The Sprague Lab

There were lots of tired ladies on airplanes this afternoon/evening. This much I know.

Some didn’t sleep at ALL last night. Some (probably most) of us got delayed in the airport in Chicago. I’m walking in now through a pouring rainstorm, about 2 hours late. Very sleepy, glad to be home to my handsome fella and my (sleeping) kids, and SO glad and grateful to have the chance to meet people from all over the world who’ve changed my life.

Liv.

Jeanne.

Joan.

Susan.

Amy.

Lauri.

Kari.

Tori.

Veevs.

Lisa (and Todd!).

Lisa.

Jana.

Shell.

Janet.

Deb.

It is a privilege to have spent the weekend with you - misting up sometimes, laughing a LOT, marveling at the idea that people from ALL over the world can meet for the first time and feel like we’ve been friends forever, tearing up Chicago in a way that only 16 digital SLR-toting, external-hard drive-and-graphics-card-talking, Photoshop loving women can. I think the town will never be the same. And I know I never will be.

Okay, and we must mention that we were standing outside the hotel, saying goodbye to Todd and Lisa, and who walks up but Ms. Ali Edwards and Simon! Heck yeah! They were in town for the Democratic Convention, and it was SUCH a cool coincidence that we were all at the same hotel! Holy cow! Ah. I know I’m definitely not the only person who can point to Ali as the person who was one of the first inspirations for me in this crazy hobby, and she has only shined brighter as I’ve gotten to know her.

What I loved about this weekend? So much. SO, SO much. A really good pork chop on Thursday night (and let’s not forget the Carrot Cake for Two (ha! proved that menu wrong!), and a REALLY GOOD slice of Chicago-style pizza on Friday night - together with conversation that ranged from current topics to digital scrapbooking (of course!) to hardware and software and families and love, and why can a group of women NOT get together and talk about childbirth? There was some of that, too. HA. Todd loved that part immensely.

But there was so much more. The city was the perfect backdrop for a weekend of fun, but it was seeing the beautiful faces, hearing the stories, meeting these friends in LIVING, BREATHING color, seeing the light shine in their eyes, being part of the love for the hobby and for what it means to all of us. And of course I cried. Multiple times. I’m overwhelmed sometimes with the opportunity I have to be part of this - so grateful to have a voice and a means with which to tell my own stories, and to have a passion and an opportunity to share with others.

The photos will begin rolling in - I have a card full, and there’ll be a gallery of all the lovelies and their antics over at the site. For now, though, I have some serious sleep to catch up on. Whoa. I thought it would actually be kind of … well… weird to go traveling and not teach something. But it was SO.MUCH.FUN. And we’re worth it, right?

Tonight was Wall-E. Back home in North Carolina. I have yet to hear how that went, so I’ll post on that later. :)

Tonight I’m on the 32nd floor of a hotel in downtown Chicago, overlooking the river and the beautiful Navy Pier. We’re here - nearly 2 dozen of us  - gathered in from all over the world for a meet-up of friends from “The Spraground” at JessicaSprague.com. It has been an amazing day. It’s so awesome to meet these women in real life - to put faces with avatars and user names, and to feel instantly as though we’ve known each other for a long time. We walked, we laughed, we shopped, we ate(!), and it was wonderful. Love Chicago. Love that scrapbooking (whether done with a pen or a mouse in hand) has the power to bring people together - literally and figuratively.

We’ve already decided to make the meet-up an annual event. So far it’s one of shopping and sightseeing and simply getting together for a fun weekend. Who knows what next year will be? p.s. It’s in Vegas. hehe.

It has been so cool to hang out with so many camera-toting women, too! Made me feel right at home! :D So there’ll be plenty of pictures to go around. So much laughter and silliness, and so many people saying, “I can’t believe this is happening! All of you, my friends, right HERE!” And that is the coolest part of all. :)

Love from Chicago. Another report to come tomorrow. :D 

I told Ele he could have a couple of minutes before bedtime to play with his trains. I came in to read him a story and put him to bed, and he was hiding behind his blinds. It went like this:

“Mama, say knock knock.”

Me: “Knock knock”

(he pulls open his blinds)

 

Ele: “Nobody is home!”

And here is where I get stumped, so I need some prompting from behind the blinds.

Ele:  “Mama, you say, ‘It’s the gwabbledy goblin!”

Me: (still confused) “Ok. It’s the grabbledy goblin!”

