the last week has been fun; we've just been hanging out at the house, running errands, and meeting up with friends and family. last week my friend sarah and her two boys, who are close to micah and rowan's ages, came over for a play date. the kids got along great and had fun, and we all had a new, yummy snack: raw milk and raw cheddar cheese! sarah is always discovering new foods, and is also inclined to notice the natural and alternative. she bought some raw milk and cheese at a co-op and brought it over for us to try. it was awesome!! the cheese was wonderful, flavorful and mild at the same time. and the milk tasted just like the milk i buy at the store, but it was so cool to know that it was raw and unpasteurized. i wish i could afford to have raw milk in the house all the time, but it's on the expensive side, and the co-op doesn't take food stamps, of course.

last night (thursday) mama and maya came over for dinner, which was really fun because it was the very first time i've had my mom over and cooked dinner for her at my house. sounds weird, but it's true. i made meatloaf, broccoli rice & cheese, and cornbread muffins - three things i know she loves. she and josh both liked the meatloaf, but i thought it turned out a little bland. i need to practice that more... after dinner, my aunt shannon and cousins emma and audrey came over to play, and they ended up staying until almost 10 o'clock. the girls all had so much fun together. the next morning (this morning) they all left on a little weekend trip with grams & sweep to mississippi. i hope they're having fun, and i hope we get to see them again on sunday night, when they get back, before shannon and the girls have to head home to austin.

today (friday) i had lina with me - i usually don't have her on fridays, but her mom needed to finish a project at work. we bummed around the house until lunchtime, then ate leftovers with josh, and drove him back to work when his break was over. then we picked up caleb and took him to work. we arrived about half an hour early, and i'm so glad we did! they were having a 50% off sale, and i have been anxious to plant some pretty, colorful flowers in the front flower bed. so micah and i went in, found what we wanted, and ended up getting 80% off on our purchase because the cashier gave me caleb's employee discount! SWEET!! i'm going to get up early tomorrow and work on getting them planted before it gets too hot. i'll take pictures and post them as soon as i can. : ) tonight (friday) daddy and vesta came over for dinner! i looooove having people over for dinner at my new, pretty house. : ) anyway, i made this chicken enchilada recipe that i got from my friend, jessica, and they turned out soooo yummy. the ONLY thing i'll do differently next time i make them is bake them for a slightly shorter amount of time. the corn tortillas were very soft, and i think i would've preferred them a little less... mushy.

naomi was supposed to come home this weekend, but she forgot that it was a friend's last weekend before going somewhere, so she stayed in austin. jill is in town, though, babysitting melanie's kiddos, so i think after we do yard work tomorrow, we're going to head up to mckinney and swim with the boyle children (josh's nephews and neice). then i hope to make a stop at half price books to get a copy of roald dahl's "the witches" for micah, and dr. sears' "the birth book" for me, for my LLL leader application. i want to read "the witches" to micah because she got two rats as a late birthday present from me and her daddy, and i think she'd enjoy the story of the boy and his trained, pet rat. : ) i also hope to pop in the old navy by mel's to see if i can find a dress to wear to temple's wedding tomorrow night!! which is also in mckinney, so we will pretty much be there all day long. i can't wait for temple's wedding. it's going to be so much fun, and honestly, it will be the first wedding i've been to in a long time in which i'm not a bridesmaid. so it'll be a nice change to sit in the chapel and enjoy the ceremony. : )

we were supposed to go on another LLL field trip to old city park in dallas this morning. but my morning did not go as planned... and i can't seem to do anything right today. first, i neglected to inform christian and/or samantha last night that i'd be taking josh to work this morning, so i could keep the car. so this morning at 7:24 i called samantha and she was already on her way here to drop lina off. i told her i'd meet her at belt line and 75, but soon realized i wasn't going to make it in time. so she ended up being late to work because of my poor planning - UGH! then, i headed north to our bank with my check from samantha for this week, with the intention of depositing part of it and cashing part of it. when i was about two-thirds of the way there, i realized that, since our account is overdrawn at the moment, they wouldn't let me keep any of it. so i pulled off the highway and drove around for a while, trying to find a bank of america branch where i could go in, cash the check, then take $100 of it to our bank in mckinney and deposit it. when i finally found a BOA branch, the sign on the door said the lobby would be closed for another 15 minutes. my stomach was cramping like mad, and i knew sitting in my car for that long would result in an accident the likes of which i haven't had since i was about 3 years old. and by this point anyway, i had grown so accutely irritated by the fact that we live in GARLAND and our bank's nearest branch is in MCKINNEY, that i angrily drove out of the parking lot and all the way back to richardson. i went to the BOA branch by my supertarget (the bathroom had stopped calling me for the time being), where i went in and cashed my check (NEVER, and i mean NEVER take three children under the age of 5 into a bank; you're just askin' for it). after that, i was hungry and annoyed and suddenly needing to poop again, so we went next door to chick-fil-a and resolved two of those three issues. even after that, i had one more errand to run: for several days now, my fingernails have been in desperate need of clipping, and i can't find our clippers anywhere. so we stopped in at the CVS right by our house for a new pair. THEN we went home, and my annoyance level has decreased since i was able to get the two younger babes down for naps at the same time. so, needless to say, we skipped old city park (it was, what, 100 degrees by 10 AM anyway), and have had a quiet afternoon here at home.

