pace found my sunglasses and thought he was one good-lookin' baby. he is shirtless because i'd just finished giving him a haircut, which he was also very pleased about. he was feeling very handsome and photogenic and kept telling me to take pictures "gen" (again) and then demanding to look at them on the camera.

more house pictures--sorry

i guess once i start blogging i get on sort of a role.....and loren's at meetings all night, so why not, right?  i think (dare i say it?)  that the house might very well be almost done (the 'almost' is because i still have to hang curtains in my room).  i know i've said that before, but now i think i mean it.  we got our new couches, so the big-empty-room problem is solved.  i also acquired many new turquoise things that quickly found places in the house (i must be in a turquoise--not to be confused with 'blue' --ha ha--mood these days).  and, i finally finished the powder room, which was actually very difficult, since it's wall-papered in not my style at all, but i think i found something that works.  so, here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.  or not.  mostly these are for my mom, and my sisters, who don't mind me getting a little house crazy every now and then!

beach fun (and freezing cold)

valentine's day

okay, so i was going to do a cute valentine's day post after reading all of yours, but now that i'm here ready to do it, i remembered that my camera sat diligently on the counter during all the festivities and never actually got used.......

i want someone to invent a camera that knows when you want a picture taken and just takes it by itself.

anyway, we did have a good day.  the kids threw their second annual card-making/cookie-decorating party and invited all the kids in the ward their age.  we had a lot of fun.  and it was good to have their friends from church over for the first time.  i love seeing the creative side of the kids, and i think i must secretly still be a sticker/fun paper junkie (left over from my elementary school days of 'the sticker collection') because i have so much fun buying supplies for the kids' parties!  i went way overboard, but luckily the kids like doing crafts all year long, so i'm sure everything will get used up eventually!

loren got me the best present ever--a day at the spa!  i have never, ever, ever even been close to a spa before, so this will be a big treat (i will post pictures of my newly manicured/pedicured/facialed/massaged self after i go).  and the best part is that he already buys me everything i really need (and then some) so it was fun to get a real present that is absolutely impractical.  hooray for valentine's day!!!!!!!

i have a question

okay, so i am new to this world of online keeping in touch, and i cannot figure out this facebook thing.  loren signed me up for it, and now i've got like a million friends (well, not really, but you know what i mean) adding me onto their facebook pages, and then i add them onto mine, and people can post little comments..........but i don't get why there are blogs and facebooks and why some people have both and some people have only one or the other.........and how do people find time to run in to the computer and type what they are doing every second?  i realize the irony of that statement as i sit here blogging, but i only get on my blog twice a day (or so-ish), and not all the time to say exactly what i'm doing at each moment.  that said, i have enjoyed catching up with long-lost friends through facebook.........so is it basically a friend-finder for people who have easy access to a computer?  i guess it would be a pain to have 300 people listed on your blog list, so in that way a facebook page is better.  anyway, if any of you computer-ly social people can clue me in on this, that would be much appreciated!  and, i don't mind being on any of your facebook pages, and i think it's fun, i guess i'm just saying i don't know how it all works (don't go thinking i am anti-facebook)............

new 'unusuals' of south florida

so, loren and i discovered something on one of our family walks the other day.  all of the ducks in the ponds/lakes/canals in our neighborhood are fake!  yes, fake.  floating out in the middle of the water like real ducks.  trying to trick northern virginia fools like us.  we did feel really silly that we'd always thought there were ducks all over the place.  what is really driving us crazy, though, is the fact that we cannot figure out why they are there.  it's not just for decoration, because since we discovered the fake ducks, we've been looking for them, and they are on every bit of water in all the cities all over here (and there are bits of water everywhere here in south florida).  the only thing we've come up with is that they are alligator decoys.  i really should just ask somebody, but i feel sheepish.  any ideas?

on a different subject (one dealing with cars), loren and i saw two very unusual and somewhat worrisome things in the same intersection last night while we were out and about on a date.  the first was a normal car (white crown vic) that was placed/mounted/jacked up (i'm not sure of the correct vernacular here) on huge truck tires, so that the bottom of the car was actually higher than the top of our car.  we had never seen such a thing before--even in california where the changing of tires on cars for various purposes is quite common, we never saw something this unusual.  it would have been better if it had been painted with lightning stripes or something, because then it would have at least been admitting that it was out to draw our attention, but it just acted like a normal car on crazy high wheels.  

anyway, we pulled up next to this car at a stop light, and then we noticed that the pickup (legitimate) truck in front of us had real bullet holes in the back of it.  we started wondering what section of town we had wandered into, and were very glad that we were 30 minutes from home and not closer to it.  

always an adventure, it is, moving to new places!!!!!!!!!!!

mother/daughter moment

liesel and gwyneth and i have been doing something really fun.  i guess they read in a book about a mom and a daughter who wrote notes back and forth to each other in a journal.  g & l thought this sounded like fun (gwyneth actually started it first and then liesel joined in), so they each got a journal and we pass them back and forth every couple of days with little notes in them to each other.  it's been really fun to read their thoughts on things, and i like being able to tell them all the good things i notice about them.  i am writing this down in hopes that i will remember these moments when they are teenagers.....