27 Dresses

On Saturday, I took the girls to Mount Vernon for a birthday party, but I'm not driving over an hour just for a birthday party, so I decided to let them pick out some fancy dresses for an upcoming wedding/Easter/their birthdays. We went to the mall (Woohoo! Real stores! Suck on that, Wal-mart!). They both fell in L.O.V.E. with the same dress. You would think, great, how easy, I can just buy them matching dresses, but NO. They don't want to match. That's for losers, not almost-five year-old twins. They were reaching near-hysteria over said dress, so we left the store with no one getting a dress. Five stores and 26 dresses later, we were back in front of the original dress, because Olivia spent two hours convincing Grace that she looked way cuter in the pink and green plaid dress than in the coveted flowery dress. Plus! it went with her hair! Grace, never one to make waves, tentatively agreed to get the second choice dress. I was ticked, because I really wanted them both to have the dresses of their dreams. They're nearing the age where they'll think fancy dresses suck, and I'm trying to get the most out of these girly years, here. Grace convinced me that she did love her dress and so I relented. We then went to the shoe department, and damn if they only had pink sparkly ballet flats in Grace's size. Karma, she can be a bitch. Overall, they were both pleased when we left the store, Olivia resigned to wearing the gold glitter shoes she already has.

The birthday party was at one of those giant playland places. Think McDonald's Playspace on steroids. It was kind of what I thought hell must really be like. About 90 degrees, hundreds of screaming kids, crappy pizza. It made dress shopping with the girls seem like a day at the park.

Yesterday we went down to Seattle for another birthday party. This one was for Mark, a big boy of 39. A good time was had by all, and just as we were getting off the ferry for home, I started getting chills. By the time we pulled into our driveway I was full-blown sick. I spent the night in bed, you know, unlike the rest of you, who probably spent the night doing fun things. Miraculously, though, I don't feel too bad this morning, so yay! Jack also woke up in the middle of the night with a migraine, and between all that and the time change, our house was a pretty grumpy place this morning (Although the girls have been skipping about, singing, "We got a flu shot, we're no-ott siiiiii-ick!"). Only Henry went to school.