Right Now.....

*Dora the Explorer is on in the other room, with no one watching it....

*Erica is putting her baby down for "night-night" on the step, after washing her face with a wet-wipe. She's such a good Mommy....

*I am waiting for the Verizon guys to get here to install our Fios. Their appointment time is sometime between 8am and 5pm today....

*I am thinking I should finish the dishes from last night, but they can wait, right?....

*I am debating if I should eat one of the cookies I made yesterday. I'm thinking the answer is YES....

Missing my Mr. Darcy

I really don't like it when Eric is out of town.....

........

The nights are particularly the worst. After the kids are in bed and the house is quiet, I find myself pacing around trying to distract myself from my loneliness. I can never go to sleep, especially in such a vast, empty bed, and the books that would usually enthrall me can never seem to occupy my mind enough.

........

Usually at these times, I endulge in my personal guilty pleasure: watching the five-hour BBC presentation of Pride and Prejudice. Since it drives Eric batty, I can only enjoy it when he is not at home, so it has become my standard distraction from loneliness.

So, I am off to press the play button and enter the world of Elizabeth Bennett....



Ahhh, Mr. Darcy, how I wish you were at home.....

White house, divided by two....

Eric flew out of town today to visit his family. As a special birthday present, we gave Heidi a ticket to go as well. And since she is still under the age of two, and therefore flies for free, Erica also went.


So our household has been divided in half for the weekend.


It already feels quite empty and quiet.


As a treat (and a shameless consolation prize), I took Ethan and Elise to IHOP for dinner tonight. It is Ethan's favorite restaurant. We sat looking at each other across the table and expressing how strange it felt, to be just the three of us. I said to Ethan, "Imagine if it was like this all the time." He replied, "It would be so boring!"


It's funny how absence doesn't necessarily "make the heart grow fonder," but it certainly does remind you of how much people mean to you. And in Ethan's case, how much you miss your favorite people to torment.

My Second-Born

Upon seeing Heidi with all her birthday money, and noting the amount she has managed to save from babysitting, Ethan was feeling a little poor.

He asked me if he will also be able to earn money when he starts babysitting.

I said yes, but also noted that wouldn't happen until he was responsible with the girls and I could trust him.

Ethan then said, with a note of exasperation, "But that won't be till I'm like 20!"

It's Just a Green Day....

A little green man sabotaged our refrigerator today.....

Heidi came home from school and upon opening the fridge door, asked "Ummmm, why is the milk green?"

For dinner we had green pesto pasta, green beans, and green-buttered garlic toast. Yumm!

Heidi Turns the Magic Number....

!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday Heidi had her fourteenth birthday! It's hard to believe she is getting so old!



Of course, I had to make a festive cake for the occassion.....

The kids enjoyed watching us light all those candles, and Heidi almost got them all in one breath.....

Erica's Shoes

Today was a gorgeous sunny day and we had the front door open to let in the fresh air. Erica wanted to go outside, so Eric told her to get her shoes on. He went into the back room for a minute, and when he came back he found Erica already outside, with my shoes on. I have no idea how she walked down the front steps with them on, but this was how he found her!

See Elise Stand....Again

We took a better video of Elise standing this morning. She's already getting better at it!!

Another Milestone!

Like all little kids, Elise has hit lots of milestones throughout her young life, they just happen to be at different times than is the "norm." Ever since we heard of her diagnosis when she was just a baby, we have been able to mark with pure pleasure and excitement all of her miracle milestones. Every one of them is an achievement that was never guaranteed, or even foreseen.

Today Elise hit a really important milestone!!!

Erica and Elise go to a friend's house during the days that I am working. When I went to pick up the girls after work today, my friend's husband told me that Elise stood up by herself today. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, since she has never done anything like that before.

Well, tonight at home, Elise showed off her new skill with glee! She pulled herself up onto her feet into a standing position next to the couch, with Eric encouraging her on! Here's the proof!

(Sorry the video is so dark, the family room isn't light enough at night! Can you hear American Idol in the background?)

Today....

....Heidi joined the rank of teens with metal-mouth!

-----

The orthodontist is predicting a three-year, three-phase process to line up and beautify those pearly whites.

-----

One day down.....only 1904 more to go!

Blog Mania

I was just messing around with my blog and I decided to try the "next blog" button at the top. I'm not exactly sure what the "next blog" is supposed to be, because it didn't appear to be in alphabetical order of any sort.


What struck me funny/interesting is this:

*I looked at probably ten blogs.
*Of the ten, four appeared to be from LDS women.
*Of the ten, three were from different parts of the world....Australia, Russia, and India. (The Australian was LDS, by the way.)


I'm not sure what conclusions most people would draw from this purely unscientific experiment, but these were mine:
*The world is much smaller than we think.
*We Mormons are prolific bloggers!


(It's the new scrapbooking, by the way....at least for me!)