fortunate enough to be able to celebrate Mother's Day with a special brunch prepared by Chef Jason Sparks at L'EcoleCulinaire. The brownies served the food that Chef prepared. Assisting that day was a true assistant and soon to be graduate of the school, Mike, along with a very helpful newbie, John, and of course a guy who spent most of his time behind a camera, me. However, I did make the whipped cream by hand.

The brunch started with a fresh fruit and yogurt parfait that was prepared almost exclusively by John. That was followed by an amazing quiche that was made completely from scratch, (Tip: For a great crust, use ice cold water.) along with a fantastic balsamic salad. To end the feast was some type of chocolate waffle topped with my whipped cream and fresh strawberry sauce.

The girls were eager to serve their mothers and I believe the moms had a wonderful time.

To see the rest of the photos from the day, visit my Flickr page and look at the Brunch at L'Ecole Culinaire Set.

Broken finger

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It has been a couple of weeks since the accident where Mia slammed her finger in a door and she is healing nicely.  So I figured it was about time to add a post about the incident.  I don't think I will go through all the gory details, just enough to give you the big picture.It all happened the night before we were leaving for a vacation to a water park.  Mia was in the house running to keep up with her big sister who just went out the back door.  Some how Mia caught her finger in the door.  Ouch! After cleaning it off, we made the pretty obvious decision that a doctor needed to see it.  Mia and I hop in the avalanche and head off to MO Baptist Pediatric ER.  While Mia was screaming in pain, once in the car she started to calm down.  She did say she wanted her Ga, a.k.a. grandmother and when I called and gave Mia the phone, that just made her cry more. At the hospital Mia was amazing!  She was very calm and let the doctors do their thing.  It did take quite a while to get everything ready (x-rays, local anesthesia, a couple of opinions, etc.) but Mia was a trooper through the whole four hours. The end result was a broken finger tip and the finger nail had come out of the nail bed.  However, the repair work went well and after a couple months of a cool, black finger, Mia should be back to normal.

Of course the doctors told us to keep the finger dry.  However, that did not keep us from going on and enjoying our trip to Great Wolf Lodge.  Vinyl gloves and some elastic wrap worked wonders!

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When we returned for follow up visits, Mia was again pretty good.  The first visit she was a little nervous about the nurse taking off her bandage, but not as bad as Jennifer.  But Mia learned to keep her finger safe and kept up her active lifestyle. We had our second follow up visit and all is going well.  You can see the very tip of her middle finger is broken in the image of the x-ray (Now a days they show you a print of the x-ray, and you get to take them home. If you click on the image, you can see the very tip of the finger is broken.

Now Mia is doing great.  She only has a small bandage on her finger keeping the finger nail clean and a little protected.  When the doctor took the splint off, at first Mia refused to bend her finger.  So we had an OT come down and talk to Mia about the importance of bending her finger and gave me some OT games to play with Mia.  Of course by that evening Mia was bending her finger just fine and even wanted to show the doctor how well she was doing.

Animoto

After listening to Net@Night where they talked about the new site, Animoto, I just had to give it a try. It was very simple, all I did after signing up and clicking the create video button I pointed it to my Flickr account, chose this group, picked some music (after listening to a sample), With a click of the create button, I went outside to grill a pork tenderloin and in a few minutes I had the video. I might be sold and purchase a pro account for my next photo to video project.