Faced with the impending school year, I'm filled with dread and anxiety. To cope, a total reorginization of furniture and clothing occurs (Shane's favorite, as you can imagine.) This reorginization has led me to places like Cosco and Ikea in search for those items that promise to make life clearer and less cluttered. I come home with buttloads of sponges, green for counter tops and blue for dishes, pork chops to get us through the fall and enough chicken sausages to invite the neighborhood over for brunch. The retail therapy improves my mood temporarily and then the anxiety returns. What is the saying? When mommy's not happy nobody's happy?

We are on the 4th night of Mahalia's rigorous sleep training. Her nightly protests have been met with a looped recording of me singing her favorite lullabies and more stuffed animals jammed into her crib than you can shake a stick at. Amazingly, she manages to smile at her father and I in the morning, despite our torturing her.

You can see that she appears completely unfazed by this, her first yucky life lesson.

We jetted out to San Francisco. Shane went to work and I caught up on Big Love. I sweat gallons in the muggy New York heat packing my suitcase and only brought sweet little sundresses for Mahalia. We had to do a little consignment shopping for the little lady, buying items like tights and pajamas with feet. Sarah reminded me what Mark Twain said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer in San Francisco." I googled to make sure not to mis-qoute and found that Mark Twain never said that at all!!! Check it out: http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=009Ckt The Internet is brilliant!

I made a bold move deciding not bring the camera on this trip. We were, afterall, going to hang with our buddy, Sarah, who never seems to be awake without one of her cameras slung on her wrist. If you're interested in checking out some details (including some very cute pics of you know who) I recommend checking out her own blog http://halebecker.blogspot.com

I do regret not capturing some shots of the Endsluirigans taking a dip in Lake Tahoe or the signs for Donner Pass. If all goes as planned, I'lldo that on a future trip.