I suppose all girls have a maternal instinct in them, but some seem to have it stronger than others. In our house, whether it is helping navigate the playground equipment or helping navigate through life's new adventures (like Kindergarten), there is one person my littler girls always look to--Tori. Macie calls her "Toowa" now and I hear it all day. "Toowa, out," "Toowa, push" "Run, Toowa"--and Toowa always goes out and Toowa always pushes and Toowa always runs. And last night at the school open house, when Isabelle walked excitedly down the school hallway holding Jamie's hand, but then stopped suddenly at Mrs. Sickman's kindergarten door, Tori put her arm around her and brought her in. (I would have taken a picture, but I was capturing it with my own mind's eye). She showed her all the fun stuff about kindergarten and even the letter that she sat on for circle time when she was a kindergartner. My girls count on me, but they also count on Toowa--and I love that.





I asked them the other night how many children they thought they wanted to have when they grew up. Isabelle said, "I want to have 3 girls just like you" (of course). And Tori said, "Well, since I sort of help sometimes and know how fun it is, I think I want like 10 or 11."

I actually was having so much fun being "Coach Gretchen" this past week at the Shooting Clinic my church put on, that I failed to take a picture of myself as a "baller" (Don't worry--I have included some that other people took and passed on to me). ;) All the Miller girls had a great week at camp and Macie had a great time reading Dora books, watching Moose A. Moose and spotting airplanes with her babysitters every night.

Of course, one of the best parts of camp was having our good friend Occhy come to stay with us for the week...he is definitely the girls and my favorite Italian.

Unfortunately for me I did not have a good showing at the Miller Family Friday Night Olympic Celebration. The girls have been really enjoying watching the Olympics and so Jamie came up with the great idea to celebrate that this Family Friday Night. We started off eating dinner at the Mall of America Food Court where everyone was required to eat some sort of international cuisine. Jamie, Tori, and I went with Chinese and Isabelle did Italian (Macie had fries from McDonalds ;)). Following our dinner, the plan was to come home, paint the girls' faces with Red, White and Blue face paint and watch the Olympics while we ate an international dessert. Well, my first minor deduction came when I did not have my dessert ready, but I recovered quickly with a relatively easy seeming fried ice cream recipe. My second deduction came when I failed to get the facepaint, but I once again recovered nicely with a quick stop at Party City on the way home from the mall. My final deduction was a big one--and really the one that probably took me out of medal contention. I sort of stepped away from the stove where the oil was heating up to check something on my recipe and I sort of had the heat a little too high...so, I sort of almost burnt the house down. Thankfully, everyone is safe. We had to spend some time outside while the house desmoked. I did gain back some grounds in my overall performance mark because I did end up making the fried ice cream and it was yummy, but not quite enough to get me on the podium. So, the standings ended up as follows...

Jamie gets the Gold for his stellar idea for Family Friday Night.
The Girls get the Silver for excited participation and no complaining when they had to venture away from the usual McDonalds at M.O.A.
And Chuck gets the Bronze for turning off all the fire alarms and getting the girls outside while Jamie and I took care of the fire. Thanks Chuck!

I guess it is back to the training room for me. Oh well.

Macie is not the only one changing in our house...it seems like overnight we went from Tori (or should I say Victoria) playing princesses and dress up clothes to Camp Rock and The Jonas Brothers. What in the world is going on?!?!? And with 10,000 fans (many my age) crowding the Mall of America to see New Kids on the Block yesterday (yes, they were the hot band when I was in school), I shudder to think what the next 10 years or so could be like. I suppose it is time for more lessons learned in Mom 101 (advice from older mothers welcome). So this is real, this is me--I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. I think this makes me the mother of a "tweener"--HELP!!!!!!

p.s. just in case you do not know---the Jonas Brothers are not Tori's boyfriends they are actually a boy band under the Disney Label I think (sort of like Hannah Montana and such....) and Camp Rock is a movie they were in (soon to be released on DVD)