They Got a Crazy Way A-Lovin' and I'm Gonna Get Me Some

**Note: I wrote this post a couple days ago while the kids and I were out of town. Before I could publish it, I lost my wavering wireless connection, and I couldn't ever get it back. We're back home now, but I'll still post my thoughts from the end of our trip.**

My niece, the Baby Goddess, lounging.

We have been enjoying the beginning of our summer to the fullest, balancing equal parts hanging out with healthy doses of working hard. Here's a list, since Cinderella is blaring loudly and I have no extra brainpower for an actual, you know, post:

• The kids and I are, along with my mother, enjoying the last couple days of a week-long vacation in Kansas City, our hometown. We're reveling in the city itself, as well as relatives who adore my children, despite their propensity for tantrums lately. It's lovely.
• I mean my children are prone to tantrums, not my relatives. There has been a lot of infighting among the troops (aka, my kids) lately. I suppose they are just of an age.
• I have (late, as usual) discovered the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and I am in love. I borrowed numbers 2 and 3 from the library and brought them with us to Kansas City. I devoured them, then bought 4 and 5, along with a companion book, at a local used bookstore. I think I might have found something I can stand behind. And it involves Greek gods. Go figure.
• While we are gone, The Professor is (supposedly) working hard at home, getting done lots of things that are hard to get done with little ones under his feet. (Did that sentence even make sense? I am not proofreading. I just refuse.) We have many things on our summer to-do list, what with Notre Dame looming in our immediate future, and the drastic drop of time for household-type things that that will mean for The Professor.
• This lamp:

It's okay if you completely hate this lamp. I understand, especially in the context of this picture. It looks much more in place in my living room, across the room from my Chair of Destiny. I found it at this fabulous store in Kansas City (called Good JuJu, which is only open one day a month, and if that doesn't ante up the anticipation factor, then I don't know what does) and I immediately fell in love with it. And it works, oh my goodness, it works so well.

(And of course, when I brought it home, I studied the shade, and realized that it was simply the original old shade, painted with acrylic paint in swirly patterns. Y'all. I doodle those same swirly patterns all the time, everywhere, anywhere that things stand still and I have a pen, and I cannot tell you how many shades of green acrylic paint (I love green) I own. Uh-duh.)

(Therein, of course, lies the danger in having the Making Things By Hand gene. I look at lots of cute things and think, Ooh, I could do that!, and of course then I have a to-do list a mile long.)

• Besides bringing home a monster of a lamp (it's huge, y'all), I also brought home about 40 different plants, and that is not an exaggeration, because just a few moments ago I stood outside and counted them all, and I promise, there are over 40. My cousin works for a lawn care business, and that is a dangerous thing for me. They had over-ordered annuals and were just GIVING AWAY PLANTS THEY WERE FREE DO YOU KNOW HOW AMAZING THAT IS, and of course I stocked up, even though I try to curtail my consumption of annuals. I told myself I was getting for The Goddess, who just moved into a home of her own after living in my parents' basement for 2 years. And I will let her have first pick. I just don't think she wants them all.
• I also had my cousin buy me a clematis with his work discount, and then I dug lots of fun things (hostas and the like) out of my aunt's yard. Plus I bought lavender at the farmer's market. Plus my mom got plants, too. You should have seen us on our trip home.

And that should about wrap things up. We are loving Kansas City, as we always do, and I will once again, for about the sixty-teenth time, add it to my list of Cities in Which I Would Live in a Heartbeat. Someday I'll tell you about the others. For now, I'm off to soak in the virtues of the midwest.