Sicky sicky sick

Smitty McSickly is ill. He has some sort of RSV-like virus with a really long and ominous-sounding name that I can't remember. Basically he has a nasty cold and is too little to blow his nose so he is all stuffy and boogery and congested-in-his-chest-ery. Food tastes icky to him, sleeping in his lonely crib is not nice and people keep suctioning his nose and testing his blood O2 and touching and poking and pestering him when he just wants mom-snuggles, thank you. I keep telling him we're trying to keep him out of the hospital. He says to leave the dinosaur socks ON and stop pinching his pudgy feet.

Also today he crawled into the laundry room, industriously dug around in a basket until he found a particular sock, clutched it to his chest and said "oooooohDOboh!" He hugged it a minute more before crawling off, special sock in hand.

I have no idea.

Today's checkup involved too much of the poking and listening and pestering. Now he has two angry-looking infected ears and the doctor suggested 3 days of antibiotic injections and I just couldn't do it. We'll try the liquid.

You've definitely had too much of the doctor's office when sleeping in your sibling's trash-pile room is the best alternative.

February decisions

Remember how February makes me go crazy? Like that one February when I up and decided that we needed to move to a different house as in right now this minute? And the time that a fist through the wall started a years-long remodel of our entire upstairs (totally worth it!) And that other February when we sold our beloved Pathfinder because there was not enough room for the carseat of the third baby that I could not possibly continue life without.

February. It's a problem.

I gave last February a pass because sweet baby Smitty had rearranged our lives pretty well on his own. My major decisions last year were scaled-down decisions.

Will baby look more snuggly in his Valentine pajama suit or his hooded sweater suit?
Should we both have a little nap in our bed, or in this delicious patch of sunshine?
Do you suppose another diet Dr. Pepper before lunch will keep him awake?

February again! Change is in the air. Joe's recently replaced the red jeep with a black one. Supposedly he'll sell the red one later. The driveway is getting crowded. Also Big Blue had some ignition problems, because he was feeling left out. Blue decided that using a key in the ignition is Lame and Common and something that Other Cars Do, and that keys were no longer for him. So instead of a boring metal ignition key, Joe fashioned one from a bit of Trex decking that he found on the ground and this little notched bit of wood is how we have to start the truck.

......yep.

But hey! Swapping one jeep and repairing one truck is boring. It's been done. It's February! Joe also decided that if the Tahoe needed to be registered and I really couldn't stop complaining about it, then it was probably time to sell it too. Normally I think I'm not a complainer. I would like to think so. And maybe if we hadn't purchased the Tahoe from criminals, maybe I would have felt like I could trust and love the car. The little things would not have bothered me. But every minute of its life, I felt like I was waiting for something to go wrong. It made me worry. The heat only worked at 3 and 4. The keyless entry worked some of the time. The tachometer worked most of the time. The speedometer came and went. The CD player only played at certain temperatures. It squeaked. It rattled. And I worried.

It sold. I watched it lumber off it its new life in Idaho without any regrets. Actually we left it in the bank parking lot where the buyer was supposed to go back for it, except he called the next day to ask where was that bank again? Because he couldn't remember. I hope he found it.

And because Joe's brother is borrowing one of our cars and another is parked at his mom's house for no particular reason, our driveway was suddenly, strangely empty.

The neighbors commented on the new look.

So today, hooray! we officially joined the Nissan team again, with Nissan #5 and Pathfinder #2. And little Violet exacted a promise from all parties to not switch any of the cars for a year at least.

This is me not caring

On kid #3, sometimes you flatter yourself that you are starting to figure things out. Then you get slapped in the face with (yet another) thing you failed to consider.

Holiday decorations and a pre-walking munchkin bent on terror and destruction, for example.

I left the nice nativity sadly tucked away in its box.

I put up the little tree which will, probably, most likely, I tell myself, not crush any little someones when they pull it over on themselves.

With the shatter-proof ornaments, because my kids have been known to eat tree-related holiday decor and, you know, safety first!

And the old, old, like from our haunted house old, gold garland.

And told the type-A part of my self that it's perfectly fine and everything will survive and he'll eventually lose interest and next year we can trust him with more of the decorations out.

Which is, I'm almost pretty sure, totally what's going to happen.

It had to happen someday

Yesterday I told someone that baby Smittins did not, at all, for any reason, crawl.



Thanks for making a liar out of me dude.

