A Tribute to Camilla Cakes

Well, you saw the birthday pictures, but what can I tell you about Camilla cakes herself?

She has been a truly amazing child. We have loved every minute of having her in our family. Even when she was getting up a few times each night at the 4-5 month stage (and even into the 7-8 month stage) Deanna didn't mind getting up to nurse her because it meant a little more time with her.

If you want to win a Nobel Prize by building a perpetual motion machine, Camilla would be the first place to start your research. The girl NEVER stops moving, and I mean never. She doesn't sit in one place and play, she flits from toy to toy, never stopping for longer than a few seconds. This obviously makes church nigh on impossible and we are eagerly awaiting the day she goes to nursery.

She is currently sleeping very well at night and is very attached to her little snuggle bunny that she sleeps with.

She loves to laugh and smile and looks cute with her two tiny little bottom row teeth poking out when she smiles. Her sister is very good at making her laugh in the car by making funny faces for her. The smiles, laughs and constant movement have earned her the nickname "Happy Tornado."

She is also in the "explore everything without any concept of breaking things" phase which has earned her the nickname "Godzilla" as she tromps around the house finding things to unintentionally break. Pretty standard toddler stuff.

She was walking by about 11 months and is 13 months today and pretty much runs as fast as she can everywhere she goes. She is pretty tough and a fall (or maybe being pushed down by helpful siblings and playmates) doesn't usually phase her. Once, we were sitting in the car waiting for an unnamed adult female in our household when she fell off her carseat and landed flat on her back on the floor of the car. That's about a 3 foot fall and she didn't even flinch. She just rolled over, pulled herself up and kept on playing. That same fall would have probably sent our older two kids into hysterics.

Camilla isn't saying any words intentionally yet and I think she may end up being like Lawson, who basically grunted until he was two and then started spouting full sentences. We understand the different tones of her grunts and cries and between the four of us, she pretty much always gets what she needs when she needs it, so there isn't much incentive for her to talk. She can wave good-bye, give a kiss and can make the sign for "more" when she's hungry or wants more food.

That is basically Camilla at a year! She's an amazing, happy little girl and we are glad to have her in our family!

Our Little Boy

Here are a couple of stories from our little boy lately.

Last week at church, Lawson learned about 1st Nephi 3:7. On the back of the paper with the scripture written on it, he got the chance to draw a picture. So, what did he draw about this spiritual lesson about obedience? Well, he draw one of his favorite stuffed animals, Pink, carrying rockets in his hands. And what did he write at the top? "Pink 3:7," which, of course, he spells "Pic." This is literally what he told me he learned about in church that day, Pink 3:7. And now that I'm looking at the picture again, I see that he even wrote "Nephi" and then scratched it out!!

We've been talking a lot about obedience with him lately. So, a few days ago in the car, he says, "Daddy, I will just start to obey you in 14 days...when I'm 7...and I get baptized." Sigh... So many things wrong with that statement...

Last night, we had some friends over (congrats Dr. Lloyd!) and he threw a mini tantrum by throwing a step stool around the living room. So, I was trying to talk to him about it, he wanted to kick instead of talk, so he ended up in his room for time out. When he came out, instead of talking about throwing the step stool, he though a visual would be more effective. So, he throws his time out timer down the stairs and stars screaming about how he just wanted to have a "demonstration" of how angry he was. I don't even remember exactly what he said other than he kept yelling "demonstration" over and over. Then he threw the step stool again to give us another demonstration of what he had done wrong!

Last week when I got home from work one morning, about 8:30, he knew that I was hungry and wanted to eat breakfast with me I was just too tired so I decided to go to bed. Well, a few minutes later, Lawson brings up semi-frozen pancakes to my room that he had dug out of the freezer and attempted to make himself and asked me if I wanted breakfast in bed. Sometimes he can be very sweet.

Lastly, here is a picture of one of his creations where he takes some stuff he finds around the house and tapes it all together to form a plane or rocket ship!

And that's my boy!

Utah Trip - The Rest of It

After having a fun (but not long enough) visit with my family, we said goodbye to them and headed north to visit Todd's family and more friends. Have I mentioned that a trip this short to Utah is basically like a teaser? We try so hard to see as many people as we possibly can, but there is just no way to visit everyone that we want to. Here's what we did manage though.


