Yesterday morning, Grace wanted me to curl her hair up in the front so people could see her ears, and so her friends would say, "Oh Cool Grace!" (Yes, she's 4 and already worried about what others think of her). So I did her hair as best as I could, and she said she liked it until I was finished. Then I popped her up here and her exact comment was, "I look like Hannah Montana's brother!"

We're in serious trouble... Hopefully she'll learn to style her own hair.... :)

Luke - 8 months

So our boy is growing, slowly but surely. He's cut his second tooth in the last week. And he's becoming more and more active each day. He's almost crawling - will take a video soon! In the meantime, here are some pictures of our not-quite-15 lb., 8 month old Bubba!

Pacifier or Teether?

Daddy makes me do push-ups!

100 Books

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Instructions: 1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. 2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE. 3) Star (*) those you plan on reading. 4) Tally your total at the bottom.

(*)1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
() 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
(*) 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
(X+) 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
(X) 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
(X) 6 The Bible –
(X) 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
() 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
() 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
() 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
(X+) 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
( ) 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
() 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
() 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare –
() 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
() 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
() 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
(X) 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
(* ) 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
() 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
() 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
(X) 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
() 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
() 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
(X)25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
() 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
() 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
(X) 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
(*) 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
() 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
() 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
() 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
(X) 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
(*) 34 Emma - Jane Austen
(*) 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
(X) 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
() 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
() 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
() 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
(X) 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
() 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
() 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
() 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
() 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
() 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
(X+) 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
() 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
() 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
() 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
() 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
() 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
() 52 Dune - Frank Herbert
( ) 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
(X) 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
() 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
() 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
(*) 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
() 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
() 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
() 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(X) 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
() 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
() 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
() 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
(X) 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
() 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
() 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
() 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
() 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
() 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
() 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
() 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
() 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
() 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
() 75 Ulysses - James Joyce
() 76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
() 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
() 78 Germinal - Emile Zola
() 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
() 80 Possession - AS Byatt
() 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
() 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
() 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
() 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
() 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
() 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
(X*) 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
() 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
() 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
() 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
() 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
(X) 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
() 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
() 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
() 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
() 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
() 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
() 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
(X) 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
(X) 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

And here I thought I was a great reader.... my kind of books didn't really make the list... :)

The local symphony has "Lollipop Concerts" - concerts aimed at 4-10 year olds. They have them roughly monthly during the school year and introduce different instruments to the children. We've attended the Drums of Japan (too loud for the girls but Luke fell asleep), Handbells (very cool) and the String Quartet. I've been waiting to go the Strings for over a year, to see my college cello professor play. So it was a lot of fun (for me) to see this quartet play and then introduce the girls to Jonathan.

Grace's favorite part of the concerts are the "Instrument Petting Zoo" in between the concerts. They have several different instruments and they let the children come and touch and play them. In December, she played the clarinet, trumpet and the Violin. This time, she only wanted to play the violin and wants to know when she can get one... Yeah, it does my heart good to see my girl interested...

30 already!?!

So, my 30th birthday passed with a week of celebrations - well, 4 days-worth but that's a lot! It was just so much fun! I love birthdays, mine especially. I know, childish, but it's so much fun!! :) I received so many cards and emails and Facebook birthday wishes, it was just awesome to see how loved and remembered I am!

Presents : Pink tulips, a metal bowl for Angel Food cakes, a mini-muffin tin, "P.S. I love You" dvd, and Navy Converse shoes! I was so surprised about the shoes - I had only mentioned it once two weeks ago about how I miss my Converse and wished I had some. Thank you Babe!

Tuesday : I went out to dinner with my SILs and MIL at Texas Roadhouse. We have such a good time when we are together. (By the way, everyone wish Susie a Happy 35th Birthday - she's done having birthdays now).

Wednesday : The actual day of my birth - woke up to a frost covered world (thankfully no blizzards!) My girls and I made my wonderful Chocolate, Chocolate birthday cake, while admiring the beautiful tulips from my hubby & children. We had dinner at Julie & Royal's and then got to eat my wonderful cake. (Side note: yes, I made my own birthday cake -twice actually - but that's only because I'm slightly a control-freak and wanted to make sure that if it was wrong, it was me who messed up).

Thursday : Pizza, Pepsi & Pie from Amy for dinner on Michael's late night! Heavens Bless You!!

Friday : Dinner and games at the Hartsons. What I thought was a cozy night at the Hartsons (w/o the Lasleys though b/c Eli was sick :-( was actually dinner with the Hartsons & the missionaries and then an evening of cake and games with several couple friends! Michael did end up surprising me with more than the little party I had planned for myself (yes, control freak). It was wonderful!!

Thanks for loving me, everyone!!