Fortunately, we've started construction on his prison.

In which I lost a rubber duck... and my mind

Who knows why this memory is sitting here, in the front of my brain, right now this very second. But it is. And I think it will not go away until I type it into my blog, Pensieve-like, and store it forever. So here goes.

One day I was playing with a very little Violet and a very helpful husband scooped up a then-baby Dash (about the same baby-size and baby-cuteness as JackJack) and took him for a diaper change. From the other room I hear:

"What. The....?"

It's the tone of voice that lets you know, from two rooms away, that there is Something Wrong. So I helpfully call out "what the what?"

"There's a rubber duck in Dash's diaper!"

"Like, IN his diaper?"

"In it."

My first crazy thought : The baby ate a rubber ducky? Is that even p o s s i b l e?

"Are you sure?"

".... pretty sure..."

So. What ACTUALLY ALL CAPS happened, as near as I can tell, was that Dash was playing with a rubber ducky as I was changing his diaper. Obviously, something distracted me (squirrel!!) and he somehow stuck the duck between his legs and I totally didn't see it as I strapped him in. I also didn't notice it as I buttoned up his onsie or as I carried him around before his nap. And if you don't believe it, you obviously haven't witnessed my amazing powers of obliviousness.

The husband did not appreciate that the rubber ducky left a dent in Dash's naughty bits.

No rubber duckies were harmed in the making of this post.

In which he earns himself another bath

Smittins is an accomplished ruiner of outfits. Lose your focus for one second and he'll pee an entire change of clothes. Plus the new diaper. And any other dry materials within a 3-foot radius.

Don't let the pudgy sweetness fool you, he's endowed with crafty baby skills. He's laid off this particular trick just long enough to lull me into a false sense of security. I was changing his diaper today and thought to myself 'self, it's sure been a nice long while since I've had to change all of baby's clothes along with his diaper.'

One should not think these things, even in the privacy of one's own head, because baby will employ his super-sensitive Power To Read Minds (the power that lets him know you're about to lay him in his crib, allowing him to snap himself wide awake and start batting himself in the eyeball with renewed vigor) and choose that exact second to whiz all over his pants, socks, onesie, twosie and overshirt. And possibly his own face.

And then he will look you straight in the eye and giggle. Fer realz people.

As punishment, I should have dunked him in the ever-loving mess that is the kids' bathtub. But he got to try out the Bumbo seat and the kitchen sink instead.

The indignity. It can't be that bad, right?

I thought not.

The new Silence of the Lambs

Apparently you can also silence them with sliced deli meats.

Happy 2011!

My first resolution is: actually think about making resolutions.

Perhaps less of a resolution and more of a task for today: take down at least one of the Christmas trees. Perhaps start with the one that has been up for more than 1 calendar year.

Let's take a nice picture

Christmas Eve... cute new jammies... sitting in front of the tree... what could possibly go wrong?


Oh yeah...

The fall-back excuse

"I'm pregnant" is a great excuse for most of my failures right now. Examples:

I DID make my children a non-cereal-based breakfast (fresh strawberries and milk) but totally let Bart put maple syrup in his bowl. Not good maple syrup either. Generic-brand, corn-syrup-based, regular ol' pancake syrup.

I have a meeting with a client and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make it out of my pajamas.

There's a strand of Christmas lights that has blown off the top of the house that hangs attractively next to the front door. It's been that way for a week. It will probably stay that way until Christmas.

I'm sure I can think of many, many more... but right now I'm too tired.

I'm pregnant.

Bending over backwards... to be the worst ever!

So you would think that the Brent Brown Toyota saga would be over, right? You'd think that after we had to drive all the way back to the dealership to pick up the license plates that they had not (and had no intentions of ever) put in the mail, we could wash our hands of the whole debacle.

You would be wrong.

About 2 weeks later we get a call from someone who has 'taken over our account.' Since they still supposedly owe us $$ for the safety inspection we had to get, Joe took the call. It went a little like this:

Sales Weasel: Hey there! I've taken over your account and I just wanted to touch base with you and (insert more smarmy weasel-talk blah blah blah.)

Joe: Oh yeah?

SW: Yes! I wanted to ask you why you didn't purchase the '05 Tahoe from us.

J: .....................?

SW: You know, I took over this account and wanted to see if there was any way I could get you into a different car with us?

J: Are you talking about the Tahoe I bought in February?

