Was that a vacation?

Okay, so I am back to post after a break from too much internet. I had to limit my internet surfing so that I could get some things done! I decided that I HAD to do some DEEP cleaning before the baby got here. I have cleaned the laundry room out, the sunroom, decluttered the kitchen (mostly), cleaned out my closet (the biggest job~I can walk INTO my walk-in closet!), and vacuumed all the corners and along the walls. Oh yeah, I cleaned out under my bed ~ do NOT ask what I found!! Of course the baby's room is now stacked with stuff that needs to be donated, stored and sold. *Sigh* I will be dedicating a day to that room so that I will be done.

I bought a new couch and that has made me feel so much better. My old couch was a hand-me-down that had been handed down WAY too many times and I found, in my current state, I could NOT get off of it once I sat down. Most people had a hard time getting up, except the kids, who loved to climb on it. Alyssa had just begun to do some pretty fancy flips onto it and for that I am glad that it was replaced. The new couch is not so "flip friendly" and that is good for mom, disappointing for her!

Doctor's appointments are getting into high gear now, at every 2 weeks. I am not looking forward to weekly trips to Tulsa, but, that just assures me that soon I will be able to turn over in my bed at night without causing a ruckus. Everything is great with me and the baby and the girls are getting pretty excited. We are trying to decide how we are all going to fit into the hospital room, since NO ONE is willing to stay anywhere else. It's going to be quite a sight!!

School has been moving slowly, but Alyssa is reading her BOB books quite fluently and reading sentences that I am writing for her on the board. Her phonics skills have improved so much this year and I am relieved. You can see that it is taking less and less effort for her to read words and sentences now. Our current read aloud is Poppy and we should be done with it this weekend. She has enjoyed the book and frankly, so have I. Each chapter we read, we want to move on to see what happens next. We participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count and it was really interesting. We have continued our birdwatching and have had a great time looking up the different birds that visit us. As a complete bird moron, I have to admit that looking at a bird in the yard and then trying to identify it in a book was extremely difficult! Once we got the hang of what types of birds were visiting and what characteristics to look for, it got easier. Honestly, a cardinal was the only thing I could readily identify in the beginning. Alyssa spent quite some time this evening looking through the bird books to identify one that she saw at the feeder today. I was happy to see that she was genuinely interested in identifying what kind of bird she saw.

Brian brought home a new puppy today and the girls were very excited. Alyssa was having a difficult time getting over Casey. I thought she was doing OK, but everytime Gwen mentioned Casey, Alyssa would get upset. And Gwen had to mention Casey everytime we left the house, everytime we drove past the spot in the Wal-mart parking lot where we got her, and any other time she just thought about mentioning what she looked like dead. It was torture to Alyssa. This puppy is an all black lab-hound mix. He is very cute! I am hoping that we can keep him from chewing everything in site, and ultimately killing himself on something in the yard/trash/field...well, you get the idea. Alyssa has appropriately named him "Black" which her father and I thought was a little weird, but when you tell a 6 year old to name her new puppy, you get what you pay for!! She insists that we NOT call it "Blackie" but simply "Black." I am hoping that before we imprint this name on the puppy she will change it to something that sounds more like a name. She does love to change her mind!

I will try and do a better job at keeping up in the coming weeks so that no one thinks I have fallen off the face of the earth, or more likely, exploded from the pressure being applied to my navel. I will also post a picture of the girls enjoying the small amount of snow we got last week. You would have thought it was a blizzard!!