Just stoppin' by

To say hi and catch you up on my week...



I've been a little MIA lately and I apologize for not keeping in touch better. My parents have been visiting from Washington state since last Saturday, they are leaving on Monday. It's been really nice. The girls are getting totally spoiled by grandma, who is giving them oodles of attention and playing with them all the time. I don't know what I'll do when she leaves, Fiona especially is going to be devastated to lose her playmate. She'll probably expect ME to pay attention to her, can you imagine?! J/K... kindof...



My dad has been working around the house, he's the ultimate handyman. Him and DH spent a few days removing black mold (eeewww) from one of the basement rooms that we hadn't been using. They re-cemented the floor, put in new wall paneling and carpet and DH has now set it up as an office for himself. It look great and DH is thrilled! Then my dad worked on my yard for me for a couple of days, he pulled out several huge flowerbeds (someone who lived in our house a long time ago was obviously a gardening fanatic, but I don't have the time to maintain their work and everything was horribly overgrown). So now I have big patches of empty earth that will eventually be sewn with new grass, as soon as I make sure all the weed roots are dead.



My parents are great and we get along pretty well. There have been some minor tensions, which usually manifest themselves by everyone being really sarcastic and snarky with each other for a little while before settling down. It's honestly not that bad, which I'm very thankful for.



Dad has also bought us lots of presents, I think he sees how much we struggle to get by and he feels the need to help us out, which I'm cool with. He bought DH a lawnmower and weed-eater (we didn't have a lawnmower!) and I got a water-cooler (woo-hoo, no more plastic bottles giving me a guilty conscious) an some work on my car done. The kids got new shoes and some clothes.



I'll be driving them over to Canada on Monday and I'll be really sad to see them go. We don't get together nearly as often as I'd like and we'll miss each other a lot.



In other news, Fiona's surgery has healed really well and she is doing great. She is totally obsessed with doctor stuff right now and played surgeon for 6 hours straight yesterday, she set up a hospital in her playroom and had several patients to take care of. For some reason she insists that we call her Dr. Melody, don't ask me why...



Saskia is doing great at school and gymnastics, her teacher pulled me aside Thursday night to say that she is the most diligent student he has, that she keeps trying until she gets it right and refuses to give up. That's so wonderful, because those of you who know Saskia may recall that she is normally a quitter, she usually isn't interested in doing something if she can't get it perfect the first time. So I'm really proud of her for devoting herself to this, even if it is the most expensive sport she could have picked.... :)



I'm at the end of my week off from school, classes start again Tuesday. I'll be going full time this summer so you probably won't see as much of me as usual, I'll be juggling a very full load. By the time August rolls around and I get a month off I'll probably be in a vegetative state... oh well.