Three Girls

Yesterday my two nieces arrived, bringing with them suitcases of clothes and bags and books, smiles and giggles and silly jokes abound and there hasn't been a five minute stretch yet that wasn't punctuated by some sort of chuckle. We started out this morning with a breakfast of choices, wherein my older niece turned down everything yummy in the favor of toaster waffles. This in my house is the breakfast of "there's nothing else left in the house to eat" and yet it was her first choice. We're knee-high in schoolwork this morning as I spend two days being a homeschooling aunt, and I must say it is pretty great.
To my benefit, they are wonderful children and aim to please. Last night, we sat down and made some sweet felt trees for their mother, a project we didn't get very far on for the dropping of needles and the tangling of thread. I've promised them I would help them make things for all their littlest friends, and I also thought I would share them here.
Here are the trees in minutiae

Here is Mollie Mouse, made my myself. She is seen here in her natural habitat with a wagon of acorns:
And who we call bitty baby and bitty mamma going for a stroll:


and I will leave you with this poem the sweet oldest wrote this morning about Little Berry and Myself:
family
by CBP

[Little Berry]
little, funny
yelling,squealing,laughing
baby,cousin, woman, aunt
sewing,creating,playing
fun, smart
[MammaPie]

I changed our names here in her poem for my own anonymity.

Plowing ahead

Yesterday was a day of pins and needles. I was nervous all day and kept waiting to hear from Pappa Starbucks. We've been weighed down, dragged down, we've felt insufficient and inadequate. We've felt like failures. True, we have eachother and a beautiful sweet daughter. But graduating from college left us in a limbo, a place where we knew not what was ahead. We fought for job after job just to see it crumble away until we were thrilled to find out he had been offered a position. A position nannying for someone elses kids, something he is so overqualified for but grateful to have nonetheless. Our biggest disappointment came last year when he was accepted into Teach For America but placed on a wait-list. This was a job he wanted so badly and was really ideal for, a job that meant more opportunities to learn and opportunities to go to grad-school afterwords, things that are virtually unattainable to us without such an opportunity because of financial reasons.
Last night at 7:00 we found out he has been accepted into Teach For America this year. We are thrilled, excited, nervous, but mostly happy. It will of course be lots of hard work and long hours, but I know he is intelligent and will do swimmingly.
Congratulations to us!