We got to visit and stay the night with Gma & Gpa. We had dinner with some of the extended family. Alia enjoyed a little bit of wii competition with Gpa, which was fun to watch. Todd and I always try to get some ethnic rummy gaming in with Gma & Gpa whenever we are with them in keeping with long-time family tradition. And they were also nice enough to send us on our way with our own package of their signature grasshopper cookies (which they purchased just for our visit). We had some happy kids in the car :-)


We were able to visit Todd's step grandparents, the Petersons, for a quick little visit and they are just as happy, optimistic, and wonderful as ever. We always enjoy seeing their smiling faces.

Because of the time of our visit, we weren't able to see the whole Bawden clan, but did get to see Tris (one of my dearest friends of all time - dating clear back to the 7th grade!) and 3 of her kids. We were especially excited to finally get to meet her sweet little girl. Tris is one of those people that I can not see for 2 years and it only feels like it's been a week (well, except for the fact that one of us might have more kids that suddenly appeared since the last time!) We love you Bawdens!


Here's me and Tris:

Our last stop in Utah was to visit some of our former Yalie friends, the McKays. In classic Heidi style, she whipped up a totally gourmet feast for us to enjoy. We still salivate just thinking about it and how yummy it was. If I could hire someone to cook for me, it would probably be this lady:

We loved catching up with the Mckays and getting to see their new house that is being built (gorgeous location!) Here's me and Heidi:

Well, then we left Utah to drive through snow storms to get to Todd's Dad's house in Wyoming. Driving through a snow storm over South Pass = not fun. There were several times that Todd considered just turning around and finding somewhere to stay for the night until things cleared up. But, we persevered and arrived safe and sound (if only just barely being able to get our car up the unpaved roads to their house).

We spent the last part of our trip enjoying hanging out with Grandpa & Nana. We did a little exploring in Lander (i.e., bookstores, where Todd and I became owners of an awesome unabridged edition of Count of Monte Cristo!) The kids, as always, got spoiled by their grandparents and also were in heaven having a house full of dogs to play with. In fact, when it came time to leave, Alia and Lawson tried pretty darn hard to convince Nana to let them take one of the dogs home with us. Todd was happy that he got to eat at a Sushi restaurant (where Lawson came this close to self-imploding all over the innocent inhabitants of the restaurant - it was stressful for me.) And we loved being able to look out the windows at Grandpa & Nana's at almost any time to see this in the yard:


We had a fabulous trip to see so many wonderful family and friends!

Friday Night

So what do you do when you're husband isn't home and it's Friday night? Here's what we did:

made people chow . . .
and cuddled together on the Love Sac, munching people chow, while watching Tinkerbell
Did you have as much fun as we did?

Mother's Day

I figured I needed to post about Mother's Day before it's not even the same month anymore. I already posted that my Mother's Day present was my fabulous trip to Utah to go to Women's Conference. But of course, Todd is always great to try to do extra nice things for me on the actual day too. He served me breakfast in bed, and it was fabulous. He made me TWO different kinds of french toast. One was orange (which was super yummy!) and the other was a puffed french toast that was almost like pancakes built in to the outside of it. It was cool. There was also sausage and chocolate milk. Can't ask for better than that.

After church, Todd let me go upstairs and just read for several hours in our bedroom while he and the kids entertained themselves elsewhere. And then for dinner he grilled me up some super tasty steaks :-) And then we died and went to heaven eating the Peanut Butter Torte that we already posted pictures of. It was absolutely heavenly. Thanks honey for a great day!

Of course one of the best parts of Mother's Day is the cute things your kids make for you. Here's a flower that Lawson planted all by himself for me at preschool, and the card that he put together for me. On the inside he said, "Dear Mom, I hope you will see my present that I made you. Happy Mother's Day! Love, Lawson"
He was super excited to give it to me and to make sure I knew he had planted it all by himself. It was very sweet.

Here's a sweet card from Alia. She spends so much of her time writing now and I just love to read them and see how she writes things.

And here's some self-portraits I took of me with my wonderful kiddos. I'm truly blessed to be their mother!

Wa-U-Say? An update on the kiddos

Time for another Ebbert kid update! Let's go oldest to youngest.

So, Alia continues to be an amazing, wonderful little girl. She is always thinking of other and so selfless with everyone. She always lets Lawson have his way when choosing games, toys, etc. She always thinks of him and is concerned for his well being. And she has show strong maternal instincts lately, trying to play with babies and make them happy whenever they are around. One day I was doing Quicken and she was asking about money. I was telling her that there are money people around the world who don't have as much money as we do, who may not even have food. She immediately said, "Well why don't we give our money to them?"

