I took E and M-G to the library this past Saturday while D-D and Z rested and Dana did some studying and work. The kids enjoyed looking at books and had a difficult time deciding which books to take home. If they could bring the whole library home, boy!! Would they be happy!!!

After the library, we went to WalMart. My kids despise going to the store with me and they really did a fine job showing me just how much they liked it. They acted like they had not had any "jerking up." Exasperated and probably very much over-reacting to their behavior, I looked at E(I had made him ride in the little basket in the cart) and said, "If you're going to act like a little kid (I was going to say "baby" but thought that would be too mean), I'm going to treat you like one!!!"

He looks at me in all seriousness and says, "But mom...I am a little kid."

Situation was then diffused. I laughed, and he was able to FINALLY get down from the shopping cart.

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Over the break, Dana grew a beard. After a little while he said that he was going to shave it off. Since I really like seeing him with a go-tee (goatee?), he sported one of those instead of shaving off all of his beard. All of us got used to seeing him with this goatee. But, this past Sunday, he gave himself a haircut (military style) as well as shaving off his goatee. E was the first to see Dana with his new look and this was E's reaction:

"ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, chortle, chuckle, snort, pfffhhhtt!!!, snicker, snicker, oooh- hooo, hoo, hoo, hoo, heee, hee, hee, hee, ha, ha, ha, ha, baaaah-ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha---heee---hooo---a-hem--

-snicker----hmmm---hooooo---sniffle----ahhhh----sigh!!! HAS MOMMY SEEN YOU YET? YOU BETTER SEE WHAT MOMMY SAYS!!!"

His new style does not look bad...pretty much what it has always been. He really looks nice and I think even a bit younger without his facial hair. But it was quite a drastic change.

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D-D has been working on her ABC's. She can sing most of it, but really can mess up the order. The film clip below is from earlier in December...when she really began to notice the alphabet and that there was a song we sing with it. This is her first attempt at singing them by herself. We have another clip of her dancing and singing her alphabet, but it is way too huge to put on here...I tried. After 40 minutes of uploading, my site still did not have the full clip...so I just stopped it and decided to let you just watch this first one. Her order of singing the alphabet now is as follows: A B C D E F G H I J LNOP R S Q V W X Y Z.

We're gettin' there!

Happy Everything!!

Dana is a man who can do just about anything. Just call him Superman!

Our new house is very nice and we are enjoying a lot about it--the trees in the yard, the extra bedroom, lots of space---but the tiles in the bathrooms are not our favorite. So, the day after Dana was done with tests and classes and office work, he came home and sat for a few minutes. After that long period of rest and slothfulness, he got up and took a sledge hammer, a drill and some other tools into our bathroom and busted up the tile, sending white dust flying through the air to settle on his hair, the counter tops, brushes and towels...and even into our bedroom, though the bathroom door was closed. After lots of scraping and bags and bags of busted tile and dust were taken to the street, he looked around the bathroom and made a seemingly small decision. He decided he would like to re-texture the walls and repaint them before he put the new tile down. All of the walls in the house were repainted before the former owners put the house on the market, but the bathroom walls were pretty banged up and sad looking due to some drywall coming off when the wallpaper was taken down. AND, not all of the wallpaper made it off of the walls. This had begun to peel and some of the paint had begun to chip off of the walls in our bathroom. This seemingly small decision avalanched into a huge do-it-yourself project!!!

So, Dana scraped the parts of the wall that needed scraping. After he did this, he decided that the mirror should come down and maybe changed a bit. The frame around the mirror was in sad shape...lots of chips and scratches. He textured the walls (which was a new experience for him), put a new frame around the mirror, and then we went to visit Mandy's parents while the plaster dried on the walls.

We got back a few days after Christmas and Dana, with E's help, painted the bathroom. E got to paint the wall behind the toilet. At one point he said, "Uh-oh!"

Dana, thinking E might have painted the cabinet on accident, said, "What happened?"

"Look, dad" he said. "I accidentally painted a dinosaur." And, sure enough, there was a green dinosaur on the wall.

here is Dana's dad telling us what to do next---ha, ha, ha

After the paint dried, Dana and his dad cut and put down the new tile, installed new light switches and outlets, put in a new light and new towel bars, and put up new baseboards, as well as laying down a new transition/threshold piece of marble between our room and the bathroom. Dana then retouched the frame around the mirror and the baseboards with paint, and he and his dad re-installed the toilet.

Dana, also in his role as Superman, cut down one of our pine trees (which landed about 5--or less--feet from our house), painted the light fixtures in our other bathrooms, replaced several more light switches and light plates and outlets, installed a new garbage disposal and put our new microwave above the stove in our kitchen.

So...Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Anniversary, Mother's Day and Valentine's Day to me!!!

p.s. I love our new bathroom!!!! and new microwave!!!!

Goose Egg

M-G had a bit of an adventure this morning. She was wearing E's Batman cape backwards and was spinning in the kitchen watching her cape fly out. Spinning and giggling when,

*!THUMP!*
!!!CRASH!!!!!
!#*BANG*#!

She lost her balance and fell into the kitchen counter top...face first.

She now sports a nice little goose egg (about the size of a robin's egg) and bruise on her forehead, along with a colossal headache!

The best part of this whole episode was when E helped Gi-Gi explain to Dana what happened:

"She was spinning around when she hit her head on the kitchen counter and cabinets." Grace (a.k.a Gi-Gi) explained.

"Yeah!!" E put in, "She lost her bounce!!!"


Here is a poem written by my cousin after reading about M-G's little mishap..hilarious!!! Thanks, Raynal!!:

I lost my bounce and so I fell

There’s really nothing more to tell

Surely you’ll ask the reason why

Maybe you should ask E

No need to talk about it more

I hit my head and now it’s sore

I have a bump – I have a bruise

I was simply trying to amuse