No School

Sorry to confuse you; thats not me, Rick or my two girls. School is out today and this is what my little ones will most likely spend most of their day playing. One of their favorite things to do is come up with an elaborate story line and then take pictures of the events.

For example, a recent episode included Kate and Christie who are sisters. They recently moved into Kate's mansion because Christie's house was too small with her husband and three children, Yasmine, age 14, Kelly, 4 years and Jessie, 5 months old. Christie's husband is Lake, and he is a football coach at the local high school. Both families decided to go to Delaware for the weekend, in Kate's Winnebago, but were caught in the path of a terrible tornado. The trailer flipped over and was destroyed, but thankfully no one was hurt. The two youngest children were back home in the mansion with the nanny. Fortunately, Kate had brought some of her horses along to ride on the beach in Delaware, and everone was able to use them to ride back to the mansion.
During these "sessions" M and E will proceed to take out every piece of their entire Barbie collection which we were graced with from a lovely family of four girls down the street from us.

Your mind won't even be able to comprehend what they have-from hotels and castles right down to the stretch limo complete with hot tub and working radio, its all there. This stuff takes up almost an entire room in our home-our laundry room to be specific; and it isn't that big, so it can often be very challenging getting around.

Poor Rick is often seen early in the morning, ironing his clothes for work (yes, we live in an equal rights household! No ironing for me!) trying to maneuver around piles of Barbie clothes, cars and horses with flowing manes and tails.

Poor guy, everything in our house is girlie; even our two dogs and our horse are girls. He is so outnumbered.

Now, if you know anything about Barbies, bathtime can also be the perfect staging area for a Barbie story to unfold. Usually here it turns to a mermaid theme-after all, there is water! and it usually involves one mermaid stealing the other's boyfriend. I try to stay out of the story lines-they are usually innocent enough and only imitated by the terrible stuff they catch when they are allowed to watch tv. Whatever happened to Andy Griffith or I Love Lucy? I have to censor just about everything that comes over the airwaves-I just can't believe some of it.

Anyway, I digress-the only thing I really wish could change is that there would be as much attention to the clean-up process as there is to the set-up process. I've got to admit it is a little unsettling in the morning to find an audience lined up along the rim of the bathtub watching me as I take a shower. And, its always fun when I am up early in the morning, walking across the kitchen floor, and I step on a Barbie shoe. These aren't ordinary shoes, mind you, but the pointy toe and stiletto-heeled kind. Which brings me to the question, "Who said Barbie was a good role model for young girls, anyway?"

I'm off on another tangent. Stay tuned for the continuing saga of Kate and Christie.