She continues to be her mother's daugther and is extremely organized. We were getting ready to play a game today and she was setting it up while D and I made lunch. She disappeared for a few minutes and came back with papers which had our names on them along with the color of our game pieces. She carefully placed them around the board so that everyone would know where to sit and what color they were when it was time to play.

She just loves to read and can often be found reading by herself. One night while Deanna was gone I went upstairs about 30 minutes after I had put the kids to bed and Alia was there in her room reading a little Book of Mormon reader by the fading light of her window. She was so cute and who was I to tell her to stop and go to bed?

Lest you think she is perfect, let me just say she has her grumpy days. We can always tell that she is grumpy by how she reacts to her clothes. If it's a good day, she puts them on by herself and we never hear a word about it. If it's a bad day, she will complain about every little part of her clothes. They are too tight or the toe seam in her socks is bugging her or they feel just plain weird. It least we have an early warning system for a grumpy day.


Lawson is still as full of energy as ever, but in a good way. He is so creative and engaged with the world around him. He will build his Kid Connex and Magnetix into all kinds of crazy and outlandish shapes, usually involving space ships or aliens.

He can be so sweet and gentle sometimes. He will often spontaneously run up to us and give us hugs and kisses and tell us how much he loves us. He and Alia will usually take turns letting each other win at games so that every gets a chance.

He is still all boy. Today we were playing the "guess the animal" game and it was Lawson's turn. We asked the usually questions above size, fur, etc. I asked him if the animal lived in water and he said, "No! It lives in a dragon cave!" Yes, the animal was a dragon. When it was his turn again he started out by saying, "The animal lives in the same place as last time." It was a dragon again but this time he gave us a description of how it breathes fire, complete with sound effects.

Something he has loved to do lately is to ask us, "What did you say?" He will say this many times a day, either because he didn't hear, didn't understand or can't believe what we're saying is true. He says it so many times a day that he has shortened it down to save time. It now comes out as one incredibly quick, slurred, "Wa-U-Say?" It's hilarious to hear and D and I are always laughing about it.

His main issue right now is that he has an incredible stubborn streak. When he is set on something, he absolutely, positively, without a doubt will figure out a way to make it happen. He will hand on until his last breath to what he wants or wants to do. D and I often talk that if we can instill good principles in him, he will be a great person who doesn't give in to peer pressure and who can be a strong influence to those around him. Let's just hope he learns to compromise before he gets married! He certainly doesn't compromise with us!

What's Up At Our House

So, over the last couple of weeks, Lawson has decided to revert back to his "naughty" alter-ego. He's been getting into all kinds of things when Todd and I aren't looking and not listening to pretty much anything we say. We've had so MAJOR battles. Long, frustrating, unpleasant battles like when I had to physically put him in lockdown in my arms for 45 minutes (with him yelling & screaming, squirming, hitting, etc.) until he would finally submit to what I had asked him to do. Many of these are control battles - Lawson desperately wants to be in control of everything in his life. That desire, mixed with the fact that he is one of the most stubborn people on the face of the planet, leads to some major clashes. We've been doing our best to let him know that WE are the parents, we have to follow through on what we say, and that at some point he's going to have to give in a little. I'm thinking that maybe by the time he's 30 years old, he'll maybe grasp this principle. Wow. I tell ya what, this kid definitely tests the absolute extreme limits of everything that we are capable of as parents. And I'm ashamed to admit how many times I just break down and lose control because my patience falls short of the mark. It's making me tired just thinking about it.

Here's a picture of an example of what he's been doing lately:
yeah, he snuck into the kitchen while I was downstairs, climbed onto a chair and then onto the counters. He proceeded to walk across my counters to open any cupboards that he could find things to help himself to. I saw chocolate on his mouth later and he denied doing anything. When I opened the cupboard where the Hershey's kisses were supposed to be-and couldn't find the bag-he again denied, and finally said, "I'm sorry". We later found this stash of wrappers in Alia's step stool. I'm not even going to try to guess how many wrappers for kisses and pieces of gum there are. I'm surprised he didn't throw up later.

He's also been on a running streak of peeing all over the floor again in the bathroom. Serious puddles, right in front of the toilet. The last couple days have been better (after threatening his life, and after telling him to "point down!!!" every time he heads to the bathroom) - let's hope it lasts.