(A roar of laughter from behind the blinds).

Jared comes in. I say, “Who is the grabbledy goblin?”

Jared (laughing): “OHHHH, the Grabbin’ Goblin? Here, this is how it goes.”

And he proceeds to act out the entire scenario again perfectly with Elliott, who is loving it.

Apparently they have both seen this particular episode of the Backyardigans way more times than I have. But at least I had the presence of mind to catch a pic of the goblin behind the blinds.

And just like normal, no matter how hard I try, I keep missing days posting.

Last night was an adrenaline-and-okay-some-Diet.-Mt.-Dew-fueled race to the finish line as we held the registration for Candice Stringham’s digital photography class at JessicaSprague.com. The class sold out in less than 10 minutes, setting a new record, and nearly putting Jared in his grave for anxiety over whether the server would support the traffic. It slowed for a couple of minutes of heart-pounding action (see? This is what action is for geeks), and then came back just from the brink - there were times when we were getting 1000 connections a second.

Last night as we were going to bed I told him how proud I am of him and the server he built (we rent a dedicated box in a secure center - they provide us the hardware and Jared installed everything from the ground up),  he said, “Only a quad-core processor with 4 GB of RAM could have handled it.” And then he kissed me. MMM. What can I say? I love ‘em nerdy.

We also had some friends over for dinner for the FIRST time since our new backyard was done. We just barely escaped a rainstorm, and were able to grill chicken and hotdogs for the kids, and then roast marshmallows over our firepit (wood-burning, of course, since apparently Jared cannot call himself a man and have a gas-burning firepit). It was SO much fun. All 4 of the kids disappeared to the playset, and the parents sat around the firepit laughing and holding a little informal competition in marshmallow roasting. True to the nature of our personalities, I lit 3 in a row on fire, and Jared, ever the patient one, quietly rolled his in the heat for 10 minutes had three PERFECTLY roasted marshmallows literally drooping off of the skewer. That sort of sums up the difference between us right there. And why we make such a perfect team. It was also really funny to joke about how much his marshmallows that looked like flabby arms. HA. (As I licked marshmallow char off of my fingers…)

Back to the news:

• Candice will be offering another photography class this fall, so if you missed out on registration AND you own a digital SLR camera that you haven’t taken off of the Green Camera mode, check it out.
• I’ll be traveling this weekend to the First (Annual?) Spraground Meet-Up in Chicago. There’ll be nearly two dozen scrapbookers from all over the world who’ve found online homes and lifelong friendship, coming together for a fun weekend of par-tay! Can’t wait to meet some friends I’ve gotten to know online in the past year!
• Our awesome summer intern, Benjamin, is working hard on posting the Photoshop Friday tutorials from the index here to a much easier-to-use interface at JessicaSprague.com. Check his progress here as he gets more tutorials up! You can print, email, and save these tutorials to PDF files for further enjoyment! This will become the main hub for tutorials after they are posted here, of course!

You’ve no doubt noticed that the blog has been, ahem, a little lacking in photographic appeal lately. I blame that on needing to install my new copy of Lightroom and on not having a file server in working order. Both of these things were resolved over the weekend, so back to pictures! Yay! Except not now. ;) Now I must go wake up two sleeping kids.

We’ve been home for nearly a week now, and things have almost reached the state we’ll just refer to as “normal”. Suitcases unpacked. Laundry done. Server back in working order (after a new motherboard was installed by Dell yesterday), all computers have internet access. Okay, so we have no light fixtures in the kitchen and we’ve since discovered that 5 electrical outlets aren’t working, but that’s small stuff. Internet access. Clean clothes. Food in the fridge. That lovely sense of order. THAT is big stuff.

The new tutorial for my column for CK’s July issue is up:

http://www.creatingkeepsakes.com/mag/article.ihtml?index_field=2185

And there’s a super-cute mini-kit compliments of Michelle Coleman from Little Dreamer Designs! Yay! Check it out:

 

I hope your weekend is going great. Enjoy the free digi goodness! :D 

All is mostly back to whatever passes for normal around here. :)

We got a new router last night (love Target open until 10 p.m.), and I picked up a little inflatable swimming pool for the kids, now that we have real, honest-to-goodness GRASS in the backyard and we aren’t scared to go back there. So we slathered them up with sunscreen, filled the little pool and they spent a total of 3 1/2 hours in it. Cheap entertainment at its finest! And it was nice to just step away from the computer, watch them play, read my just-arrived copy of Lisa Bearnson’s awesome new book, and listen to delighted squeals as Rowen pretended to be a mermaid (who could, of course, grow legs and jump and skip every time she left the pool - and then re-grow fins to get back in the water), and Elliott pretended to be (what else?) a “Jupiter fish”…

Rowen’s preschool teacher is holding a week-long half-day daycamp this week, and invited both kids to participate. Today was day 2, and she told me that yesterday they played a game, “I am going to the beach, and I am taking a….” and then she’d roll a ball to each kid and they could answer what they were taking to the beach. Elliott’s item?