SW: Oh... well... really? My notes said.... Umm..... The guy who had your account is..... no longer with us.... uuuuhhhh.

J: While I've got you, I did want to ask about the money they keep saying they're going to send me for a safety inspection.

SW: Umm, well I could ask... But it would probably be better if you just called back and spoke to someone else on your own.

You know Sales Weasel, that is a pretty good idea. If only anyone at the dealership understood the finer points of answering or returning calls. Which they don't. So, dear readers, if anyone ever goes to that dealership and embarks on a months-long Festival of Incompetence, don't say I didn't warn you.

Come on. They couldn't possibly botch every detail.

Right?

Remember when Brent Brown Toyota sold us a car and we got the ultimate run-around because not a single person on their staff could offer up an honest answer, or even return a phone call? After the 48 hours of time-wasting annoyance they put us through, we could at least sigh a sigh of relief that we would never ever have to deal with their incompetence ever again. We could just get back to worrying that somehow they managed to mask some serious problems with the car we currently own. Good times.

Interestingly, someone from the dealership also left a message to say that she had read the Dear Brent Brown blog letter and she wanted to 'set things right.' I thought that was a nice gesture and called her back.

She didn't answer.

Nor did she return the call.

But really... it's not like they failed to do anything right. They sell cars every day. I mean, they did take our trade-in car and handle all the paperwork with the bank and pay off the remainder of our old loan in a timely manner, so that we would not get calls from our bank asking why the payment for our Nissan was late.

Right?

....right?

In which every used-car-dealer myth is confirmed

Dear Brent Brown Toyota

I would not say that our most recent car-buying experience was the worst ever. I would not even go so far as to accuse you of being the most dishonest dealer we've ever done business with (that honor still rests with the seller of the Pathfinder, who - among other things - gave us a falsified 'safety' inspection. Totally legal.)

In fact, at the mid-point of the transaction, I actually entertained the notion that we had purchased a vehicle with a minimal amount of hassle. In fact you even agreed to hold our trade-in vehicle so that Joe's mom could purchase/register it from you the next day, at the exact trade-in cost. That seemed like such a nice, human thing to do.

Then the lying began.

I suppose I can't actually accuse you of outright lies. It could be completely possible that someone arrived 2 hours later and fell in love with the Pathfinder and offered to buy it on the spot for MORE than the trade value. They might very well have been able to see past the salt-encrusted exterior to the lovely SUV that lay underneath. They could have been searching high and low for an interior that was equal parts microfiber and orange goldfish crumbs. It could have happened!

But I doubt it.

I understand that in the excitement of such eager buyers, you may have not found the time to return our phone calls. We appreciated the salesman's possibly-sexist refusal to speak to my mother-in-law in a civil manner. Old fashioned manners are so charming. When my husband actually had to drive to the dealership to track down the sales manager, he totally did not resent spending his last day of vacation explaining the importance of verbal agreements. I did appreciate the myriad of excuses you then gave for holding on to the Pathfinder. It gave us so much to choose from!

I do love choices.

When the Mystery Over-Eager Buyer failed to materialize, we were instead told that the car had so many problems that it had to be gotten rid of wholesale. In fact, you went so far as to have a mechanic perform a lengthy and thorough safety inspection after the dealership had closed and without disturbing the salt-crusting! Truly a miracle.

Of course we were interested in hearing the laundry-list of problems that had appeared in our beloved Pathfinder. Especially since my husband had just done a pretty good safety check of his own before we drove it 500 miles to St. George and back 2 days earlier. And especially since your own service manager had test-driven the car and found it worthy of a good trade-in value. Whew! I understand that you may have wished to shield us from any unpleasant news. Therefore your flat refusal to disclose any of the supposed $900 worth of repairs was completely warranted. In fact, this conversation...

"What exactly is wrong with the car?"

"We can't tell you."

"I'd like to know the problems it had."

"It doesn't concern you. But it won't pass safety."

"Who performed the inspection? I'd like his name."

"We can't tell you that. It really doesn't matter. Ummm... he's not even here right now. Yeah that's it..."

...totally didn't make us suspicious at all.

In all fairness, it was nice that you let us spend an entire afternoon taking the Pathfinder on one last trip, to get a different safety inspection at our own expense. Which amazingly turned up not one single problem. And you let my husband sit in the parking lot, not letting the Pathfinder out of his sight until the sales manager grudgingly signed all the papers so that my mother-in-law could finish the purchase of the car.