Anyway, lots of fun stuff like that going on lately. And, of course, he can also be the sweetest little boy in the world 5 seconds later. He and I have enjoyed spending as much time outside as possible and going for walks and playing at the park. His favorite space adventures lately have been to fly around a "flying saucer" all over the house (which is made up of one of the play pots & lid from Alia's kitchen set) with an alien inside (a little plastic dinosaur) and other little treasures (like marbles, bracelets, etc.) He also loves to pretent that he knows how to read and write. Today when I picked him up from a friend's house, he had written me a message on the driveway with chalk. He translated the scribbles for me to say, "Dear Mom, I love you" (as he points to each section of scribble for each word).

The other day when we were family a family bowling tournament on the Wii, he randomly grabbed a laundry basket and played from inside of it. Don't ask me. But it was cute.

And speaking of bowling tournaments . . . Alia has gotten so good at bowling! She totally creamed all of us the last time we played. We were very impressed with her 225! She got 9 strikes and the rest spares except for one frame. Way to go, Alia!
I also wanted to post a few pictures from the trip we took to Madison to visit the Schaefers, since we haven't posted them yet.

The kids had lots of fun playing outside, playing wii, and playing toys.

Here's Todd & Steve-o trying to be cool...
yeah, they couldn't hold the cool for too long :-)
And yes, Todd does look like a Mafia person. Sometime you'll have to ask him or Steve about the coat he's wearing.

The Last Couple Weeks

I haven't posted very much the last few weeks. We've been busy with the normal stuff - a couple trips to the library each week, swimming lessons for Alia, preschool & school, the endless picking up and cleaning of the house, piles of laundry, cooking. You know, all that good stuff. I've been reading a couple of books for my fantasy/sci-fi book club and doing some digi-scrapping for the Amazing Digi-Scrapping Race that Sarah and I are doing together. Last week I also had to teach a photoshop class for an enrichment activity - so that filled my week with some stress. I think it went pretty well and it at least got a bunch of people excited about creating stuff with photoshop. We're hoping to start getting together monthly to learn more tricks and scrap layouts on our laptops. I've been really enjoying digi-scrapping again lately, which is so nice since I went through a period where I just couldn't do it at all. It's always so nice to get my creative outlet that way.

Last week was heavenly! Iowa actually saw some SUNSHINE. Yep, let's say that again - sunshine. Beautiful golden light from the heavens that is warm and melts the crappy, evil ice from the sidewalks and lawns. We only have a couple of tiny piles of snow left to melt from our lawn and I am loving that! The kids actually were able to go out in the backyard and play a couple times, and we were able to take a few walks around the neighborhood. The whole week we had temperatures in the 40's and 50's. Truly dreamy. I have major spring fever and am trying so hard to clamp it down a bit because I still am afraid that we will end up getting another snow storm(s). Like when we went to Nauvoo to go to the temple on Saturday and were expecting 40's and cloudy (as predicted) and instead had snow and rain and dreary gray skies. So instead of getting to play at the park and spend time outside, the kids and parent sat in the car for much of the time while the other parent went to a session. That sure makes for a long day that way. I'm really hoping that we will have decent weather this weekend and can have a fun easter egg hunt in the backyard for the kids. I sure wish we could twinkle ourselves to Utah for Saturday to do the egg hunt with all my family and celebrate my Dad's birthday! We'll miss you guys!

A lot of people have asked me how I'm doing with recovering from the surgery. Tomorrow is 1 month from when I had my surgery and I feel great! I had some trouble with my biggest incision getting infected and it gave me a lot of trouble for a while, but now it is fine and is finally healing up quite well. I feel like I'm getting some more energy back and feel like I can pretty much go full throttle now with strengthening my stomach and exercising (getting started on a routine is so hard! I keep telling myself "today is the day"...) Other than seeing scars on my stomach, I honestly can't tell that I had surgery and feel back to normal (whatever that means :-)

Last week I got to go with Alia's class to the children's museum for a field trip. Here's a few pics:



Don't you love their tie-dye t-shirts they made?

Update

Just thought I would give you a quick update. Deanna is doing very well, though I think we pushed her too hard today. It's amazing how quickly she is recovering, so thank you for all of the well wishes.

