What have we done lately?

Time for another edition of "What have we done lately?" according to the following random photos from my iPhone.

Peekaboo!

Pinkalicious!  The Musical

The Main Street Theater is a wonderful community theater here in town.  They regularly perform productions based on children's books.  The shows last an economical one hour (perfect for little kids), and they include a fifteen minute intermission.  When I found out the theater would be performing one of my daughters' very favorite books, Pinkalicious!, I knew we had to make an event of it.  Each girl got a special mommy/daughter date for the show.   Amanda and I invited two of her good friends from school and their moms, and we had a girls' night out on a Saturday night:  a 5:00 show at the theater followed by dinner.  It was a very grown-up date befitting three young ladies preparing to matriculate in Kindergarten.  Elizabeth and I attended a Sunday afternoon matinee with her very good friend Eileen.  I don't think I have ever seen Elizabeth sit still for that long.  She was transfixed by the action on stage and clapped enthusiastically at every opportunity.  Afterwards both girls got autographs from the star of the show, Pinkalicious herself:

(PS Tickets at Main Street Theater are only $12 each!)


The Saga of Painting a Bookshelf:
Dad and Linda generously gave us a very big bookshelf.  The girls and I decided to paint it, and I let the kids pick the colors.  I think the finished product is pretty cool:

So the project probably looks finished, eh?  Well, this may surprise you, but the girls and I managed to get just a smidgen or two of blue and pink paint on our front porch while we were painting.  I thought, no problem, I'll just paint over it with this half can of touch-up paint I've got in my garage.   Turns out the paint doesn't match anymore, even though it did match a little less than 9 months ago.

Obviously now the whole porch needs to be repainted.  I refuse to pay someone to do it, because then our free bookshelf would end up costing about $200 or whatever it costs to pay someone to paint the porch.  So I got busy taping off the porch and removing the rocking chairs when it started raining last week, then I ended up going to Austin for the day, and now we're about to leave town for a few days.  It is quickly becoming one of those half-done home improvement projects that happens to be on display for the entire block.  You guys might be surprised to learn that this current state of our front porch absolutely thrills my husband.  Truly, nothing makes him happier than coming home to find two rocking chairs parked on our driveway and two cans of unopened paint sitting on a splotchy front porch bordered on all sides by blue painters tape.  So what will end up happening?  Will I give up and hire a painter?  Will I finally just lock the kids in a closet for six hours with a carton of goldfish and two juiceboxes while I do it myself?  Will we get a nasty note from the city for having a house that looks like a "before" segment on HGTV?  Will Brian eventually spontaneously combust?  Stay tuned...

Dinosaurs!
The girls and I went to the Museum of Natural Science to see Tornado Alley 3D on IMAX and see the new Dinosaur Hall.  The IMAX show was good, but the Dinosaur Hall was infinitely better.  The girls were so scared and awed by all the bones (not just dinosaurs, obviously) that they refused to stand close enough to any of them for me to get a good picture.  Below is the best one I got. 

So that about sums up the last few weeks at our house.  More news in the next installment.