In conclusion, thank you for re-confirming that all my preconceived notions and gross generalizations of car dealers are completely validated. I will absolutely recommend that if anyone is considering buying a car from you, they should run screaming for the hills.

Yours etc...

Green Chili Chicken Salad

For dinner last night I tried this recipe - a copycat of my favorite Bajio salad. It turned out really nicely and we all loved it. Although I cheated and didn't make the dressing. I just went to Bajio for chips and salsa and asked them for a few cups of dressing. I don't use a lot of dressing on any salad (that's where the sneaky calories hide) and the chili chutney was plenty of flavor so unless you're really craving the dressing, I think the salad can stand alone.

Now, let me go ahead and put this out there so you can all laugh at me and then Learn From My Mistake. This recipe uses jalapeno peppers and the ones from my garden were hotter than the fires of Hades. Which was kind of a surprise because last year they were as mild as a bell pepper. So I didn't put on the nitrile gloves that I keep in the kitchen for this express purpose. And what with the peppers and onions and all, my eyes were watering and I picked up a tissue to wipe my nose.

I'm sure you can fill in the blanks from there. It wasn't the best part of my day. And here's the lesson you're learning:

Skip the traditional home remedies. Unless you want to spend many uncomfortable minutes with a stick of butter and a popsicle** up your nose, searching the internet and reading about other people who have somehow gotten the pepper oils on their naughty bits and then chosen to share that information with potentially thousands of strangers. If that sounds like a poor option to you, just go straight to Plan B and get the thing that works.

WaterJel Burn Gel.

Joe used to keep it with his tools for the occasional muffler or hot-engine burn. Personally I think every kitchen needs a bottle of it too. Because at some point you're going to brush up against a cookie sheet or grab a too-hot handle or an extra-springy oven door is going to snap closed on your arm (don't laugh, it happened!) and then you will thank me.




**In a pinch, the popsicle will probably feel pretty good until you can remember where you keep the burn gel.

When one stress meets another

It being the Week of Weird Dreams, here is another.

In my dream I had to design a blog. I spent most of Tuesday doing just that, so it was kind of annoying to still be thinking about colors and pixels and vector shapes while trying to enjoy a relaxing sleep. Anyway...

I have a great idea for this design, but something is wrong with my computer. Maybe the power was out in a lot of the house (like it is in real life). So I'm running around with a jigsaw and a hammer, cutting intricate designs into giant pieces of sheetrock and wood. GIANT pieces. Like 6 feet long. And I'm desperately trying to hold these pieces up against the wall, layering them one on top of another, to illustrate to Amy what my vision is for this blog design. They are so HEAVY! And she is saying really helpful things like "I really like the front pattern but I wonder if you can cut it out in blue instead of green?"

Surprisingly, I woke up more tired than I went to sleep. I think tonight might be a doped-up-on-Tylenol-PM night...

Calling all dream interpreters

So last night I have the following dream:

We've decided that we'll start driving my Dad's old Mazda wagon. It's the car I learned to drive a stick-shift in. I think it was donated to the Kidney Foundation several decades ago so I don't know where or how we acquired the car.

**When this car was 'mine' (meaning I had to pretend it belonged to my Dad and share it with my sister Kelly) it was really old, semi-reliable and sounded like a prop-plane, so you could hear it coming from two counties away. The back end of the car was composed of equal parts rust and blue-and-white paint from where Kelly and I painted the car for every football game. The front end was MudPuddle Tan except for a patch on the driver's-side hood where my Dad hit a deer. There was a 1-foot square patch over the big dent. Either Dad couldn't find faded/antique car paint that matched the color, or he's possessed of such a frugal nature that he used off-white exterior house paint because it was "basically the same color".

So for some mystery reason, we've decided that we need to start driving the Mazda around again, except that Joe thinks it will be much nicer if it has tinted windows. So he calls his brother, who, at one point, knew how to apply window tint. Brett decides that the car is too old for tinted windows and instead installs aluminum window blinds, in a stunning color combination of red, white and tan (to compliment the house paint). So in my dream I'm arguing with the guy installing the blinds because the cord to raise and lower the blinds doesn't seem like it works very smoothly. I'm asking him how he expects me to drive when I can't reliably raise and lower the blinds that cover every window. This is when I wake up, still feeling stressed about arguing with the blinds-guy.

