Did you see the above photo on Facebook on Wednesday? No, Sarah Kate is not working with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mr. Andi is not using her as bait to catch his dinner, and there were no fire ants down in the storm drain. Sarah Kate dropped her phone down there while she was out riding her bike in our neighborhood, and Mr. Andi thought the best way to retrieve it would be to pop the manhole cover off with a crowbar and send someone down to get it.
Our brilliant idea was to make Sarah Kate go down there – an attempt to teach her a lesson about being more careful and whatnot.
A futile attempt, as it turned out, because she found the whole episode great fun and couldn’t wait to tell all her friends about it at school the next day.
Sarah Kate asked me to come eat lunch with her at school this week for the first time in five years. Just the thought of spending a half hour in a cafeteria with hundreds of kids makes me start to twitch, but I am not so horrible a parent that I said no. I even picked up a Sonic Jr. Cheeseburger and Mozzarella Sticks for her as a respite from the cafeteria food.
It was everything I expected and more! Kidding. It wasn’t too terrible or all that awesome, either. I mostly talked to Sarah Kate and her friend Molly, tried not to look at the flirtatious female gigglers (while silently thanking the Lord that my daughter and her friend were not among them), and fought off a strong desire to eat the Doritos of the kid across the table.
That’s a win, right?
Mr. Andi and I have decided to kill off Santa. Not literally, of course. 🙂 We had a long talk about it and decided, for a variety of reasons that I’ll detail in a post next week, that he needs to go. That was on Wednesday night.
On Thursday, when I picked Nathan up at preschool, I learned that he’s going to play a “very special part” in his class Christmas program that’s “a big deal” and not an elf. It’s public preschool, therefore I’m pretty sure he’s not going to be Joseph or Jesus, so I assume that means he’s going to be Santa. Oh, the irony…
But we shall clap and smile and take pictures and all that jazz, anyway, because he will be cute and we aren’t Santa-haters. More like Santa-avoiders.
Remember Devine from a few weeks back, the ginger little boy with Down syndrome who needed a family? His profile is no longer listed in the Waiting Children list with the state of Florida. I really, really hope that means he’s found a loving family – it’s unlikely we’ll ever know. Keep him in your prayers.
On the fire ant front, things are going about how you’d expect. Each individual bite is healing as it should – blistery things are gone, bites are scabbed over, some of the smaller scabs are starting to peel off, etc. The problem is there are just So. Many. Bites. You know how when you have a cut or sore it will start to itch as it heals? Yeah. We have that – dozens and dozens and dozens of times over. Plus he’s been on what was described as basically high-powered Benadryl for a week, so there’s been a lot of this:
But other than that, he’s doing GREAT! Sigh. This, too, shall pass.
My new site design is live! I hope you’ve noticed. If you haven’t, then I’m definitely doing it wrong. 🙂 It officially went live last Saturday afternoon, but I’ve been tweaking it throughout the week. Please let me know if you run across anything wonky or annoying. A couple of readers made some great suggestions early on that I really appreciated, and I incorporated them ASAP.
A few things I’d love for you to check out:
- Completely Revamped Navigation Menu: I scrapped my old categories and started fresh. I think the new organization makes SO much more sense than the old ones did. You can read about the new categories on the – TADA! – brand new Start Here page.
- New About Us page – Instead of a tedious separate page for each family member, I’ve combined them into one where I briefly lay out what our story is, then describe each family member in five words (and link to a few posts about each person). Mr. Andi and I had a lot of fun creating the “five words” lists!
And one favor to ask of you: I created a new page with “14 Facts About Me” – I’d love for you to check it out, but what I really want is for you to leave a comment over there telling me about YOU!
If you’re completely disinterested in the design details, feel free to skip this snippet. But if you’re curious, I’ll share.
- First, I did it all myself, so if something is wonky or ugly or annoying, it’s my fault. But if you think it’s awesome? Yay, me! 😉
- The blog is self-hosted using WordPress and the site is built on the Genesis Framework. The child theme that I used is Modern Blogger Pro, but I customized it a good bit (I know just enough code to be bold and dangerous!)
- To lighten my load and save me some time, I added the Genesis Design Palette Pro premium plugin.
- I pinned a bunch of color palettes that I liked, but ultimately settled on this one.
- I went with the Modern Blogger Pro default fonts, because I liked them so much. Both are Google Fonts – the cursive is Lobster Two and the sans serif is Montserrat.
I have to give out a shout out to Pretty Darn Cute Design, the creators of Modern Blogger Pro, and the support team at Genesis Design Palette Pro. I had a few questions and resisted contacting tech support because I didn’t want to admit I was an idiot. I finally decided to appear ignorant in the interest of saving myself several days and a few more gray hairs, and they were both so helpful and responded so quickly – fantastic customer service (unlike my experience with AT&T in the same time frame, but I digress…)
Have a great weekend!
*Yes, there are affiliate links in this snippet. After the new site when live, I virtually sprinted to Genesis’ door to beg them to let me be an evangelist, and they agreed.
This post was inspired by and is linked to This Ain’t the Lyceum’s 7 Quick Takes.
HUGE blog page facelift! Looks great!
Thank you!
The first day you used Lobster Two, I found it distracting and hard to read, but it’s growing on me.
I may yet change it. There are just SO many options now, though – hard to decide what to use instead!
I’m totally jealous of Sarah Kate – I’ve never been down a manhole! Had I been, and at her age, I probably would have been tempted to explore a little farther…. 😉
And re: the fire ant bites…the poor little guy!! I’m glad they are healing. Hopefully this will be past soon.
She loved it! Not much to see in a manhole at the end of a dead end street, though. 🙂