Photos to Melt Your Heart (And If They Don't, You're Dead Inside)

We arrived home from our summer trip yesterday around 4:30 in the afternoon. After the girls totally crashed out by 7:25 p.m., I stayed up way too late unpacking, doing laundry, cleaning up after the cat, making a grocery list for today, writing thank-you notes for Genevieve's birthday gifts, updating the girls' baby books/toddler journals, and catching up on my personal grooming. You know, actually BATHING and WASHING MY HAIR and re-doing my chipped toenail polish. Because strangely enough, I didn't seem to have time for good grooming while we were gone. You'd think I would have, but I didn't. I was up until after 11:30 last night waiting for my toenails to dry. Although we'd hoped Genevieve would continue her at-grandma-and-grandpa's-house trend of sleeping through the entire night and also not waking up until after 7 a.m., it was not to be, and the morning commenced with several toddler tantrums.

All of which is why, rather than following through on my original plan to get some preschool-volunteer work done during the girls' naptime today, or possibly--do I even remember how?--EXERCISING, I'm thinking something more like drinking a Diet Coke out on the patio in the sublime late-summer sunshine, reading a library book. While eating chocolate. And ignoring my to-do list.

Oh, and showing you this:

(Formal portraits of the girls, taken during our trip north;
Julia 4 years old, Genevieve 2 years.)