Tess's Tidbits: Back on Track

Do you ever go through a time where you feel like you just can't seem to pull things together and accomplish what you need to, even though you know others are counting on you?  Even when you go to bed at night kicking yourself for not following through with your commitment?  Even when you are plagued with guilt for letting others down?  That's how I've felt these past couple of months.

And on that note, I must apologize for the sorry lack of posts on this blog.  I'm ashamed to admit that I don't really have any valid excuses, either.  It was all just busyness, distraction, and procrastination.  Maggie has every right to be as frustrated with all of us as she has been.  Of course, I wish she could have addressed the issue in a kinder manner...but tact never was my friend's strong point. ;)

Hayden, Emma, and I discussed it, and we decided the best thing to do was to give you a brief summary of all that's happened to us these past months and then start over with a clean slate.  Otherwise, we'll always have the past posts we were going to do hanging over us like a dark thundercloud.

For starters, we've recently rearranged our rooms, and we thought you might like to see the outcome.  Mama helped us with them before her girls all got sick this past week.  Unfortunately, she didn't get to Maggie and Rachel's room or the ABC girls' room.

Forgive me, I really shouldn't refer to them that way until I've asked them first.  Maggie got tired of calling Mama's BFC Ink and Hearts For Hearts Girls dolls by their full names, so she's taken to calling them the "ABC Girls", since their names all involve numerous letters.  You know Maggie and her habit of nicknaming others. ;)  We've all rather gotten into the habit of calling them that as well (it is easier), but we've never had a chance to see whether they mind or not.

Anyway, Hailey and I are certainly enjoying our new set up.  It's wonderful having more room to play with my Calico Critters and my lovely Victorian dollhouses that Grandmama found for me at Goodwill (they were originally Christmas ornaments).

Hayden and Jenna switched shelves with Emma and Charlie, and all four of them seem to be happy with their new rooms:

Those of you who are more observant may have noticed that we missed documenting about 2 important days:  Hayden's birthday on January 29th and Charlie's birthday on February 16th.  You might be especially surprised that Charlie never mentioned her birthday, especially since she had a post about her birthday weekend.  That's just the sort of gracious doll she is.  Mama was so busy with her daughters' birthday trip that she completely forgot about Charlie's birthday, and Charlie didn't want to bring it up in the post and make Mama feel bad.

Birthdays are a bit silly for us.  We don't actually age, so we just celebrate the same birthday over and over again.  Our birthdays aren't actually the day we were born, or even the day we joined Mama's doll family.  They're just dates she picked out and assigned to us.  As you can imagine, this makes it a bit less devastating when our birthdays are overlooked than you humans might find it if someone forgot your birthday.  Of course, we love the excuse to have a special day set aside for each of us.  But to be honest, Mama often has a hard time remembering our birthdays, so we usually end up celebrating them at least a day late. ;)  We all make sure to offer each other birthday greetings on our special day and try not to expect anything more than that.

All that to say that so far this year, the birthday "celebrations" have been very low key.  Mama forgot both Hayden and Charlie's birthdays for about a week, and then offered them each a gift, complete with a lengthy apology.  Poor Mama takes it really hard when she forgets about us.

Hayden got a "Man From Snowy River" poster for her birthday (you can see it hanging on the wall just behind her head in the following picture).

Charlie got some more Toy Story Squinkies:

She got Jessie, Bullseye, and Woody. :)

Let's see, what else was I supposed to share?  Oh yes, the Literary Ladies Society meetings.  There's not much to share there.  Hayden decided I could just give you a brief overview, and she'll pick up telling you about the meeting this month.  

The entirety of our January meeting was spent assigning a schedule to each of our meetings for the year.  Sadly, we're already behind on said schedule because our February meeting was cancelled.  The third Saturday fell on the weekend that Mama was gone, and while Papa knows that we're alive, it still makes him rather uncomfortable to see us moving on our own and everything, especially when Mama's not there.  Since he was working on projects around the house, we decided it would just be best to stay in our places and keep things as normal as possible. :}  We should be back on track for the third Saturday of March, though. :)

I did have a great idea for another "Tea with Tess" post, but it never came together like I hoped it would.  Those posts are much more involved than my regular posts, so they take much more time and organization.  I'm going to take Mama's advice and not promise posts ahead of time, but I do hope to have another "Tea with Tess" post at some point in the near future.  

Well, I believe that we're now completely up to date.  I can't tell you what a relief it is to be all caught up. :)  My hope is that we won't let things get that behind again, but we're only vinyl, after all.  We can't be perfect all the time. ;)  

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, dear readers.  We'll talk again soon! :)

Tess