I have really, really enjoyed being home. I think I could be quite happy as a stay-at-home dad. Yes, it takes lots of effort. Yes, it can be frustrating. But I really doing derive deep joy and satisfaction from being with my kids and my wife. Is it too early to be looking ahead towards retirement?

I was also very productive at home this week, getting taxes done, cleaning up some projects around the house, etc. It was kind of nice not to focus so much on work.

And for those of you who are worried, we did let some people take care of us...just a little. That is one of my favorite things about the church. You have a built in family almost anywhere you go.

I am currently on Neuro MRI this month and that is easing the thought of going back to work tomorrow because I really enjoy it. MRI uses extremely powerful magnets (more powerful than the magnetic pull of the earth) and electric currents to take pictures of the body. This month I am specifically reading MRI's of the brain and spine. The nervous system is incredibly fascinating and the pathology of the nervous system is also very interesting, so I am really enjoying my time on this rotation.

WARNING, SPORTS RELATED MATERIAL AHEAD:

And last, but not least, let me just say something about sports. First, the good. I am totally surprised how many people are putting the Jazz in the hunt for the title. I think they are good, but their margin for error is just a lot smaller than the other teams. I would be very pleased if they make it to the finals, but I really think at this point it would be a big surprise to me.

Next, the bad and the ugly together. This is completely pathetic, but I really haven't recovered from the Patriots season yet. To go along so well and to end so horribly, in the final minute, to ELI MANNING of all people and after having the SpyGate would reopened, I just couldn't take it. After the game I placed an immediate ban for myself on all sports related websites, radio shows or TV for about a week and so I have not read or listened to anything about the SB except for two Bill Simmons columns because I knew he would be more depressed than me. And really they weren't even my original team, but after living in CT and then defending them all year long from people who hated them I really, really wanted them to win. I know it's only sports, but I have now associated myself with a team that will come up in every single conversation for the rest of my life when someone talks about going undefeated wire to wire and failing. And now it looks like there is potential for SpyGate to NEVER go away and completely ruin everything the Pats have done prior to this. Anyways, I know I'm a loser, but it really has just tainted the entire 2007-8 football season for me. It's almost like the Pats have to win the SB next year to redeem themselves. And I know at least Steve-o is backing me up right now.

PS. If anyone wants to plant a virus in Gregg Easterbrook's computer, let me know. I will pay good money for that. :)

END SPORTS RELATED MATERIAL

Anyway, hope everyone out there is doing well. If you made it to this point in the post, congratulations, you must really love us. Or you have too much time on your hands.

Christmas Eve

Here are some pictures from Christmas Eve in no particular order. Well, actuallly, they do have an order, it just happens to be the order that blogger randomly assigned them. Also, keep in mind that Lawson does not have a giant booger in these pictures. A few nights before this he had fallen off his bed and scraped his nose. Sorry, but I had to explain it. Anyway, on with the show.

Here are Joseph and Mary holding baby Jesus. As you can see by this, Alia has become very maternal lately. She will take her stuffed animals and make a little bed for them, tuck them in, wrap them up, feed them a bottle and so on. She was very good and tender with her little doll pretending to be Mary.



Here is the Ebbert and Son sheep herding company. Lawson's costume (brought to us by Grandma Fromm) is much, much better than mine which is my robe and a kitchen towel on my head. But I'm holding a nice sheep, aren't I? Lawson's costume can also double nicely for Obi-Wan.

The Wisemen.


Opening the traditional Christmas Eve PJ's.

In the PJ's.
Making the now traditional homemade Christmas Eve pizza and eating it on the Christmas blanket in the living room. Santa would sleep in that same spot later that night as he took a break from his activities.

Back to the program! Lawson as the angel Gabriel visiting Mary.

Here is Lawson pretending to be asleep while the angel visits him and tells him to marry Mary.
And everybody's favorite, daddy as the donkey with Mary and Joseph going to the inn.

BTW, Todd posted this even though it says Deanna.

Silly Kids and a Swingset

Our kids have said some really funny things lately, and we keep thinking we need to post them, but always forget. Here's a few that we can remember:

This part written by Todd:

At one of Lawson's birthday parties the other day, Alia was very concerned about her balloon exploding. She has also been very into spelling the last word in her sentence lately. That combined to provide us with this little gem: "Daddy, I don't want my balloon to P-O-O-P." That's definitely going to be used for blackmail later.

