Ready or not, here we come!

Well, there's no turning back now - today was middle school orientation. My baby is actually going to grow up and leave me behind. I'm not sure that I'm ready for it - but I'm pretty sure she is. I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture (it was taken at 8:30 last night - not the best picture-taking time of day), but she has CHANGED this summer! Since I had such a miserable time with junior high (think nerdy, big nosed, zit faced), I decided to treat her to a bit of pamering this summer. She is now allowed to wear makeup (okay, just mascara and a bit of eye shadow), she got a new stylish hair cut (notice the side bangs?), and last week I even took her into my "face lady" for a teen facial with "brows"(lose the unibrow)!

I know it is all external, but my work seemed to pay off today at orientation. Mikaela stepped right up in the foreign world of middle school choas and got her picture taken, received her ASB card, requested her new PE uniform, and took me on a tour of the school enough times that she can now find all of her classes without a map! Lets hope the confidence lasts her through the first week of school!

And lets also hope I can drop her and her two friends off on the first day of school before I melt into a giant blubbering mess ...

Choices...

Here is a picture of our summer ...

Painting a house can be such a difficult thing to do ... but even more difficult is the task of choosing a color! Our summer project was suppose to be painting the house, but reality has finally struck, and the actual summer project has been choosing the color. I think the fall project has now become painting the house. Unfortunately, the girls want to stay with the "purple" house, and Addison and I want to go more modern with a warm brown and white trim. Who knew there were so many shades of brown? No, we don't want green-brown, grey-brown or yellow-brown! We just want a nice mocha brown! After weeks of buying testers (see lovely picture above), we have finally reached the point of driving around, stopping at "pretty" houses, and going to the doors to ask the owners what color their house is! Sounds desperate (but much easier), but still hasn't worked as planned. Although most people have been flattered that we would choose their house color to copy, we have received many false leads. Some home owners have not spoken english, some just don't know their color, and some, who have willingly given us the color name, have ended up giving us the incorrect name! Yes, we get very excited to finally get a color name, only to buy it, place it on the house, and realize that it is not the actual color of the house we were admiring! Ugh!

So, thus is our summer...

And we are beginning to like the lovely look of the back of our house ... hope our neighbors are getting a good laugh out of it.

Our NEW Mall!

For all those who come home to visit and look forward to visiting their favorite old mall, well, it is no more. Southcenter has officially become Westfield, and you can tell by the two pictures above, it has been completely redone!

We took the girls to the new mall last night after hearing rave reviews of it's remodel. It's gone from being an old and dumpy mall, to the biggest mall in the Pacific Northwest. Grand Opening was Friday, and it now boasts 75 new stores, a 3 story window next to the new food court, parking garages, second story covered walkways from the garages, two levels of stores and a third level housing a new AMC theatre! I'm thinking, "yeah, right - I've seen the cool malls down south and dumpy old Southcenter could never look anything like those!". Well, we were pleasantly surprised!

The girls REALLY wanted to be able to "walk the whole mall". Okay, no biggie, we can easily get that done. After 3 1/2 hours, we FINALLY made it through the entire NEW section of the mall - we never even went through the old part! You need to come up here and see for yourself - you will not believe your old mall! If I was an elequent writer like the Green Duo, I could use my writing to paint a picture for you of the sophisticated shopping atmosphere, the relaxing seating that includes TV's for the husbands to watch while the girls shop, the stores that are more like entering a Disney ride than a mall store, roomy food courts and parking garages that remind the girls of the airport ... but writing is not my "thing". Here is my summary: the place was packed, there was no parking, the food was great, and we needed several more hours to truly enjoy the place. I also learned that taking three girls, who are all now concerned about "style", to the mall together is a mom's nightmare! This year we will be doing all school shopping one-at-a-time with mom! They each have their own "style" and each want to go into their own stores! I felt like I was being ripped apart the entire time! Oh, the fun is just beginning around the Smith household ...

http://thesledgehammer.wordpress.com/2008/07/27/what-240-million-gets-you-these-days-a-look-at-the-westfield-southcenter-expansion/