A Clean Car, Some Artwork, A Crested Gecko and A Cool Author

Earlier this week I drove Dave's car all day while my van was being washed and detailed courtesy of a groupon Dave had bought me a while back.

Emma and Rebekah were so excited when I picked them up from school in Dave's car! As I put their backpacks in the trunk they peeked out through the backseat armrest with such happy little faces. I had the camera handy because earlier in the day I didn't want to forget to take the picture below, of Rebekah's beautiful crayon work on the walls of the van. I knew they'd be long gone after the cleaning. I remember when Emma told me that Rebekah was drawing on the car and how her tone went very quickly from tattling to great pride as she told me, "Look, Mom! Rebekah made an upside down bicycle!!" I'm sure that's exactly what Rebekah was going for :-)



This picture is embarrassing not only because it shows the crayon marks that have probably been left on the wall of the van for over a year (I kept meaning to jump back there with a magic eraser sponge to clean it up, but somehow the task managed to remain at about #700 on my to-do list), but also the upholstery and cup holders in the back were both filthy. This cleaning was long overdue, and it came as no surprise when at about 2pm I had a message from the guy at the car place saying, don't worry, everything is alright with your van, it's just taking us longer than expected to clean it. Can we move the pick up time from 4 until 5? It was eventually finished and ready to go at about 5:30, and the girls thought we had gotten a new car. Rebekah looked down at the protective foot mats and said, "Hey, we had these in the old car too!" So now we have a mini van that doesn't look like three little girls have chosen to take up residency in there...we'll see how long it lasts.



Speaking of Rebekah's artwork, she has been really into drawing her cousin Triton lately. Here he is cheering on the Brewers, a team established in 1970 as she read on my t-shirt. I missed getting a photo of her drawing of Triton on the board in our classroom at church, but it was equally cute.



And here's one of our little family. It started out as just me in the middle, but then she added everyone else in. Dave is in the top right corner, and as Rebekah said mid-marker stroke, "Daddy is so hard to draw because of his hair!"

I'm sure not loving the huge Jay Leno chin she gave me, but it's a lot better than the picture she drew of me almost a year ago (here, Mommy, this is you she had said handing it to me):

Yikes, the scariest Mommy ever. I hope I don't really look like that.


In other news, we got the girls a real live pet. He's a crested gecko, and super cute as far as little lizards go. He's tiny right now, but will eventually grow to be about the size of my hand. Before we even picked him out, Rebekah wanted to name it Banana. I was surprised that Alyssa and Emma immediately agreed on her name suggestion, they just wanted to add some middle names for Banana. So without further ado, meet
Banana Lemon Mulch Big Bad Bob Sachs:

It will be a couple more weeks before we can handle him a lot. I guess geckos have a difficult time adjusting to a new environment and everything we have been told and read about advises us to give him plenty of time to settle in before we overwhelm him with three little sets of hands that are eager to hold him. He's an awesome jumper and climber too which ought to make things interesting, but hopefully soon, I'll have a little bit better of a picture to share.



Last night, the girls enjoyed meeting James Howe, the author of many books including the Houndsley and Catina books, the Bunnicula series, and The Misfits. We started reading some of his books last year when Emma loved a book by him that her teacher read to the class. He wrote super nice messages in the books the girls asked him to sign and we are so excited to read the new books!