Lawson pretty much has a rocket with him at all times lately and they blast him wherever he wants to go, accompanied by the shooooooosh sound effect, lots of spittle and crazy contorted facial expressions. While getting him dressed this morning, I asked him to come over by me so I could put his pants on. He says, "But I don't have my rocket!" (Thinking...) "Hm, that's OK because I have rocket bums!!" So he balls up his little fists, plants one on each cheek and then uses his "rocket bums" to blast himself across the room!! It was hilarious and he didn't have any idea why I was laughing. That one's gonna come back to haunt him later too.

Alia drew a bunny today and named him "Hippy." Her grandpa would be so proud. :) I think she was going for hoppy...

All the rest of the post written by Deanna:

The kids and I were driving in the car the other day to get Todd and Alia was trying to explain to Lawson what a joke was.

Alia: "Here, Lawson, I'll tell you a joke. How do you know if a seed is a flower or a tree?"

Lawson: "uh, I don't know"

Alia: "You go to the store and pick up the packet of seeds and see what it says on the package! If it has a flower, then it is a flower seed, and if it is a tree, then it is a tree seed!"

I found this highly amusing. It was obvious that my kids had no clue what a joke was. As we picked up Todd I was trying to explain to Alia what a "real" joke was (i.e., FUNNY!). I told Todd about it and he decided to teach the kids about jokes by inducting them into the world of "knock knock" jokes. I'm not sure that was the best move (they still don't understand what a joke is...), but it has been highly entertaining to say the least. They both love to tell the knock knock jokes, but they combine some of the different ones Todd has told them (thus making no sense at all), and after the "punch line" is said, Lawson bursts into hysterical, maniacal laughter with a crazy look on his face. I was literally in tears on the way home from laughing to hard at him. We've been trying to get it on video to post because it is hilarious, but haven't succeeded yet.

Here's another quote from Lawson the other day while we were driving: "Daddy, how come you always call my mommy a smarty pants?" Their little ears certainly do pick up everything that is said!

The other night Alia was trying to pray and Lawson was trying to help her out. We had just read some scriptures about Jesus and so Lawson was prompting Alia to say "and bless Jesus to get in a rocket" (as he flies his "rocket" through the air with his hands). The kid is absolutely obsessed with rockets. Every toy, no matter what it is, becomes a rocket that flies through the house. And he proably spits more saliva in a day with his very long "blast-offs" than most people produce in a week. Seriously, he looks like his face is about to combust and explode into tiny fragments as he makes his sound effects for the lift-off. He did this the entire time the Sister Missionaries were at our house the other day for dinner. He also made up some very creative space stories to tell them while they were here. He's one crazy kid!

In good news, we are SOOO happy to now have a swingset in our back yard! I found a really cheap used one on craigslist that we figured would hold us over for quite a while. And guess what? Our kids actually play in our back yard now! Hallelujah! We're all very much enjoying it.

You can also see from this picture one of our projects this week. We've been staining/treating our fence. It's going to look great when we're done, but it has definitely been more time-consuming and money-draining than originally planned. We're glad we only have to do it this one time while we live here. We're also going to do the front porch and the deck soon (hopefully).

D's Happy Place & Update

It's been a long time since I posted a D's Happy Place, so I here's a new installment. To start off, one of my favorite all-time comfort foods in the entire world: my grandma's homemade chicken noodle soup. For as far back as my memories take me, I remember getting to eat my grandma's famous homemade chicken noodle soup most times that we would go and visit her in Utah. She was an amazing cook, and this particular recipe is probably the favorite of most of my siblings as well.

The noodles HAVE to be homemade. Without that, it's really just ordinary soup, and not the special homemade kind. It's really not all that much work to made homemade noodles, in my opinion, and so worth the rewards. My kids really love to help with this process as well, as you can see here.


Beautiful. These strips of goodness make the soup taste so wonderful and I just love the look of a pile of homemade noodles.

Here's the end result. Not the best picutre, but oh well. I also have to give away another family secret here. My grandma always served her homemade chicken noodle soup over mashed potatoes. Yes, you read that right. I've never heard of that anywhere else, but that is always the way it was done in grandma's house, and I just can't bring myself to make the soup unless I'm going to make the mashed potatoes as well. It makes the soup extra creamy and yummy.