A planet.

Of course.

Obsessed? Maybe a little. I don’t know ANY other kid who can name the four largest moons of Jupiter and can pick out the Hubble telescope from other telescopes, or pretends that blowing on my face is not just wind, but “solar wind”, let alone a kid who has just turned 3. But there it is. And it is awesome.

Of course we still have a few gremlins in our new web site, which Jared is working on one by one, and we have one naked lightbulb in the kitchen, and Dell is coming on Friday to have a look at the file server which still will not boot (and I have no access to my pictures), but today? Today I drank lemonade and sprayed sunscreen on my two small swimsuited kids, watched as they played for literally HOURS in their pool, listened to squeals of laughter as I pretended to be a shark and gave my opinion on what mermaids and Jupiter fish do and do not like (“Do mermaids like to run and skip and slide down the slide?” “Of COURSE they do!”).

Tomorrow? Who knows. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it (in about 6 hours…).

Asheville was dreamy. Magic. We stayed at the Grove Park Inn. Ate dinner on the terrace as the sun went down. Lounged about sleeping in until 11 a.m. almost every morning. Got a facial (me) and a massage (him) - something we’ve never done before. We didn’t even do much other adventuring (except driving part of the way home yesterday along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and stopping at Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi), because we only wanted rest. And a good thing, too. The Coming Home has been .. ahem.. a bit rocky..

You heard the first part of the story. The storm, which knocked out the cable modem, also knocked out the power to most of the first floor of the house. Got a new cable modem today, and it looks like the router doesn’t work, so I hooked Jared’s computer directly to the cable modem, and at least we have one computer in the house with internet. Whew. That’s something!

The file server still won’t boot. We’ve got triple redundancy with twice-a-day backups, so the data is safe. The computer, we don’t know. That’s an adventure for this evening. As it is, I can’t access any of my files until at least tomorrow.

The electrician just came to check out why the power was still out in much of the kitchen. Turns out the surge shorted BOTH of the track fixtures - the one over the kitchen table and the main one over the island. Remember those cute fixtures? Yeah, they’re dead. He replaced one of them with a collar and a naked bulb, and just pushed the wires up into the hole of the one over the table. A bit of a downgrade. So now we either need to repurchase and reinstall the track and pendants, or have the electrician do it (we’ve been meaning to look at getting a couple more recessed lights put into the kitchen, so this might be the perfect chance, who knows?). And in the meantime (he gave us an estimate of 2 weeks) we can eat in the glow of the single naked lightbulb over our kitchen island…

I still count the fact that one computer has internet access (even if it isn’t MY computer, and even if I’m straddling a wire that crosses 5 feet to the cable modem) as a win, so the current score (but who is keeping track?): Reality 12, Us 1. But we are still kickin’.

Sounds like pizza night. :P AND we have internet access to be able to order it!

How has your Monday been? Anybody else joining us for pizza night tonight? Or when was your last “*sigh* sounds like pizza night” experience? Let’s commiserate!

In other news, Jared and I were married 8 years ago today, in a little ceremony in Utah. It was the best day of my entire life, and I’m an incredibly lucky girl to have found him. :) I will post a pic as soon as we figure out what happened to our file server…

Hello! This is Jared, Jessica asked me to post from my office because she still does not have internet access. She just wanted me to note that registrations for the organization classes will happen as scheduled tonight as posted on jessicasprague.com. She mentioned that we might have to push it back in her last post do to not having an internet connection, but we’re not going to need to do that. So that’s the latest news, hopefully we’ll have our internet connection back soon! Thanks!

- Jared Sprague 

So last night we were lounging about in our hotel room, lazily pondering whether we should get the backend of our class organized, send out emails, schedule things, etc. And we were like, “naaaahhh, we’re on vacay!”

