Right now

Blogging has taken a backseat to the craziness of life that seems to be the norm lately. Rather than try to catch up, I'll just share a few highlights.

Right now...

*Andrew's back is STILL bugging him. He has good days, but they're outnumbered by the bad ones. He goes to physical therapy, usually once a week. (We just got a bill from our insurance for two thousand dollars saying it's not covered....I hope it's a mistake!) He does lots of stretching at home and is getting some nice biceps as a result. Good thing there's at least some silver lining to this big ol' cloud.



*Caroline is so much fun. She has all of wrapped around her chubby little finger. She loves to eat. I only nurse her 2-3 times a day. She prefers regular table food to baby food. Some of her favorites include: broccoli cheddar soup, strawberry yogurt, string cheese, waffles, and Honeycomb cereal.

But she'll still put anything and everything in her mouth.

*I am feverishly working to renew my dental hygiene license. I am only licensed to practice in AZ, but let that expire last year. I can pay a late fee and still renew it by June. I have A LOT of continuing ed credits to finish up before then. I've done as many on-line classes as I'm allowed and spent all day yesterday getting

CPR certified.

I'll be attending a dental convention in May which will cover most of the remaining credits and just need to squeeze in one or two more classes. It has been fun to get back into my specialty. I love teeth! And gums!

*Whitney is taking dance class again. It includes tap and ballet.

She is a beautiful little ballerina.
Her teacher is a lot of fun and

her best little girlfriend is in the class, too.
They have a blast every week.

*Brandon's favorite thing to do with his free time right now is to play basketball in the backyard. He asks Andrew to join him every chance he gets, but is happy to just shoot around by himself, too. Too bad all the neighbor kids his age have moved away. :( I guess I'm not a big enough challenge.

*We are having the hardest time finding a new TV that will work with our Singstar video games. It is SOOOO frustrating! We have tried three different brands of LCD's and all of them have an audio lag that completely ruins the scoring of the game. Annoying. At this point, I'm anti-new-technology. The game has no issues on our little 10-year-old TV. I'd be happy to just leave things as they were, but our 20-year-old TV that we've had in our bedroom finally kicked the bucket and I wanted a replacement. Maybe I just need to keep my eye on Craig's list and buy another old one.

*I'm having fun slowly spending our tax refund on home improvement projects. (So far they've all gone much smoother than the first doorknob fiasco.) My favorite one so far has been

our family theme.

With help from my SIL Cindy and vinyl letters from Kelly, I put this together. Very fittingly, it makes me happy... even though I'm not completely in love with the frame.

*I'm looking forward to a visit from my BFF Marianne later this week, a long weekend road trip to DC next month, and a month-long road trip out to Utah this summer. I am so spoiled.

*Caroline's eyes are still grayish blue, but I'm starting to see the slightest hint of brown flecks. Dang. I was hoping the gray would last. I tried to take a close up picture to illustrate and ended up with this:

Isn't that cool how you can see the reflection of me and my
camera? Unfortunately, you can't see the brown flecks.
Are her top eyelashes to die for?
I'm jealous.

*Brandon finally has glasses again. He lost them sometime in the last six weeks, but I kept thinking they would turn up. We finally gave up, bit the bullet, and paid out of pocket for another pair. We told him this pair better last AT LEAST until June when insurance will pay for more. It's nice that he doesn't have to squint all the time any more. I think his teacher was beginning to think I was an unfit parent.

AND he lost his front tooth after weeks of having it wobbling around. He came up with the most creative way of getting it out and I videotaped it, but am having issues getting uploaded. Boo.