Bill Roper's Journal

I have trimmed and otherwise adjusted a number of family photographs tonight. We have a lot of relatives, none of whom actually live around here, many of whom are no longer alive.

Katie is nine years old today. I may get a better picture uploaded later, but this should give you an idea of what things look like around here. :)

It's been a while since I posted pictures of Katie and Julie. And since daisy_knotwise threatened mayhem if I didn't manage to post pictures of the Halloween costumes that she'd worked so hard to put together... :)
( Little girls inside... )

Julie turned three years old today. This means that it is definitely time to post more pictures.

Oh, and if you happen to be wondering what the smudge on Julie's forehead is in the later pictures, well, that would be chocolate frosting. Yes, the frosting on the outside of the cake is white cream cheese frosting. Between the layers is the chocolate frosting. And inside and on Julie, because she got the leftovers...
( Little girls inside... )

Finally, here are our pictures from the Blizzard of 2011. That name had better stick around here, because otherwise it means that there was a second blizzard. We don't really need that, thank you very much.
( Lots of snow inside... )

We decided to take the Christmas tree down today, because I'm going to GAFilk next weekend and the city of Des Plaines will recycle into mulch the trees that come down now, while trees that come down later are likely to wind up in the landfill. I carefully explained to Katie and Julie how taking the tree down now meant it would probably get used to help make a park where kids can play. They asked about visiting the tree there and I told them that we would when the weather got better.

So ornaments were packed away, lights unstrung, and the tree carried out to the curb. Then Katie and Julie put on their coats and went out to the curb to say good bye to the tree. I wish I'd had a camera handy.

I did have a camera handy for much of the rest of the Christmas season, so if you'd like to see what the family was up to this Christmas, here's your chance. :)
( Photos inside... )

It's important to give Katie and Julie a chance to burn off some energy with other kids. And the nicest place to do that locally is out at Woodfield Mall...
( Photos inside )

Sometimes, Katie insists that it's time to take her picture. These were from some of those occasions this month as I catch up on things that are on my camera. (Not counting the photos that I found where Katie hijacked my camera.)
( Photos inside... )

So I went back to the optometrist today to pick up our new contacts. I parked in the garage where Katie had most likely lost her backpack containing Badi, the blanket that she'd had since she was a little baby. And since I grabbed one of the two hour parking spaces, it was easy to walk up the ramp to the garage office. I asked the lady there if anyone had turned in a child's purple backpack. She said no one had, but that I should check with Security across the hall, because people leave things there.

So I walked in and asked them if anyone had seen a child's purple backpack -- and I looked over to the closet on the right -- and added, "Like the one sitting there."

They told me to take a look and see if it was mine. I picked it up and immediately saw the patches of glue where daisy_knotwise had glued eyes to the backpack when Katie had dressed as Dora for Halloween. And I opened the backpack and pulled out Badi.

"And this is my little girl's blanket."

"Go ahead and take it. You don't have to prove it's yours -- no one's going to lie to get something like that."

And so I took the backpack on to our optometrist who had also kindly been hunting up and down the street for it. She was quite happy to see it too.

But not as happy as Katie was when she got home from shopping a bit after I did.

Katie is four years old today. Wow! Of course, this meant it was time for a little celebration. :)
( Little girls inside... )