We even got a call from Grandma that there was a pretty bad storm back on our side of the state last night. Bad enough to knock out the breaker to one whole section of the house. Jared’s mom told us she couldn’t get online from the laptop downstairs. But we didn’t know the extent of the damage until we walked in at 8:00 p.m. We were on vacation until then. And THEN, reality came back to hit us like a .. well.. like a lightning strike.

Apparently the lightning strike was powerful enough to go right through the surge protector to our cable modem and our file server.

Panic.

If I see blood, I can be calm. If someone is injured, I can usually maintain a clear head.

But when we have CLASSES and REGISTRATION and EMAIL and (gasp) GOOGLING… well, now is the time to freak out.  There were some wild-eyed stares. There were some raised voices. There was some rushing about, and some slamming of doors.

And now it is 8:52 and we are at Borders finishing up the class organization. Desperate times, and all that.

All should go well for the beginning of Now We’re Rockin’ tomorrow.

But depending on when we can get another cable modem to our house, we MAY need to push the organization class registrations back until Tuesday or Wednesday this week. PLEASE stay tuned, and I will send out a general email to everyone as well.  

I will keep you posted, ok? Our house is too quiet without the hum and whir….

Oh yes. You read that right. The Couple Who Never Travels Together is actually going on a little side-trip for our anniversary (#8, officially on Monday). We’re driving over to Asheville tomorrow morning, staying til Sunday, and we can’t wait!

Grandma Carol is here visiting us, and she offered to stay with the kids while we go away for a few days. Oh yeah. Love her forever for that. :D Our last trip together was for our anniversary in 2006 (Remember the Outer Banks and stumbling on a hang gliding school? That was the very last adventure we had just us). So we’ll go see what adventures we can have in a westerly direction, and hopefully catch up on some sleep, and be able to talk to each other face to face, instead of calling over our shoulders such romantical things like, “I’m uploading that new image now, can you refresh?” and “Did you turn on that SEO optimization checkmark? It breaks the store! You can’t turn that on!” Ah yes. The romance runs deep around here when your office is your life is your hobby is your partnership. That’s why this trip will be so nice.

While I will have my laptop and will undoubtedly be checking email, I will try not to. ;)

And who knows? Maybe will find another hang gliding school. :D

Have an awesome weekend, and Happy Father’s day on Sunday to all the dads out there, especially if you are the husband of a scrapbooker (ahem, or a scrapbooker I’ve turned to the dark side who also now wants external hard drives and a wide format printer…). I know what kind of man it takes to be married to one.

(And ladies, you can copy and paste that from me. It also contains subliminal messages that he needs to buy you the technology gadget of your choice…)

Happy weekend (and yeah, it feels good to be saying that on a Thursday…)!

 

 

*Warning: This is an Enabler Alert*

Win a New Nikon D60 

There is currently a CK contest to win a FREE Nikon D60 camera kit. All you have to do is enter your info on the contest page. Sponsored by the fine folks at Nikon, and ends July 15.

Still don’t own a copy of ACDSee Photo Manager?

Here’s a cool discount on my favorite program for organizing digital supplies. ACDSee Photo manager changed the way I scrapbook, because I can actually find all the kits I’ve downloaded. :D 

Receive 40% off ACDSee 10 Photo Manager! Take advantage of the Summer Fun Sale! Offer Expires 08/26/08

 

 

And here is what I picked up at DesignerDigitals today. ;)

• Spot Dots No. 02 Brushes-n-Stamps
• Filmed Overlays No. 02
• Double Painted Masks No. 02
• Grunged Up Alphabet No. 01 Brushes-n-Stamps
• Clementine Paper Pack and Overlay
• Messed Up Edge Die-Cut Masks
• Scanty Journal Lines
• Scanty Journal Lines No. 03 Brush Set
• Scanty Journal Lines No. 05 BrushSet
• Scanty Journal Lines No. 02 Brush Set
• Mail Room No. 04 Paper Pack
• Graphic Pop Circles No. 02 Brushes-n-Stamps
• Letter Box Clusters No. 03 Brushes-n-Rub Ons
• Floral Clusters No. 03 Brushes-n-Stamps
• Grunged Up Photo Blocks Brushes-n-Stamps
• Messed Up Photo Blocks Brushes-n-Stamps
• Expressions Tapes
• 1 x French Summer Kit

 

One of the things I love about CKU is the chance to connect with other scrapbookers, and also to be reminded of why I do this crazy thing in the first place. I wandered about with my camera today, spying on my life, trying to capture a few of those details that might otherwise escape.

