This girl #humblebrag

I just want to brag on this girl a little bit. She has been working SO HARD on her distance learning and time management, and within the last few months she's gone from still working on her school work when I'm making dinner at 6:00 to now she's regularly done by 12:00 or 1:00, right on par with her brother and sister. Her grades are great and the biggest concern these days is that her chromebook has glitchy A/V. On top of all of that, she took her reading assessment last week and jumped four levels up to a late 5th grade level. Her teacher said she probably would have kept going and she probably would have gone up to mid-6th grade but they ran out of materials.  I took her to our local bookstore to pick out new books and she was just so sweet and excited and grateful. She spent a long time deciding between four different animal books before landing on these two, but she asked me to take a picture of the others so she could ask for them for her birthday. 

It's hard to be the youngest and even harder when you've all been stuck together for a year, but she remains such a fun, funny, joy to be around and it's so fun to see her little, kind of odd, brain at work. 
 

You know those moments when you think you're pretty hot shit?

This year I finally thought to make copies of some of the pictures my mom has from way back when. Most are adorable baby pictures that illustrate just how much Syd looks like me and also show that Eli got his weird, awkward smile from his mom. But some are just pure awesomeness. Behold

I can pretty much guarantee that Gilette or Billy Joel was playing in the background. Also, pretty sure there's a half can of Herbal Essences hairspray on those perfectly coiffed bangs.

At the time I thought it was perfectly natural for a woman to ask a bunch of delinquent 16 year-olds to model wedding dresses at a bridal show. Even better, she let them all do their own make-up. Now? I'm thinking there was some awful bus accident that kept all the real models from making it. Seriously, one of the other pictures has a girl carrying a baby down the runway.

 

This one's just adorable. I guess if we really need to mock something, it could be the macrame wall hanging, but really? Curlers and footie pajamas? That's the definition of Hot Shit. 

Dancing Queen

Dude. How freaking cute is this?

Also, I'm pretty sure every single video of Sydney has some commentary from her brother in the background. Usually of the "Look at me! Look at me!" variety. Oh he loves his sister, but he HATES not being the center of attention. Like his dad :)