Rice Family

Riggety Jig. So I'm back home. We had a great time visiting Minnesota. And I only planned on being there a week, but after about 3 days my oh so loving hubby calls and asks "Do you think you could stay there longer?" What? Seriously, come on folks...aren't they supposed to miss you and want you to come home? - Obviously not. But, all joking aside, he did have a reason. He wanted to surprise me, and the surprise was our finished (well practically finished) bathroom. It has been in a state of chaos for...well probably about a year! GEEZ! And J finished painting and took out the old carpet and put in new linoleum! I'm so excited to actually have a bathroom again. M, E and I went to aunt Megan's house and got to play with my her and her family. M loves to go and play with her cousins - who also adore her...at least for the first week! Maybe having people stay in your home for two weeks loses its appeal! We also spent time at Grandma Jo's and aunt ...

We had a great week with Emily, Erin and my mom! but it went way too quickly. and now I am in Minnesota visiting the Toney's! which has been great so far. But all this leaves very little time for blogging - and so my blog is a little lacking.... and will probably remain so for another week or so.

We had so much fun in Lawrence visiting Bob and Gail! Tons of good food and great company!! And of course worlds of fun was fantastic! as always. M had lots of fun, but she really wanted to ride the Crazy Catapillar because her cousin Cara rode it and she saw a video of it once; unfortunately the crazy catapillar was broken. But M and Jodi had lots of fun riding the other rides. No fear. Lots of fun. very hot. Definately worth it!

This is the new word I know that I passed to M: (M carrying around some toys and accidently drops them. Under her breath she says):Dagnabbit. I suppose it't not too bad, and kinda cute actually.

People try to tell you "Don't do that. I've done it, so just trust me. Learn from my mistakes." I used to hate that. I'm sure all young people do. And some older people. The thing is, most people learn from their own mistakes, and don't believe that other peoples mistakes will become thier own. I have learned otherwise. About, oh I don't know, 85% of the time when someone tries to warn me of something and I don't listen I do make the same mistakes. And it's not fun any of the times. So today, I am using ALL of my strenght to listen to my big sisters advice - despite what my own...judgment (or emotions)...are telling me. And I mean ALL of my strength. I figure she must be right, and my choice of path isn't worth the trouble and frustration. We will see. Thank you Megan.

I LOVE my kids!! E is growing like crazy; He still doesn't do much, but I can get him to laugh and smile, and he is getting much more efficient with his hands so he can grab more toys! M is just as fun and smart as ever. She really likes those Fancy Nancy books, and so do I. It really surprises me, but she really does pick up some of the vocabulary from them (which are pretty big words sometimes). Just now she was sitting on the couch reading a book (not fancy nancy) and got to the back and said, "And that is such a nice masterpiece." (masterpiece being the word from the book) The cool thing is that she actually uses them correctly. We're having a lot of fun so far this summer, and I'm looking forward to more of it!

Here is Sugar now. She is turning into a great dog, and she is beautiful. She still has her puppy tendencies (like chewing and licking) but she is really a pretty good listener...most of the time. I guess I could just say we have our good days, and we have our bad.