Celebrating 9 years

April 24th marked our 9th wedding anniversary. I simply cannot believe it's been 9 whole years! We celebrated by going out on Friday night (thanks to Will's parents who kept Jacob and the Pence's who kept Bella). There's not a whole ton of fun things to do out here in the suburbs but we did go play blacklight golf followed by a late supper at Carrabas.

Last weekend we took a much deserved break from moving preparations and traveled to Austin to attend our sister-in-law's baby shower. It was a very laid back casual co-ed baby shower and all my family was also invited so it was great to visit with everyone all at once.

My Mom & Jacob



Bella and my Dad, AKA "TheBaby Whisperer"


After all the fun, Bella was not a happy girl on the way home, she pretty much fussed and cried the entire way back. We kept stopping to take her out of the car seat and soothe her and just give ourselves a break from the sound of the constant fussing.

Here's a shot of Bella "driving" during one of our stops.

Just so you know

I went to the market tonight and I remembered to bring my reusable bags and seeing as how today is Earth Day I'm feeling very pleased about the whole thing. It's late and I'm too tired to post anything more right now but the whole bags thing was really bugging me so now I feel better about it.

Our weekend

We had a really awesome weekend. After weeks and weeks of hard work we took a Saturday "off" to enjoy some family time. The children's school had a Spring Fling event which we attended on Saturday afternoon. The weather was glorious and we did all the activities including riding a trackless train, petting a llama at the petting zoo, riding a pony and jumping in the moonwalks for hours. I think I've posted on this before but Jacob is hilarious at petting zoos because he is so strategic about it. He "tagged" each animal and then he was done. Jacob had a blast and Anabel took a nice long nap in the stroller. We forgot our camera but Will's parents had theirs so I'll post pics when I get them.

Saturday evening Will and I took the kids up to Tin Roof BBQ. They now have two large play structures and kid size picnic tables set up next to the outdoor eating area. Jacob was in heaven - he had all his favorite things: mac n' cheese, live music, dancing and a playground all in one place. Yes, I had my kids out dancing to "Devil Went Down to Georgia" until 8:30 PM but you gotta' loosen up on the schedule every now and then and they did sleep very well that night!

Ready to Eat Some BBQ! (Not quite yet!)

Dancing With Daddy!

The new house is coming along great, they are really going full tilt boogie on it - we now have windows, siding and almost an entire roof and our brick has shown up. The window above the front porch is going to be redone - it will eventually be two rounded "hobbit" windows. The process to date has been great, only a few small things here and there but they have been caught and corrected right away.

Bella continues to be her little busy bee self, exploring all over the house and getting into everything she can. I'll have to try to get it on video but she makes this putt putt raspberry noise while she toodles around the house, so wherever I am if I hear her making that little farting sound then I know she is concentrating on getting into something she probably shouldn't be!

Busy Bee - these were taken about 1 minute apart! I also really like these kinds of outfits for her - they are like a onesie in the back and a dress in the front, looks pretty but without getting in the way of crawling. Like a reverse mullet (party in the front/ business in the back).

Right before I took this she was actully inside the toy basket but I was too slow to get the picture!

SMACK!

You know those V-8 commercials where someone smacks you on the forehead & reminds you that you could have had a V-8? Well, that would be me, about 9:30 this morning checking out at the market WITHOUT MY NEW REUSABLE BAGS. Dang it, change is hard! So, I COULD have helped save the world, but instead went home with another 8 plastic sacks. I feel like I should 'fess up to this seeing as how I was all high and mighty about it in my last post! So, we'll try again the next time. I'm determined to make this one small change!

Plastic Bags

This year on Earth Day the Whole Foods stores will stop using plastic bags altogether. Plastic sacks kill animals because when they eat them it messes them up badly, bags clog waterways, and may take up to 1000 years to break down. Imagine if every plastic bag you get you just piled into your child's crib, because that's pretty much what we are all doing, leaving our kids a world full of trash. This isn't just tree hugger whining, go ahead, do a few google searches and see for yourself. More than anything else they are just plain wasteful and unnecessary. If you are able to travel to Europe you will see that people often have sacks or little wheeled baskets that they take to the market, clearly it is just a matter of getting used to the idea and making a committment to change. So, I went ahead and bought ten reusable bags (only 99 cents each). If nothing else I can set a better example for my own children. I'm blogging here, not to toot my own horn, but so that I can be held accountable for my intentions.

Update on my tooth

For those of you with any interest in the saga of my oral surgery I thought I'd give an update on today's appointment. Just to summarize - my tooth was extracted in February and I was given a bone graft and a membrane was put in to keep the graft in place and keep foreign matter out of it. Today the membrane was finally removed and Dr. Jeffries stated that the bone graft has taken nicely, he said my healing was "ideal". Having the membrane out was only mildly horrific - they cut a slit and pull it out, rather like pulling a Kleenex from a box of tissue is how they described it. Anyway it isn't swollen but it does hurt and I'm back to eating mushy stuff for a while until the wound heals up. Happily, I have somewhat of a hiatus in procedures until late June when we will have x-rays taken to see how the jaw bone is doing. We are wanting it to be good and solid so that it can eventually hold the titanium screw. In case you are wondering, the bone graft was cadaverous bone and while he was removing the membrane the surgeon told me all about how cadaverous bone is harvested and prepared and how I shouldn't worry because people hardly ever get AIDS or hepatitis from bone grafts anymore. Hah, I bet everyone goes and like flosses and stuff after reading this! * Note, I totally just now (4/9) noticed that I wrote "bone graph" over and over in this post, clearly I meant GRAFT not graph! Hah! I MUST just love my job so much that I think about graphs all the time or something, anyway I've changed it.

Easter Photos

These photos are mostly from Easter. The ones at the end are especially for the Pences. They recently held a Sesame Street birthday party for their daughter Joanna and the party favors were these buckets (like Oscar the Grouch's trash can). These have given my children endless joy. Jacob pretends they are hot air ballon baskets and takes all his cars and friends for hot air ballon rides. And Bella puts them on her head. These buckets are played with DAILY and enjoyed by all! Thanks Pence's!!!

And P.S YES, I know, it's the 11 o'clock hour and I'm blogging and not at church. That would be because I have a sore throat and Bella's nose is still VERY icky, my poor girl, I just can't seem to get/keep her well these days. We are on day 6 of an antibiotic and if anything I think she is getting worse - my poor sweet baby, it is so sad.

Photos of the New House