This morning started out badly.

A text from Southwest alerting me that my flight was cancelled.  Not delayed, but poof, no longer in existence.  A quick flurry of panic, tears, and texts later, a new flight was booked, to a different city, at a different time.  Then, I horribly burned my wrist with my broiling hot curling iron, and ordered a bathing suit from Walmart.  Yes. Walmart.

All before eight am.

So I headed out to Target to get some more magic remedy for the now very angry blister on my wrist.  And candy.  Because Target doesn't sell jalapeƱo Cheetos anymore, dumb jerks. And some other stuff that I randomly threw in the cart in my weird emotional state.

Currently I am writing on a plane en route to celebrate my current favorite baby girl fetus, with friends I love and live to freaking far away, taking a break from reading Bittersweet, because I just did my make up in the airport bathroom and I don't want to land looking like a jacked up raccoon.  I can't wear mascara and read anything lately, or listen to Hillsong United's Zion.  I can't.  I am a sobbing my face off, emo mess with the both of them.

But yesterday I saw Lauren Conrad, so whatever.  You know just sitting in front of us at the beach with all her friends.  All American and happy, drinking out of an adorable mason jar, so festive in red white and blue.  The very Lauren Conrad who is the only reason I ever even walk into a Kohl's.  The designer of my most worn top, inventor of my pretty much daily braid hairstyle, the girl who's hair and makeup is my most favorite.  So as I sat there, all fan girl, thinking of some way to talk to her without being even more dorky than my normal super dorky self, I notice little miss sunshine, the most social of all butterflies, Janey, standing smack in the middle of Lauren's group of friends.  Little JJ, with her wild, salty curls, talking to a beautiful girl with impossibly long, bright red hair.  Without hearing what she was asking her I immediately knew.
"Are you Ariel?"  was her query.
The precious redhead bent down, touched JJ's hair and told her "no, but I am friends with Ariel."
JJ's face lit up, and she scampered back to report her findings.  
She went back a half dozen more times to ask her things about Flounder, Ursula, and such, and each time not-Ariel indulged my little blondie's interrogation.
I wasn't brave enough to talk to Lauren, but I did thank not-Ariel for being so kind.  I also totally And not-Ariel's swimsuit?  Bought it. From Walmart. (Not-Ariel had the anchor one.  I bought black polka dots.)
 {Shane, stand here and let me pretend to take a picture of you, when actually I am going to text it to Drew because LAUREN CONRAD IS IN THE FEDORA ON THE LEFT!!!}


{What?  No, I'm not stalker.  I am just taking pictures of my baby, see, he's in the frame of one of them.  That totally counts.}

Oh, and took some stealthy paparazzi pics.  With Shane as a ruse, of course.
Thank you Lauren Conrad for having such nice friends.  JJ will always remember this year's 4th of July as the one in which she met Ariel's friend.

I will remember it because of this:
I might have cried a little.
Because, I mean look.
How could I not?

Funny thing, I am actually wearing another Lauren Conrad top as I write and there is this pretty button on the back that keeps getting trapped in my hair, messing up the curls that I destroyed my wrist getting, and giving me crazy tangles.  That is what I could have told her.  Because I am sure that there is nothing one would like better when enjoying a holiday at the beach with their friends, than a random customer complaining about button placement....  But really, the button is awful.  She would totally feel my pain, being her hair is always lovely, and she would not like a button getting in the way.


Next time Lauren.  Next time.


We are surviving summer.
The weekly schedule is causing STRESS (we have had to stray from it about every single day).
The daily schedule is saving me from descending into mean mom.
Thinking that we need to go the dry erase marker route with the weekly one.  Except I just don't have it in me to go to Costco right now.  Or the laminating store.  I just do not.
The kids are happiest if the day involves outside and water.  So we have been outside and in the water nearly every second of every day.  I am already on the fourth bottle of sunscreen.
These are the moments I hope they remember when they look back on their childhoods.
Because their childhoods are pretty dang rad.