I guess I'm in trouble then

Today, Laura was having a Lunchable. It had the ingredients for a dessert pizza, but I used all the crusts for cheese pizzas, so she wanted to eat the fudge sauce by itself. I told her no, and she held it as if she was reading the label and said, "It says 'Fudge has to be eaten or moms get in trouble.'"
I eventually let her have a tiny bit of fudge, as well as the little chocolate chips that also were supposed to go on the dessert pizza.

Rocky Mountain Balloon Festival

Yesterday morning, some of our friends came over so we could walk down to Chatfield State Park to watch the mass ascension at the balloon festival. However, it was raining and foggy, so the balloons didn't go up. This was the scene:

This morning we got up and looked out. It was much clearer, and we could see 10 balloons from our living room window. But Kevin and Laura went out and saw about 35 -- including a couple that landed in the field just south of our house. Here's a photo that shows a pig (lower left), the Energizer bunny and an Alpo can (the square-cornered one lower right).

My view at work

To take this photo, I had to get up and walk about seven steps. Otherwise, you'd see furniture and cubicles and stuff. But it's sort of what I can see while sitting at my desk if I turn my head to the right.

Class of 2019

Laura started kindergarten today. The girl to the right is our friend Alexis, who goes to church with us and whose mom is Laura's babysitter.
Since she's been asking every day for months when she starts kindergarten, let's hope it turns out to be everything she's hoped and dreamed.

These are professional actors. Don't try this at home!

Yesterday morning, Laura was insisting that she needed to use her (toy) Sesame Street cell phone to "call the cops" because one of her stuffed bears, Sprinkler, had bitten another stuffed animal, the big blue puppy.
So this is my representation of how such an event might have looked.

What a difference 5.5 years makes

Laura had her five-year checkup on Thursday. She weighed 49 pounds (83rd percentile) and was 45.25 inches tall (79th percentile).
In other words, she's getting quite big.
But she's still the same in some ways, as there was crying when she got shots. She seemed to be planning to keep the three purple Band-Aids on her thighs forever, although I did manage to peel them off after we took a shower the next morning.

For Auntie Eva

I got this from the Chicago Tribune recruiter at the jobs fair in Tulsa and needed to take a photo so we can try to get some similar frames for ACES. Of course, we won't make Chicago skyline postcards to go in ours.

How I spent my trip to Tulsa

1. Teaching people about writing headlines.
2. Being glad ACES isn't considering having a conference there.
3. Admiring the view of the Crowne Plaza roof I had out my third-floor window.
4. Remembering that the wind does really go whipping down the plain -- even when it's 107 degrees.
5. Hearing a keynote speech by Wilma Mankiller, who was the first female chief of a large U.S. Indian tribe. (Interesting detail: She and her husband live in the same low-income housing area on the Cherokee reservation where she was born, even though they have more than enough money to move somewhere else.)
I bought Laura a beaded necklace and bracelet set from an Indian craftswoman who had a booth at the convention. Laura likes it, but not as much as these magnet Joan and Melissa Rivers cutouts (complete with evening gowns) that I got from the guy running the TV Guide booth at the jobs fair.

Welcome to Tulsa. Population: me

OK, so I'm not actually going to Tulsa until tomorrow. And even then it's only for two days, to do a presentation at the Native American Journalists Association convention. But even so, it seems like a strange place to tell people you're going. Even though Mom and Dad got married in Oklahoma -- I know, that was Midwest City, not Tulsa -- it's not a state I've ever thought much about.
I'll report back on my nonscientific observations.

Stealth cucumber

This afternoon I found a good-sized cucumber that I hadn't even realized was on our one remaining cucumber plant. I picked it and brought it inside. Laura kept saying it had just been delivered -- as if some little cucumber fairies had just decided to pay a random visit to our house.

The view from our living room

As seen by Kevin this morning.

Build-an-overpriced-bear workshop

Laura's been bugging us forever to take her to Build-A-Bear Workshop. Kevin finally did last week. She got this koala and named him Furry. She's still talking about Kevin not having let her get the shoes to go with Furry's soccer outfit, but I'm sure she'll eventually get over it.
The actual purchase of a bear -- we've gone in to look numerous times -- was such a big deal that Laura even wrote a letter to Amanda about it.