I’ve had the girls to myself since Thursday morning, and they’ve been great little helpers for the most part. In particular, they’ve cleaned up messes when I’ve asked as they are well aware that we need to keep a tidy house now that we have put it on the market. We, including the pets, are half way through a busy weekend, all while Mama is at a conference in D.C. This morning I ran around the house cleaning up, tightening down the mattresses, toweling down the sink and shower, hiding the cat and dog food, and similar things that put the finish on our staged home. The girls were great troopers at keeping themselves occupied inside while not making too big a mess.

I finally let them go outside around 9 because it was such a beautiful day. Then I hauled them back inside for a quick snack, and preparing for Siena’s soccer game. That’s where it got interesting.

Siena had a great game and great fun. She’s really blossomed this season, her third in the “under 5” league despite behind closer to six than five now (the cut-off dates for the league are out of alignment). It’s not just that she’s a head taller than the other kids (which she often is) or that she has two more seasons under her belt than the kids that recently turned four. It really comes down to her drive. She’s finally showing some aggression, always going after the ball. I see some of the younger kids doing what she used to do: chase around after the pack of kids but not going for the ball. Siena, meanwhile, is going in and kicking straight at the ball, knocking other kids over, and scoring lots of goals (probably 6 today, I lost count). It’s enough to make a father proud.

In any event, after her game we rushed home to do some final prep for a scheduled showing that was set for thirty minutes after Siena’s soccer game ended. Just as I was going to scoop up Tenzing to put him in his carrier, the doorbell rang and it was the first real estate agent, 20 minutes early. I was not pleased. I managed to get all the animals into the car and back on the road in a few minutes. We took the animals to Mama’s office, where we dropped them off for a brief visit.

We then headed to the mall for a quick lunch at Burger King. The girls love getting the fries and apple slices, and since Siena wanted a hamburger and Thalia wanted the chicken fingerthings, I got two kids meal. This means they each got a crown, which is of course my real motivation for writing this tonight:

and

After a trip on the food-court carousel (literally, a merry-go-round in the food court), it was 2 PM and time to head home. The girls fell asleep as I drove by Mama’s office to pick up the pets. Amusingly, Tenzing was so stressed that he was drooling profusely.

We got home, and Thalia went right back to nap. I was sufficiently tired that I went down for a brief nap too, but Siena as usual just powered through, had a snack, and went outside to play. When I finally went out to really check on her, she had gathered her gardening tools and our weeding bucket, and was working her way through our front garden weeding out the grasses and weeds. How awesome is that!?

Thalia was up around 5 PM, they watched “Elmo’s Potty Time” — digression: first time ever watching this, I had to take the protective tape off the DVD case, but the girls had seen it in the morning as one of their play time activities while I was cleaning up a bathroom was to go through our DVD collection and see what we had, which is the first time they’ve ever done that (the DVDs are stored in a closed cabinet) — and then we had dinner, bath, books, and bed. Whew.

I was very happy and proud of their behavior today, and especially with Siena with the unprompted gardening after all the other stuff we’d been doing. As usual, such a good set of girls.

We are, nonetheless, very much looking forward to seeing Mama back home from the conference!