It was a Good Day.

Yesterday was a good day.

The kids were home for the first time since the beginning of school for the Jewish New Year, and we enjoyed a lazy hang around the house day.  Both girls had friends over to play with and Alec was up to his eyeballs in LEGO sets that he had opened for his birthday the day before.  (At one point, we had half-completed sets on the kitchen table, the kitchen counter, our half-wall into the family room, and random spilled pieces on the kitchen floor.)  I had the day to putz around the house, assembling LEGO pieces, half-supervising the houseful of kids, doing some laundry, and putting out our fall decorations.

I realized with great joy that I have a new mantle in the basement den to decorate for all my fall/winter holidays.  It's the little things that make me so very happy.

After the friends left and I had destroyed the pads of my fingers putting together a Minecraft LEGO set- it had the tiniest pieces and SO MANY OF THEM- we ate and went out to choir.

I finished up the evening by judging a "dancing contest" in the living room between Jenna and Michaela, wherein they played very borderline-appropriate pop music and "dance" to it, one at a time.  I was asked to judge on "creativity and overall look".  Michaela's strength was moving around quite a bit, not quite dancing per se, with lots of hair tossing, a few of her Toddlers and Tiaras pageant moves, and she threw in lots of mediocre cartwheels for good measure.  Jenna did much better lipsync-ing to the song but her moves weren't quite as polished.  In desperation at the end Jenna did her trick of the week: laying on her stomach and stretching up backwards so her head touches her toes.  A neat trick, for sure, but not really a great dance move.  I declared Michaela a winner by a hair and Jenna took it pretty well.  They did a little routine together at the end to a different song which was made up of Michaela barking orders at Jenna and Jenna laughing and trying to keep up while they both generally flopped around.

We tell Michaela all the time that one day Jenna is going to finally snap and give Michaela a beat down of a lifetime for bossing her around her entire life.

At the end we were all laughing and could hardly breathe.

Dan and I watched the end of Derek Jeter's last home game with the Yankees.  The only time I cried was when they showed his mom crying in the stands after the game. (of course.  That's how I roll, Mom-style.) It was all very exciting and sweet and a little schmaltzy and wonderful.  We had seriously considered giving Alec the name Derek- in fact, it was the name we picked out if Michaela had been a boy- and for a moment last night I was a teensy bit wistful that we chose Alec instead.  Jeter is a classy guy and we both really admire him.

I think the best part of the whole day was something totally unexpected: Michaela asked me to dig out the published blog books we have so she could show her friend some stories and pictures from when she was little.  After hunting around a bit (they were moved in our basement remodel and in the half-completed office redo) I found them.  Dan and I spent lots of time last night reading through old posts, seeing our life as it was eight years ago.  So much has happened since then- it is incredible.  The girls love hearing stories of the quirky things they did and said and I, of course, gush over all the pictures of my sweet babies.

It is a great reminder of how far we've come as parents, that the kids are really easier now, and there seems to be much less puking now than there was back then.  Thank goodness.