So dream interpreters... have at it.




**The part about the car's color and condition is true. I didn't dream it.

I know I'm going to jinx it but...

I just noticed that today was Friday the 13th. And I'm still alive.

Unlike certain members of my Italian family, (Mom) I'm not really a superstitious person. I don't really believe in good luck or bad (I do, however, habitually throw salt over my left shoulder when I spill it). But you may recall that last Friday the 13th, my bike tried to kill me. And the one before that summed up something like this (I swear I'm not making any of this up):

Originally posted Friday, July 13, 2007

If you have a busy week, everyone else will plan things for the same week.

If you have an even busier week, Joe will switch shifts and be gone for all of it

If you have a million things planned, your child will get the flu. **Turns out it wasn't a stomach flu, he had that cryptosporida from the swimming pool and he ended up being in the emergency room overnight for dehydration. Awesome huh?

If your child gets the flu, he will somehow manage to puke on every single blanket and shirt he owns.

If your child pukes on all his clothing you will dress him in his sister's shirts

If you dress your son in his sister's clothing, your husband will give you The Eye. Not the good one either.

If your son barfs on all of his bedding, his shirts AND his sister's, you will have a lot of laundry.

If you have a mountain of laundry, your washing machine will break.

If you have a broken washing machine, a pile of laundry will build up, take over the basement and threaten to spill out onto the street to show your neighbors what a bad mom you are.

If you get frustrated with Laundry Mountain, your children will put all their efforts into tearing all the books off the shelves and dumping hundreds of thousands of Polly Pockets all over the house.

If you have piles of towels to be cleaned and a totally dirty house, you will forget it all and go on vacation for the weekend.

Since you can't do laundry you decide that you'd like to come home to a clean kitchen and do the dishes.

As you're doing the dishes the sink will clog and 12 gallons of water will pour out of a broken pipe all over the kitchen floor.

As you're trying not to use The Swear Words you leave your husband to fix the sink and start to pack the truck.

If you tell your daughter not to play around in the truck as you're packing it, she will tell you that "it's OK", grab the rear-view mirror, yank it off the glass and break the windshield!!!


If you (after a towel-throwing, door-slamming, screaming fit) decide to abandon the vacation entirely and send your husband by himself, he will have Guilt and take your daughter on a mini-fishing trip to a nearby pond.

If you take a three-year-old on a mini fishing trip she will catch a hook on her leg, cut herself and be afraid of fishing flies forever.

If your three-year-old injures herself at Adventureland Park you will vow never to return there ever again because this is the second time in a row that you have removed a bleeding child from that park.

When you get back to the house you will have two tired, dirty (bloody) children, a broken washing machine, a messy house, a soggy floor and a husband who gets to go on vacation without you AND your neighbor will back out of her driveway and try to crush you with her Tahoe.

If this happens, you will remember what day it is today. Then you will sit down on the wet floor amid the barf towels and the Polly Pockets and laugh until you cry.

So yeah. Friday the 13th has not so much been my friend. However, it's almost 6pm and that's 2.5 hours from bedtime. Even though we tempted fate by inviting several pre-schoolers over to decorate Valentine's cookies, I think we may survive. If anything fabulously terrible happens in the next little while, I'll be sure to post about it from the bunker in which I'll be hiding.

Do you know...?

...that the Puffs Kleenex tissues are not the ones with lotiony-soft goodness of tissues? Oh, you can get Puffs Ultra, or Puffs Plus, or Puffs with Vicks or Puffs Containing Butterscotch Pudding... but of course your added features cost more. Didn't regular old Puffs used to be the good ones?

So imagine how angry I am that, right as my kids got colds, I stocked up on several boxes of the base-model Puffs For People Who Don't Read Labels Carefully Non-Lotion Tissues. Only to find that they're not the softy-soft tissues for the happy noses of little ones. Or me for that matter!

That is my Nyquil-inspired rant for this evening. You can bet that hubby is picking up premium Kleenex on his way home from work. Happy weekend.

Go Utes!

Shoe shopping - figured out!

This is last year's school-shoe shopping experience, re-posted:

After a summer of flip-flops and Crocs, it is time for some new shoes. Bart is growing out of his sandals and Lisa's shoes are all missing; some went with her cousin back to Maine and others have vanished entirely. Shoe-shopping stresses Joe out. Not that he doesn't love shoes, don't ever get that idea. The boy has more specialty footwear than the rest of our family combined (light hikers, work boots, everyday boots, Sunday boots, nice sandals, lawn-mowing sandals...)

