Dan's cousin Mike...

is an old, old soul. He sings like an angel and is about as calm and centered as the Dalai Lama himself. He is the only spiritual person I know that lives so completely...well...spiritually. We were so happy to see him this past weekend. The kids just loved him and we got lots of family to come together since Mike doesn't get to see us too often. He lives with his family of wife, 3 girls and 1 boy in Pennsylvania. We actually haven't seen him in 9 years. He hasn't changed one iota!

Hopefully, we see more of Mike in the future.

Tag!! You're it!

This is the girls' new favorite game and they play it constantly! It's hilarious to watch and listen to. Elise is such a mimic so if Lola screams a certain way, Elise will copy her.

Anniversary!

On Saturday, 02/02/08, will be our 6 year wedding anniversary. Yep, we were married on 02/02/02. Believe or not, that was totally NOT planned. Well, the wedding was, but I was not trying to do a cutsey thing with the date. I didn't even want to get married in February, but since Dan propose in January 2001 and 2 of his cousins already had weddings planned for summer/fall of 2001, I had to go with early 2002. I didn't want to go way beyond a 1 year engagement so February it was. I was originally going to try to tie it in with some Valentine's Day theme but for whatever reason, that didn't work out so we picked the 1st weekend in Feb and it turned out to be Groundhog's Day.
It was a fabulous wedding though! So fun!!! We danced our butts off and had lots of fun.

Anyhoo, so Saturday is our anniversary, but now we have a surprise guest staying at least a portion of the weekend so I'm not sure what we'll do. Luckily, though, way back in September, I had bought us tickets for Jan 31st showing of Cirque du Soleil's show Corteo. So we decided to pretend that last night was our anniversary just in case family stuff takes precedence on Saturday.
Cirque is particular fun for me to watch because it was an effort created in part by Guy Laliberte and started in my hometown of Montreal. I never saw any Cirque shows when I was growing up in Montreal, but now I've seen about 7 different shows. Corteo was awesome and we had front row seats, nothing between us and the stage! The only bad part was all the dry ice...I sounded like one of Marge Simpson's sisters this morning, when I got up! But it was a truly fantastic show. I definitely missed my hometown a little...sniff...

Oh, there's more...much more!

Um, Saturday we went fishing at a local lake. I don't feel bad about it since we have yet to ever catch anything in our dozen+ "efforts". It's really more about hanging out and doing outdoorsy stuff with the kids. We spent most of the time playing with Lola's new ring toss game! The fishing part is really just the kids tossing string into the rocks, hoping to catch something. Lola gets a real (and really gross) kick out of playing with the nightcrawlers...yuck.

Anyway, after we got home from the lake, I snapped this photo of the kids goofing off. They are such a trip!

OMG! I get to blog! Could it be???

No WAY!!!

Dan took Lola to dinner tonight, the baby is asleep and I find myself alone in the house with a very unfamiliar sound...or should I say, lack of sound. Could it really be???? Silence? I must be dreaming. I probably only have about 5 minutes and I don't know how to sum up a week's worth of events in 5 min., but I'll start at the beginning, right?

So, last Friday Lola had a gymnastics recital and that was really fun to watch. Dan, his mom, Elise and I all came to watch Lola do her little gymnastics routine. There was a huge crowd and lots of acts. Earlier that evening I put Elise in the tutu that my friend Val made and she was absolutely entranced by it. She walked around the house a hundred times just giggling to herself! It was hilarious. So, Dan's mom convinced me to put her in a tutu for the recital. So the show was in one room and there was another room across the way for the performers to get ready in. Elise spent a lot of time in that room running around in her tutu, making everyone laugh and also getting on the gym mats as some older girls were trying to rehearse! I had my hands full that night!

But it was super fun and watching Lola was awesome! She is a born performer. She does a little curtsey after everything and has no shyness in front of crowds whatsoever. So different from when she was younger. People keep telling me to put her in some kind of drama class so I think I will try that...

Oh yah, near the end of the performances, Elise started getting really fussy sitting in the audience with us so I took her back to the performer's area to hang out till the show (which was almost over) was done. There was only one other person in the room at the time...a performer doing ballet, maybe about 8-9 years old. She was practicing a twirl on one foot (I'm sure there is an elegant ballet term for this spin, but I just don't know it) and started spinning really fast. Elise was FASCINATED! She started trying to "spin", but she can't twirl yet so instead she ran these little circles as tightly as she could! It was so cute!

Kids Club Torture?

So I took the girls to the gym today to play in the Kids Club while I worked out. Lola is totally fine with this, but Elise....well...let's just say not so much. I was called over the loudspeaker to come to the Kids Club about 35 min. into my workout. I walked in to find Elise hysterical and Lola just playing and having a good old time. They told me they had tried to call me a while ago, but I didn't hear them.

so, WHAT DO I DO? Resign myself to try to fit in gym time around the schedule of my workaholic husband? Or do I keep taking her and hope she eventually "gets used to it"?
Argh! It felt pretty bad when I picked up my little crying mess of baby...I don't relish doing that again....

help!

Anthony

I actually got to talk to my cousin on the phone this morning and that was great! He sounded awesome, which I was not expecting so soon after the accident. As of this morning, the doctors still haven't started his facial reconstruction, but hopefully, he went into surgery today. You can tell he's anxious to get home and get on with healing there, but he was AMAZINGLY upbeat and positive. I told him it made my day to talk with him...I think he is going to be just fine, after all! I want to help somehow, but I don't know what to do.