Sweet, dear, curious-about-everything Elizabeth broke my favorite kitchen dish this morning. A wedding present that some of my favorite recipes go into--baked zucchini, a family-sized batch of apple crisp...it looks like they aren't making the exact color anymore. And right now I'm not sure I can justify replacing it. Silly sadness over a blue oval dish. Moving on...

There has been lots of other sweetness in my morning today. Catching this moment between sisters. They sat there for quite a long time. Emma doing such a good job of carrying on conversation with her sister's squeals, clapping, and warbled attempts at new words like kitty, dog and go. She is such a good big sister.

And then of course, we closed the door and broke her heart. Until we could distract her with her favorite food--strawberries. I've given up keeping her in clothes that aren't stained by smears of red strawberry fingers. She's definitely my daughter--the stained clothes part, and the love of the berry.

I can remember the house we used to go to when I was younger, to pick up strawberries every year--a white house, on a busy road with a huge field of strawberries. On the way home from picking, I'd scooch down in the back seat of our orange VW Bus and polish off a whole pint before our wheels were even back in the driveway. (And for the record, if someone showed up at my door with a VW bus, vanagon, eurovan...I'd trade in all the amenities, and bells and whistles of my current car for that VW, and never look back.)

In other news, life is busy. We are pushing to move in this weekend. I need to get over there and take some more pictures to share. Dan has made some good progress over the last week and a half--finishing our bedroom, painting floors...Sometimes, at random moments in the day I get these little, okay big, flutters of excitement in my stomach.

And other flutters of the nervous kind--I found out my homeschool review is coming up next week. I'm nervous. I admit it. But in a way, it's been affirming to start gathering things together from this year, reminding me that yes, we did make progress. It's also great incentive to get some stuff finished--like figuring out a way to sum up all this horse learning overload that we've been talking about all year...

Happy Wednesday, everyone. It is Wednesday, right? Oh, yes. It is. Of course, because Emma is already dressed for her 4:30 riding lesson.