No, the stress comes from the kids, and by "the kids" I mean "Bart". This child turns insane in a shoe store. Having inherited his father's love for shoes, he wants to try on each and every pair in any available size. He presents his bare toes, wiggles them and demands "choos!" Newly-shod he will then run laps around the entire store. I can catch him long enough to do the traditional toe-press fitting before he's off again. And new shoes make him FAST. Bart came equipped with a turbo-boost feature that allows him to outrun the casual chaser, you have to really be determined to catch him. Although I did learn that if you only put a shoe on one foot and leave the other bare he tends to run in circles for a while, making him easier to catch. My technique is to lie in wait at the end of an aisle and snag Bart as he rushes by, change his shoes and let him continue on his way.

Meanwhile as Lisa clomps past in a size 12 pair of red Mary Janes, I can usually distract her long enough to try on a pair that is her size. But as I'm checking out all the shoe options, looking for sizes and casually searching for anything cute in my size, Joe is the main referee of the Amazing New Shoe Race. He's the one that keeps the kids from pulling down displays, bolting for the emergency-exit, finger-printing up the windows and asking passersby if they have chewing gum. Isn't he a great husband?

This year I was not so lucky. Lisa got it into her head that ONLY the most ridiculously Disney-Princess-Or-Perhaps-Dora-Themed Shoes would do. The more licensed characters and blinking lights the better. Plus they cost at least twice as much as the ballet flats I was considering. I'm sorry but... no. I may let them wear Halloween costumes to the grocery store in February but I have to draw the line somewhere. After about 10 minute she had a complete meltdown in the store and we took both kids home - sans shoes.

Fortunately Kelsey from Vanilla Joy had a great shoe-shopping tip that inspired me. Why take the kids along at all? I think all the shoe choices stress them out and turn them insane. So instead, I measured Bart's feet compared to Lisa's. While she was at school I took him to the store with me. While he contentedly clomped around in a 14-sizes-too-big pair of rain boots, I picked shoes that fit him and estimated the size for his sister. I picked shoes I knew she would like and a style that she needed. My master plan worked perfectly and when presented with only one choice of shoes, she happily switched to the new ones without argument.

Lisa loves to name her shoes - so far we have had her Kicks (pink Buster Brown slip-ons), her Steps (clompy buckle shoes), her Slides (pink and purple sandals), her SlipSlops (interestingly, they're flip-flops) and now these. These are her Taps.

Weekend update

At the risk of sounding Seriously SO Blessed, wow... we were busy this weekend!

Joe and I ran another 5K on Saturday morning. He finished in an amazing 24 minutes... and came in second-to-last in his age class. In two weeks he'll be 30 and he would have finished third. Oh well, when all the NCAA runners from BYU are crowding out the top places, what chance do you have?

Meanwhile I shaved a few minutes off my time, finishing in 30 minutes, 20 seconds! I sprinted the last 100 yards because someone was trying to run past me and we ended up crossing the line at a dead run with the announcer screaming "go go GO!" into the microphone. It's not like we won, or were all that awesome even, it was just a nice way to finish the race and I was pumped.

Straight from the 5K we dashed home, showered and tried to look nice and ran over to a wedding. We got caught in parade traffic, ended up late and skidded into the park about 10 minutes late... along with most of the guests. Fortunately nothing here starts on time so we were OK. It was a beautiful wedding and we are so happy for you, Ryan and Kristin!

I ended up leaving the wedding luncheon early for the bridal shower of the lovely and radiant Miss Nemesis. Not only did we have excellent snacks (why did I even eat anything at the wedding lunch, knowing that Cicada was providing food for the shower?) but I got to meet a lot of fellow bloggers and that was really fun.

Rushing out of the shower I headed down to look for houses with my sister. I am slowly trying to coax her ever closer to my own neighborhood. I have dreams of my sisters and I getting together in the fall to bottle peaches and tomatoes and all good things. So far my master plan seems to be working...

And straight from that we went right back to the wedding reception. The kids stuffed themselves full of chocolate fountain goodies, cupcakes and cobbler and played at the park while we visited with friends. When it started to rain we headed home. Just in time to prepare 10-minute church talks that we had to give on Sunday.

So that's my excuse for not having posted anything for a few days. The End.