 

This is what a tea party looks like if you are a 4-year-old girl who happens to love trains and Lightnin’ McQueen. Note the smaller sized teacup to accommodate the mini-train. :) She invited ALL the friends. Ah. This photo makes my heart smile.

 

Elliott running through the kitchen with his new Rocket. The faster you run, the louder and faster he plays music. Oh yes. And we got that for him ourselves. Have only regretted it… a few times… 

 

 Elliott making a bubble beard in the tub. He only knows how to do this by sticking his entire face in the bubbles (mouth open) and then making a super loud POOF to blow the bubbles away from his mouth. And he looks just like a little garden gnome, minus the sweet red hat.

 

Two kids, spied through the bathroom door, watching the water go down the drain and make a whirlpool. There is much kicking and screaming and general melting down if the whirlpool cannot be witnessed each and every night. And it has sound effects. But it’s part of the ritual, and that makes it special.

Just a few glimpses as I slip back into Ordinary Life. :) 

It’s good to be home.

Home. One of my favorite words. :D

Thankfully, travel is another one,  so all is well there. I arrived back from CKU  few hours ago, in time to turn around and go pick up my MIL from the airport for a 9-day visit. She came just in time for the record-setting 100-degree temps around here. :)

CKU.

Was awesome. I have so much admiration for the brave ladies (and gent!) who took the chance on the digital class and came ready to learn this whole new thing. It takes a lot of courage to bring a laptop to a scrapbook show. My very favorite thing about CKU is about 2:00 on the album days, after everyone has been working for a few hours, plugging away at pages, practicing the techniques and the layer and file management, the room goes quiet, and gets this air of concentration about it. The sound of smart people thinking. And it becomes obvious that everyone is getting it. The number of questions goes down, and everyone begins to gain that rhythm. It’s incredible. So humbling. Photoshop is not an easy program to learn (and still harder to master), so being able to be there when this moment begins to happen is so cool.

A huge shout-out to the brave TA’s who joined me in the adventure on Friday and Saturday, so willing to offer patient assistance - thank you for your help!

I love being able to see my far-flung friends Ali and Paolo and Margie and Tim every couple of months, going out to dinner or chatting over lunch - and can we talk about the Houston location? The Westin Galleria is located directly attached to a huge mall. Oh yes. And you have to cross the mall’s hallway to get to most of the meeting rooms - it was hard not to get sucked out into shopping every time I went by there. I did manage to resist. A few times. But I also managed to get my shopping fix in the off-times as well (I haven’t been to a mall in like 6 months). Sometimes there’s nothing sweeter than a quiet no-kid stroll in a mall. :)

But more than anything, I’m glad and grateful to be home. CKU gives me a great inspirational pick-me-up - being around all the scrapbookers, and being part of this awesome event reminds me why I do this, why I started scrapbooking in the first place, and what I value most about my life, and so it’s good to be home to see my peeps again. :D

I hope your weekend was great! If you were at CKU this weekend, big waves and hellos to you wherever home is, from  my home, N.C.

After weeks of preparation, the Big Day is here. Jared has flipped the switch, and “like chocolate syrup pouring over the world”, the domain name is slowly changing over to the new site.

We’re excited. We’re a little nervous. You might even find, ahem, a few things still out of place. But we’re so excited to present the new look, the new classes, the new features.

If the JessicaSprague.com address hasn’t updated for you yet, be patient! It can sometimes take a couple of hours for the switch to hit your computer. :)

See you on the other side! Visit: http://www.jessicasprague.com for all the goodness! 

You know it has to be nuts around here when I’m looking FORWARD to CKU for a little rest and relaxation! LOL!

*EDITED* Found all the TAs! Thank you! 

And speaking of rest and relaxation, if you live in the Houston area and would like to come share in a day of great fun, geekiness, and Photoshop love, and would like to be my TA for either Friday or Saturday, shoot me an email! Significant experience in one version of Photoshop is a must. :D 

Can’t wait! It’s going to be so much fun this weekend! 

 

Now I owe days 5 and 4. Haha!