micah is hungry all... the... time these days! i bet she's going through a growth spurt. i'll be anxious to see how much she's grown by the end of the summer. rowan's appetite hasn't changed, but his crankiness has upped a bit. i don't know if it's because he's getting some molars in, or if it's just the slow march towards 2. he's also giving lots of unsolicited kisses, and is "talking" and make some new gestures to get his message across.

the big 3-0!

here are some cute pictures we took at josh and jill's 30th birthday party last month.

josh and rowan in their matching hats. so cute!

rowan, me, katy (josh's youngest sister) and hope, josh's neice (a year older than micah)

micah and her favorite cousin, hope ann, having fun in the pool!!

i have baby fever! a good friend's sister had her first baby, a girl, at the end of june. i've been spending time with my friend, jessica, and her sweet 7-month-old boy. one of my LLL friends had a baby boy in mid-june. my friend in pennsylvania is pregnant with her first, and another friend here is pregnant too. gosh... i want another baby. : ) and the cool thing is, josh no longer winces when i bring up the topic! we even have names picked out for #3. shhhhh...

we had SUCH a fun 4th of july in wichita falls with josh's sister, jill, and her boyfriend, richard. we stayed at their house and slept in their wonderfully comfy guest bedroom with a roomy king-size bed. josh didn't want to come home and go back to sleeping on his stiff, creaky twin trundle bed mattress!

on friday we arrived pretty early and played rock band at the house, then went out for a nice dinner. on saturday josh and i took the kids to a flea market, then in the evening we all went to a fun kids event at the civic center where micah got to ride one of those spinning carnival rides (with her aunt jill; those things make me barf) and eat cotton candy. the fireworks turned out to be a bust... it started pouring down rain, and we were waaaaaay too close to where the fireworks were actually launching from, and the noise was overwhelming for micah and rowan. they had fun running around inside the civic center, though, listening to the booms and pows from a distance.

the next day, sunday, we got up and had an early lunch, then went roller skating! it was micah and rowan's first time to do this, and they both had fun. rowan wore his skates for about ten minutes, holding my hands or josh's hands and scooting around, then he sat down and pointed to his laces and said, "uh, uh, uh!" translation: get these crazy things off of me so i can walk normally again! micah stood perfectly still on the carpet next to the rink in her skates for a long time, maintaining perfect balance and watching people zoom around in a circle. after about 45 minutes of watching me, her daddy, aunt jill and richard skate around and have fun, she decided she was ready to try it - and she did very well! : ) she held my hands first and skated forward with me behind her, then held one of jill's hands and one of richard's hands and skated in between them. it took her a while to get the hang of centering her body over her feet so her feet wouldn't shoot out from underneath her, landing her on her tail bone (that happened several times - ouch). once she got the feel of how she needed to balance a little differently, she enjoyed it. i love watching her learn how to do something brand new. it gives me the neatest feeling, and i hope i remember all these moments forever.

from the skating rink, we went to an early dinner, then josh and the kids and i headed home. we made really good time, so once we got to richardson we stopped at the grocery store for some stuff we needed for the house. micah slept the whole trip home, so she was a bit wired, but rowan, for some reason, stayed awake and whiny the whole trip home. he had a weird burst of energy once we unloaded the van (we borrowed joann and sheridan's van for the trip), then crashed at his normal time.

micah and i stayed up watching the dog whisperer. wesley, my stepdad, has us hooked on this show. it's got me totally psyched to be a better pack leader to mia!

today my aunt and cousins came over to play, and we had so much fun! micah always has the best time playing with them. then tonight we all ate dinner at my grandparents house. ahhhh, heaven. : )

and rowan signed his first sentence yesterday: he signed "milk" then "all done", to tell me he was done nursing. : ) : )