Things that made me smile today:

~ Abigail's look of concentration and pride as she steered the boat in the river today. She even successfully navigated through some trees without any help from Luis.
~ Simon leaning forward to reach for Luis, a huge grin on his face, when Luis came into his field of view.
~ Irish cream iced mocha
~ Vincent looking like a little surfer dude. He was wearing green abstract print swimming suit, olive green flip flops and a candy necklace with his hair a little long and a heck of a tan (he has Luis's skin tone and tans so easily).
~ spending time with my family with no one else around.
~ Isabella deciding to create a "star chart", essentially a reward chart. She heard about them from a friend. She drew one up, told me how it worked and said it would be for her not waking me up at night. Um, no. She has only woken me up a handful of times in the last 6 months. We decided that it would be for hissy fits. If she goes half a day without a hissy fit, she gets a gold star. She can earn two stars a day. If she gets 14 stars in a row, she'll get a nail polish, and if she gets sixty stars in a row, she'll earn $20 to spend any way she wants at Old Navy. We are 3/4 of the way through day one and hissy fit free. Considering her behaviour as of late, this is a Good Thing.
~ Riding the moped. I always feel about 14 years old again when I get on the Spree. It's fun to ride around town, wind in my hair.
~ My decision that our trip to Great America's homeschool day will be a two day get away. We'll take the kids to Shedd Aquarium, ride the metrarail and free trolley, splash in the fountains, walk the shoreline downtown, stay in a hotel. It should be a great time. I'd like to go to the Art Institute, but they would probably like the aquarium more, and I don't want to squish too much into a day. Maybe I should push Luis for two days downtown plus Great America...

I have decided get rid of our front yard. It is small anyways, only about 20 feet by 10 feet. I'm going to put in a path and landscape it with perennials, herbs and bushes. This will be a long term project, but phase one will start next spring. Maybe I'll do away with the terrace grass too. I always love the look of yards that consist of landscaping like this when I see them in magazines or real life, and there is simply no reason I cannot create this. It will be a work in progress, and I have given myself permission to have it take a few years to get established. My perfectionist tendencies get in the way of things like this sometimes.