Spring Fever

Hey, hey! Looks like I'm back to my old schedule of doing blogs! =) I can't believe it's May! The weather is warming up, the grass is growing, birds are chirping and we have been living in the USA for almost a year. Wow! In some ways it feels like our time in Australia was a lifetime ago but we also can't believe we have been back for a year already 'cause we sort of still feel like 'newbys'. Our friend Carolyn just arrived from Australia on Monday so we are getting a bit of an "Australia dose" with her. We will have lots of fun together and don't have to send her back until May 23rd! Thanks to her fiance, Tim, for letting us borrow her!

We have been busy as usual with the kids, work, church, friends and getting stuff done around the house. We have rearranged the garage and can now at least get one car inside but we have some more boxes to sort through so it may be a little while before Daniel gets his car in. We slowly get more pictures and things up on the walls and it starts to feel more like home.

Daniel and I have had the privilege of getting to go on several dates lately (our last was in December) and, by golly, we still like each other! Our friends Jason and Hallie watched the girls one night and we went out to eat at a fondue place...very fun. And just a few days later we tried out a new babysitter from our church while we went out to dinner with some friends. The girls really like her so I do believe we will be employing her again and we will go out on dates more often! We have been going through a marriage course at our church and are about to have the 5th week. It has been really great to set aside a time to focus on each other and our marriage amongst the usual 'life stuff' that often winds up taking precedence.

Carly is doing well...she is just 3 going on 13 so she really likes to test my patience and that of her father and sister as well at the moment. But, that being said, she is generally very gentle, giving, nurturing, cuddly and loves to tease, listen to music, dance, sing and make up songs, run all over the place, etc. I REALLY would like to harness some of that energy and have even 10%! She pretends that she is a princess and regularly pretends that Kate is her prince...obviously she does not get the whole prince/princess thing but, hey, she's 3. She makes me laugh every day. She is SUCH a social girl- every day she asks, "where are we going today?"

Kate is growing, growing...she is 15 months old now and believes she is every bit of 3 years old, like her sister. She likes to climb, RUN around and eat everything in sight. She recently yelled at me while she was eating, pointing at something on the table. After I went through about everything on the table, I discovered that she wanted the fork. I gave it to her and she proceeded to start eating her green beans with the fork with no problem. We ask her a question and she nods yes but it looks more like an fast Asian bow. She says 'yeah' and 'mmmm mmmm' in response to questions, except the 'mmm mmm' is as if she were saying 'no' but she actually means yes. It took us a couple of days to figure out that one! She says 'more, please', sounding like 'ma pees'. She is very opinionated and is not afraid to scream at the TOP of her lungs when she wants to make sure you understand she is unhappy or wants something. Generally, she is a hoot. She has just stopped nursing and I'm pretty sure high school is up next.

In March we went to Georgia for Daniel's grandmother's funeral. We will truly miss her. But though it was certainly a sad occasion, we know that she would have been very happy to see the whole family together. It's always an entertaining time to travel with children but they did well despite the beginning of another cold for both girls. We had planned a trip up to Kansas City to see my family that weekend so we will visit in early June instead. My mom, Nana, came the next weekend on a spur-of-the-moment visit which was fun!

I will hopefully do a few more blogs shortly with other recent happenings...but that's all for now, folks!! Thanks to all of you for your love and support in our lives! Enjoy the pics! Mom