Just another Manic Monday

This morning started as any other- breakfast, dishes, get dressed, get Jilly dressed again when she changed her mind, etc. but went downhill fast.  I don't go to Walmart very often, but I was in the mood to torture myself so we headed there with a semi-long list.  Just to further my torture I gave into Jilly's pleadings for "the fun cart" aka "the cart from you-know-where."  For a few minutes the girls were strapped in and happy but then Mattie lost it.  She is usually very demure, especially out in public, but not today.  She squirmed and cried til I let her out and you know what she wanted to do?  Crawl through the bottom of the cart over and over and over again.  I spent the rest of our shopping trip either holding her while she screamed and kicked or strapping her into the cart where she screamed and kicked while Jilly screamed back.  It was awesome.  When we were finally leaving someone said to me, "Oh, so that's who I heard screaming through the store."  Ummm, yes, and thank you.

Before we left the house I couldn't find my keys (I blame Bryan because on Sundays he drives and uses my keys) so I used the spare key.  We also have a spare house key so I grabbed it to lock the house.  The house key isn't on any kind of key ring and somehow it disappeared in the depths of my car.  So we made it home with a trunk full of groceries and were locked out.  I was about to drive to Bryan's office to get his key when I noticed I had left the window open (dumb, but lucky.)  I was able to push out the screen and hoist Jilly up through the window and she let us in.  Just last week in our neighborhood newsletter there was a tidbit on looking out for each other and one of the things to watch for was when someone was getting into a house a different way than the front door so I was a little panicked all afternoon that someone would call the cops on us (but, really, no one probably reads those newsletters except for me.)

While Mattie was blessedly taking a nap Jilly and I made pumpkin banana muffins and a mini-loaf to take to our sweet neighbor who is always bringing little gifts for the girls.  Later in the afternoon the bread was cooling on a rack and I discovered this little present left by my sweet Mattie.  And, to add insult to injury, after she took the bite she spit it out on the floor!  Bryan suggested we just frost the bread and still give to the neighbor, but I opted to give her some of the muffins instead.

BUT, after dinner (during which Mattie threw all her noodles on the floor one at a time) we headed out for some fresh air.  We live 20 minutes from the big city and about 20 minutes in the opposite direction we reach beautiful farmland.  Some friends had told us about this amazing field of sunflowers and it did not disappoint.  These pictures don't do it justice- there were bright happy flowers for as far as you could see.  And they did wonders for my disposition.

All's well that ends well.