Beginning of October

Starting with today and working our way back, we have been having some great times. We've had a few problems in the last month with faucets leaking upstairs and had a few repairs done. We noticed some brown outlines around the light fixture above our dining room table recently, so the repair man, Carlos, came by today with his son and cut out a big hole in the ceiling, fixed the leaking pipes, and put it back together. He does some awesome work. So, I was vacuuming afterwards and, as usual, Lillie grabbed her make-shift vacuum and helped me out. It's so cute when she does it even if she stands right in front of the vacuum all the time.

Then, we decided to make a milkshake for fun, which is something we do pretty often, actually. Lillie loves to sit on the counter right next to me and put all the ingredients in the blender. She grabs the frozen strawberries, bananas, scoops of sugar, and milk and will get extremely upset if I don't let her put them in with me. I love making shakes with Lillie. She seems to have fun too.We had some grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch today, too and we tried our broiler that we have never actually used since we've been here. It didn't turn out so well, and we actually had three flaming sandwiches within two minutes. I had to blow out the flames! Oops. Next time we'll put it on Low instead of High.Yesterday was Anna's birthday, so we celebrated! Anna loves chocolate, so we did brownies instead of cake. Without thinking about it, we waited until the brownies cooled a little bit, then put the wax candles in. We apparently didn't wait long enough for the brownies to cool and the bottom of the candles melted inside the brownies. HAHA. So, instead of eating wax, we cut out the areas where the candles were and had a nice little happy brownie cake.
If you look closely, you can see the bottom and top halves melted away on the candles sitting in the eyes of the happy face.

Then, we moved on to opening Anna's presents, which we could not keep Lillie away from all day, but she seemed to not figure out how to open them before Anna did, so it's alright. Some of the presents were still a surprise. Anna has been wanting a body pillow, especially with her belly growing and everything, so I surprised her with one. She also got a new comfy pair of shoes, an expensive Calvin Klein winter coat (from Marshall's!=much cheaper, still new), a couple girly movies and some chocolate. Even though she picked most of it out herself, she still seemed to enjoy opening the presents.

We then went out to a local Italian restaurant called Luciano's, which had some great pizza and cool decorations. It was a great day. Anna seemed to enjoy it.

Within the last couple weeks, we have just been trying to enjoy life despite my crazy hours of studying. This year is much busier than last year and the material is much more difficult to learn. It has kept me up later and in the library longer, which means less sleep and less time relaxing/helping with Anna and Lillie. But, occasionally we get the chance to just have fun so here are some things we do.

Lillie likes to find new things she hasn't played with in her drawers for a while and try them out. Here she is with some swim goggles and a ribbon.She always loves bubbles, so we take her out on the deck if it's not raining or too cold and let her chase the bubbles around and pop them. When the ground is wet, they stick a little better, and she can pop them before they pop themselves. We have a good time doing that.We also have a good time up on campus. I have been playing indoor soccer again this year and my two biggest fans always come along. Anna and Lillie are great cheerleaders for the teams and Lillie has learned to say "Go Team Dada!" Everyone loves to see Anna and Lillie come and watch us, as they always have their "Cadavers" team shirts on. Here's a picture after one of our games where two of the Cadavers Coed teams played against each other. (We have two Coed teams and a Men's team from the med school, all named the Cadavers.) It was a great game and all three teams will now move on to the playoffs. I look forward to the games every week and love to have my family there to root me on. Go Cadavers!As for the new baby, we are having an ultrasound this week, so you'll hear from us about that later on. Anna is doing well and is only sick if she doesn't get enough sleep, now. She was more sick in the first trimester, but not so much anymore. Stay tuned.