My mom and dad bought us a swing set as a house warming gift, and we were pretty psyched about it, especially Sophie. The manual said it would take 10 to 12 hours of building time, which we thought was a load of crap. It was not. Even with the help of my two brothers it took us nearly 7 1/2 painful hours. Most of the pain came from Sophie trying to help and losing the bolts and screws, or insisting on being right next to whatever we were working on. We were shocked by what a huge swing set came in such a small box, slide and all. We finally got it all put together, and now Sophie and I spend literally hours everyday going up and down the slide, over and over and over and over. . . .

We had a minor disagreement with our sprinkling system and ended up blowing a pipe in the front yard. To his credit, and my surprise, Eli dug the thing up and fixed all by himself. What a handy man!

The Girls' Room

We've been in our house for about 2 weeks now, and the only room that's done is the girls'. I had a lot of fun doing it, was really pleased with how it turned out, and Eli was really pleased when I finally finished and put all the paint, brushes, and plastic away. Sophie was actually pretty good about staying out of the way, she only stuck Oreo's to my canvas once, and smeared only half a flower.

BAHAMAS : )

We had the terrible luck of having to attend a wedding at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas last week. Rough. One of the girls I played basketball with in college was the bride, and nearly the whole team showed up for the event. There were a lot of TALL girls running around the beach, and it didn't go unnoticed. The water was absolutely beautiful, literally as clear as the pools. The food was amazing, the sun was wonderful, the company great, and the experience unforgettable. The resort had everything you could possibly think of to do, from a club and restaurants to water slides, swimming with the dolphins, scuba diving, jet skis, and a "lazy" river complete with rapids and a tube slide. The whole week as awesome, EXPENSIVE, and totally worth it!

IT'S A GIRL!!!! Eli is destined to be surrounded by women : )

OLD MAN

Yesterday was Eli's birthday, so as of today he is officially old : ) Only one more year in your twenty's babe! 29 really isn't that old, but it's half a decade older than me! happy birthday babe! old man or not i still love you!

Easy to clean my _ _ _!

While vacuuming the car I noticed Sophie's car seat had a funk about it, so I decided it was probably time to clean it. I have done many hard things in my life, but never would I have guessed that cleaning a car seat would be added to that list. After removing the Goldfish, Smarties, and a wedged DumDum, I ran into trouble. The freakin' cover would NOT come off. After a few tries I decided there must be some simple trick I just don't know about, so I started searching online. Every review, blog, post, etc. simply said, "easy to clean!" After about 10 minutes I felt like I must be the only owner of the Alpha Omega Elite who just plain doesn't get it. Either that, or everyone else out there is lieing and has never actually cleaned theirs. Anyway, I attacked the thing with new found gusto. . . and may have broken it. I did however manage to get it apart and throw the pieces in the wash. We'll see if it goes back together once it's clean. That'll probably be about the time I find the "dry clean only" tag.