This is me in front of a gigantic bougainvillea plant in an alley a couple of blocks from our house. See how big it is compared to Annalie & Bug?

I know I should have written this post yesterday since that was Day 4 of 7 Days, and today is actually Day 5. But yesterday was busy and by the time I got my photos uploaded to Flickr I couldn’t form coherent sentences.

Yesterday was supposed to start with a trip to Snail Mountain for our traditional doughnuts-and-lattes breakfast with Brenda and Bug, since it was my mom’s last day here and she’d never gotten to do that with us before. When Annalie woke up, though, she really wanted to do our other traditional breakfast that we do with Brenda and Bug, which is chocolate pancakes. My mom didn’t mind too much, since she got to sleep in a bit longer that way.

Brenda divided the pancake batter into two and added Ovaltine to one and green food coloring to the other. We used the squeezy bottles to make some really fun bi-color pancakes. We didn’t take any photos because we were too busy trying to keep Bug and Annalie from burning themselves on the griddle. They both insisted on being right there helping, which is great but a little nerve-wracking for moms who have not even had their coffee.

After breakfast we went to the park! While we were there, Brenda talked me into leaping and running down hills for our 7 Days self-portraits. Unfortunately mine didn’t turn out at all, but Brenda got a really funny one that made it look like we were shimmying & shaking to some groovy 80s music. The kids had fun at the park too.

That afternoon we had to take my mom to the airport to catch her flight home. Yes, the time had come for her to leave. We were sad to see her go, of course. But we knew my dad was missing her, not to mention the rest of our family and my mom’s friends and the people at church. And even though my mom misses us when she’s not here, I know she misses the people back at home too.

My poor mom. Always torn between two places. That’s pretty much been the story her whole adult life, since she lived in Nebraska after she married my dad but most of her family was still in California. I have to say, I can really sympathize. Being in the Navy and moving around means we have family and friends scattered all over, and my heart belongs to a dozen different places.

After we dropped my mom off at the airport, we drove back home. Bug was sooo tired and fell asleep about five minutes from our house. When we got home she woke up and was rather cranky, as one is when one is awakened unexpectedly from a nap. Annalie was tired too, since she’d gone to sleep late the night before and gotten up early in the morning. Basically, Brenda and I had two really tired kids on our hands. We let them watch TV for a while, and then sent them outside to play.

We should have known when they played outside together peacefully, drawing with sidewalk chalk for 20 minutes without a squabble, that there was trouble brewing. We were in the kitchen where we could hear them outside the open windows when Annalie came up to the screen door and said, “Mom, I have to tell you something. Bug got a little carried away with the sidewalk chalk and decorated the wall. But I’ll be honest: I started it.”

I went outside to view the damage, reminded her that she knew she wasn’t supposed to draw on anything but the ground, and told her she needed to get the hose and wash the wall off. I told her I’d take the sidewalk chalk away for the rest of the day, and that if anything like that happened again, she would be punished.

Then I got the camera, because come on, how could I not? Annalie cheerfully tattled on herself, admitted her wrongdoing, posed for a photo with her “sorry” face, cleaned the wall off, and helped me pick up the sidewalk chalk so I could take it away from her. And the drawings were cute!

Bug’s “sorry” face was pretty cute too. It wasn’t as cute when Troy had to use cleanser and a sponge to get the rest of the chalk off the walk. I didn’t get a photo of that.

After we took the chalk away, the girls decided to put on swimsuits and play in the puddles left on the patio till dinnertime. By the time we finished dinner, it was clear that they were both very tired. The squabbling had become more frequent. Brenda and I looked at the clock, and it was only 5pm. Ack! What to do with two tired kids for another hour and a half till we could reasonably get them ready for bed?

Time for a walk around the neighborhood, of course! We were actually taking the walk specifically to take photos by the giant bougainvillea, but we took the long way around and took more photos on the way.

Annalie thought these numbers on a fence were cool, so she took a picture of them. She also took pictures of a funny cactus and a tree that looked like it was made out of drinking straws.

I was taking pictures, too, of pretty flowers, the kids, and a few self-portraits just in case the bougainvillea thing didn’t work out. As it turned out, by the end of the day I had a whole bunch of options for self-portraits—the bougainvillea ones, one of my feet next to a cool stamp in the sidewalk, a reflection of me in a dry cleaner’s window, the one I took of me and my mom at the airport, and a funny one of me taking a sip of Coke Zero at lunch.

I also took this shot of my hand on a pan of madeleines about to go into the oven. A while back Brenda and I were talking about how much we like the madeleines at Starbucks, and I mentioned that I had a madeleine pan somewhere that I bought when we lived in Ottawa, after being introduced to madeleines by a French-Canadian lady at our church. When we first talked about it I wasn’t even sure if I still had the pan, but shortly after that I found it, and immediately researched online for a good recipe so we could make some the next time Brenda came to visit.

I made the batter earlier in the day while the girls were playing. After the kids were asleep I took the prepared madeleine pan out of the freezer and spooned the chilled batter into the seashells while Brenda worked on her computer.

At the same time, Troy was in the kitchen juicing lemons from our tree. Earlier in the day, he and the girls had “picked” lemons by shaking the tree branches and then gathering the ripe lemons into grocery bags after they fell to the ground. We don’t want all those lemons to go back so Troy juiced 60 of them (he counted!) and poured the juice into ice-cube trays so we could freeze it and use it later as needed. We still have another 100 or so lemons to use. Crazy!

Brenda, meanwhile, had seen JustJenn’s recipe for Bruleed Lemon Bars and joked that when I was done with the madeleines I could get started on the lemon bars. I immediately said that sounded good to me. Brenda laughed and said, “You don’t really have to make them…but if you want to I’d love it! I’m in lemon heaven!”

I replied, “Look, you should know me well enough by now to know that if you suggest cooking something to me, I’m probably gonna say yes! Especially if it involves lemons!”

Then somehow we decided it would be a good idea to make lemondrop martinis since we had all that lemon juice. I googled the recipe and amazingly enough we actually had all the required ingredients, so Troy made enough for two drinks.

We don’t have martini glasses so we had to serve them in these little wine glasses Troy got at a wine festival in Cyprus on one of his Mediterranean deployments. Troy and Brenda both thought they were quite tasty. I had a sip of Troy’s and as I expected, it tasted like cough syrup. Most mixed drinks taste like cough syrup to me, especially when they’re made with vodka.

I’ll just stick with my plain old Coke Zero, thanks.

Oh, I almost forgot! Here is Annalie’s 7 Days – Day 4 photo, a simple mirror shot.