But seriously, we have been working SO hard to get things ready -  top that off with an attempt at balance and seeing my kids every now and then, and maybe eating once or twice. Oh! And heading over to my sweet friend Heather’s Girls’ Night In party tonight, in which we ate tons of snacks and watched Pride and Prejudice. I’ve never seen the version with Keira Knightley. I think it’s safe to say that all 10 of us were misty-eyed, romantical balls of goo by the end. OO honey. And a roomful of women with NO HUSBANDS groaning made it all that much better. :)

Then it was zip off back home and back to work! Hehe.

So what about the sneakies, you might ask? Okay!

Day 5 Sneak! A Shoebox Class for the Mac-Heads! 

I mentioned that there will be three (3) new instructor-led classes coming up! And for those of you who use a Mac and are feeling left out by Heidi’s AWESOME Getting Organized with ACDSee class, never fear! We have heard you loud and clear. I’ve invited my good friend Molly Schneider to teach a Shoebox class! For those of you with a Mac, Shoebox comes very highly recommended as a full-featured organization system, and Molly’s class will help you take full advantage of it! Molly’s class will involve a LIVE portion, and there are more details to come! :D

Day 4 Sneak!

(uhh.. this is where I start to panic a little bit - ack! 4 days!)

Day 4 Sneak! Self-Paced Classes!

This one will be a lot of fun, I think! I’m going to be releasing self-paced classes, for those who are in-between the instructor-led classes or if you’re just building skills and practicing. You’ll get instant access to these classes and can register anytime. Topics and formats will range from albums to layouts to hybrid projects. Can’t wait! I’m excited to continue to offer new stuff!

Have a great night, and see you for Day 3 of the countdown tomorrow! :D 

After yesterday’s big announcement, you might think there’s not much more that could surprise and delight. But we’ve got more, oh yeah. The next announcement relates to the brand-new look and feel of the site.

We feel like we’ve grown a lot in the past year. We’ve learned a lot, and I know everyone who’s taken classes has learned a lot. I’m grateful for the opportunity to participate in that growth, and as we thought about the new site and what we wanted it to BE like, to feel like, we made a list of some descriptive words, and went through a process of trying to distil our mission into a single statement.

Here it is:

 

I know that learning the stuff we teach at JessicaSprague.com (digital scrapbooking, photography, organization, and more to come) is not easy to learn. It’s not stuff you learn overnight. They are skllls that come with practice and hard work, and areas of knowledge that you can continue to learn things about for the rest of your life. But they are skills that grow. I love the idea of growth, and the opportunity that life presents us all to continue to try to gain knowledge and skill - growing to be better, different, more observant, more confident people. That’s what scrapbooking is to me, and what JessicaSprague.com is about.

This is about changing lives - yours and mine - it’s way more than Ctrl-c Ctrl-v, way more than the latest black-and-white conversion technique. I can look back and see the growth in so many areas of my own life in the past year, and I’ve heard from so many people who have grown because of their hard work in the digital and organization classes - who have accomplished goals, worked through incredibly difficult personal or family issues, who’ve found friends and a home and an opportunity to share their stories - the common everyday occurences that make life magic, and memories worth recording. I am honored and humbled to be part of YOUR life, and reading YOUR stories (in your layouts, on your blogs, in your comments here, and in your emails to me) motivates and inspires me. I hope you continue to consider JessicaSprague.com your home for growing your skills and staying inspired, too. :D

Much love to you in ALL you do.

 

It was Thursday pizza night here. Our backyard is almost finished, but we’ve been out there playing and eating kind of nonstop all week. The kids took advantage of the sprinkler going on the new sod (strategically placed near the bottom of the slide) to get soaking wet. They loved it! I love the laughs and squeals of delight, and then we just strip them down just inside the back door and run them up, cold and teeth-chattering, to the tub.

I walked in as Jared was helping Rowen get dressed, and he was teaching her, “I see London, I see France, I see Rowen’s underpants!” She thought this was the FUNNIEST thing she had ever heard, and I knew in my heart that we would live to regret this decision. She was awake for the next approximately two hours, and every five seconds (through pizza on the patio, through stories, songs, lights-out, and through her closed door we heard, “I see England (close, right?) I see France, I see DADDY’S UNDERPANTS! RAAHAHAHAA!” And there was an ongoing singsong undertone from Elliott (turning slow circles on the patio), “underpants, underpants, underpants, underpants…”

I was eating pizza and looked at Jared (you know, THAT look?), and he was like, “What? She’d have learned it eventually from other kids.” 

The funny thing about this, is that he said that like HE was one of the other kids. True, that.