So, that's an instant happy place for me (as well as Todd & the kids!) My next happy place is air conditioning! I've mentioned before that I am a hot person. I think sometimes people don't believe me, but it is true that my normal body temperature is higher than the average joe (and I know this for a fact after spending about a year taking my basal body temperature - it was always much different from what it supposedly should have been). I have been thrilled for the last year + to have central air conditioning for the first time in our almost-9-years of marriage. I LOVE it. It makes me happy. I keep our house cooler than I even need to, just because I can. Especially since we live in places that are humid. Humidity is my anti-happy place. It's disgusting, horribly, evil and nasty. And alas, I've had to live with it for 5 years and will have to live with it for many more years. Air conditioning is my saving grace against heat and humidity.

Well, right around the time we made our move from Wisconsin here to Iowa, the air conditioning in our car wacked out on us. It would only work if we were driving 30-35 mph or above. So, essentially, it didn't work since most of my time running errands and driving where I need to go is on roads where I can't drive that fast and where I have to stop at lights all the time. And when you stop at a light, not only did the a/c not work, but it instead pumped out even hotter and more humid air than what was actually outside. It has been absolutely miserable. It has made running any errands a dreaded event. It's not a fun thing to feel miserable and to see your kids in the back seat sweating their little heads off and worrying that they're going to collapse of heat stroke because they're in a car that is 100+ degrees and full of humidity!

We've tried to hold out for the last 2 months with this because I know that air conditioning problems can cost $500-$1000 to fix and we just didn't want to put that much money into our car that we are just biding our time with until we can get a mini-van. Well, this week the radiator fan completely stopped working as well so that the car was overheating, etc. So I couldn't put it off any more. It's also difficult to take your car into a shop to get fixed when you only have 1 car, have to drop off and pick up your kid from school each day, and will have to walk to/from whichever car place you take it to. There was only 1 place in North Liberty that I could take it to and luckily they were great. So I suffered through one incredibly hot and humid day of walking to/from the car place with Lawson and walking to Alia's school and back (I definitely get very grouchy when I am hot and sweating buckets of humidity). The good news was that all the problems stemmed from the radiator fan and they were able to fix it that same day for me and a very reasonable price! If only I had know that was the problem 2 months ago, we could have saved ourselves some very uncomfortable time. Oh well, that's life right. Needless to say, we are all VERY VERY VERY happy to have our car a/c back!!!

Other updates. Alia finished her first week of school and loved every minute of it. Her favorite parts of the day are when they get to play outside. Lawson and I have really enjoyed our time together as well, and for most of the days after Alia got home from school, she and Lawson played wonderfully. What did they play? Princess goes to school. They get their backpacks out and the princess and prince go to school and play games and learn and all sorts of things. It's very cute and it makes my heart swell when they play well together. I have SO enjoyed not having to spend every waking moment of the day playing referee to my kids. There is so much more peace and quiet and that makes this mom happy.

Lawson spent the entire week on and off being sick. I just don't get the bug he has. He would be fine for 2 days and then throw up again. So it was very difficult to know if we should go places, play with people, etc. Just when we thought we were over everything, he would throw up in the middle of the night again. Very confusing. Because of that he and I didn't do too much in the way of fun outings, but kind of kept things low-key here at home. It's been a rough week for sleeping because of Lawson's sickness as well. Every night he would wake up many times, coming into our room. Our futon downstairs has come in even more handily than we ever imagined it would! Just ask Todd! It's a much more comfortable alternative than sleeping in bed with a kid that takes all your space.

That part of the week caught up with us and we were all tired the whole weekend. Todd was a saint and let me take naps on Saturday and Sunday (long ones! thanks honey!)

Some other great parts of the weekend. I had a meeting with the other moms that are going to be doing a preschool coop for Lawson and 3 other kids. I'm really excited to start it soon and think that Lawson will really enjoy it. All the other moms are great and I'm sure they'll learn and lot and have fun. I'm especially glad to have this coop this year since the way it stands right now, Lawson will miss the kindergarten deadline by 3 days, so he will have 3 years of preschool before starting kindergarten! We really don't want to pay for 3 years, so it will be nice to have it not cost anything this year.

We also got to go out on our first date in the date night group that we joined. We joined with 3 other families and will get to have date night every Saturday night for 3 hours. So we'll get to go out 3 of every 4 weeks. We did this in CT as well and loved it more than anything. Last year in WI, and having to dish out mega cash every time we went out really made us appreciate how great these groups are. So we are VERY excited about this and look forward to Saturday nights!

OK, I promise I'll end now and run off to get some sleep...