Girls Afternoon Out

V & I met up with the O'Keefe ladies of Wake Forest on Saturday. Lori, Eavan and Emmy were brave enough to fight Christmas parade traffic to spend an hour in an incredibly loud Marbles Kids Museum. It would have been longer...but the traffic was bad and parking was tight. And appetites come before fun so we headed off for food after a brief visit to the Mr. Potato Head exhibition.

Our go-to spots were packed with families from the Christmas parade so we went to a place that Lori and I like a lot- Raleigh Times. Yes, we took our girls to a bar. They fit right in.

Emmy, Eavan and Virginia

Stop judging me...I promise there were plenty of other families in there and we DID sit in the non-smoking section and we only had ONE beer. The menu told us we had to.

Don't ask how many the girls had before jumping on the bar and dancing...

I swear, I had NO IDEA Mimosas had champagne in them...we thought it was just orange juice. :) I kid, I kid. No really, stop dialing child protection services. It was the powerful effect New Order has on people that made them act like this. You just can't help but dance, no matter where you are. Even T is not immune.

Support Crew

Well I've gone and done it again. I've signed up for a 1/2 marathon in March thanks to my dear friend April. Sweet Virginia is cheering me on already. She greeted me after work wearing my running gear and saying "time for a run, Mama!" This is the image I will be picturing when I hit the 2 hour mark in the race and realize I still have 30 minutes more...

Carrots

Does anyone else feel like the world is on fast forward these days? Typical day in the Bruce household:

5:30 a.m. Alarm goes off for work out. Sometimes we get up, sometimes we don't. But the alarm always starts early.
6:30 V wakes up ready to PLAY. Thankfully T is willing and able to play while taking in his first cup of coffee. I, on the other hand, sit in my chair drinking coffee and reading the paper until I turn into a human again.
7:00 E nags T to hit the shower
7:35 E gets her shower, and attempts to keep V from using/breaking all the makeup in her drawer as she gets ready for work.
8:15 T&V leave for daycare/Queenie care, E leaves for work.
8:30-5 E spends the day "offering people the opportunity to give" money to the Symphony.
9:30-6:30 T spends the day shooting and editing video of strangers
5:30 Pick up V
6:00 Get home, play with V, start dinner
6:30 Feed V, T gets home from work
7:00 Feed the grownups
7:30 V gets in the bath
8:30 V is tucked in for the night
9:00 T&E fall asleep on couch
10:00 T&E decide it is finally late enough to get in bed.

REPEAT Mon-Fri

With all that going on, it truly takes and effort to slow down and smell the roses. Or in today's tale, the carrots.

Around Mother's Day we got a bunch of pots for the back porch and had a great time planting them with flowers and herbs for the summer. This Fall, we've planted spinach, arugula, chard, cilantro and carrots. Not just any carrots, Carnival carrots. So named because they are supposed to turn out pink, purple, white, yellow and orange. We pulled up a few this past weekend for thinning purposes, and to check them out, and look what we found:

Are these not the cutest thing you have ever seen?

Better yet, V & I had a contest to see who could take the smallest bites. Guess who won?

So if you don't hear from the VeggieBruces for a while, know that we may be smelling the carrots. Or trying to find the pause button on our life.

Goings on...

What have we been up to? Too much to have time leftover to post on the blog apparently...so here's a quick update in pictures.

The Fair








Vollmer Farm, Year 2
(Revisit 2008 shenanigans here)

Pumpkin Carving








And of course, Halloween!