Look, my friend Sara got married a couple of weeks ago! Isn’t she hot? So is Tim.

I’m back from surgery. Aside from the massive bruising and lumpiness on my body, it’s harder to tell I had children now. Not that I don’t wear those particular scars with pride. It was the stretchmarks that were killing me.

During my recovery haze, Lily hung out with me on the couch as much as her two-year old personality would allow. One of her favorite phrases from bad reality tv, repeated at a loud decibel: “Where are all you Bee-Otches?!?!?” (Slang for “bitches). Nice. Arden’s starting to talk, though her speech is all vowels and babbling. Still, she seems to think we can understand her and emphatically says “babababbababa” over and over again while making eye contact. The other day she said “YOBA!” and Lily thought that was hilarious. We don’t know what it means, but it sounds cool.

Lily seems to be doing well at her new school. She’s making new friends and soon the pool will be open. She can’t wait for that. She may end up not loving the pool as much as she did last year since I’ve enrolled her in swim lessons and the director of the program said that they generally cry and pitch a fit for the first few lessons . . . but after 6 lessons, they swim. It’s hard to imagine Lily swimming under the water and holding her breath, but this particular schools says they can learn to do it even younger. I just don’t have it in me to sign Arden up yet!

I figured I’d better post today since next week I’m having some surgery and will be drugged up and not allowed to operate the internet, let alone machinery.

We got back from the Asheboro Zoo on Sunday and I’m posting some pictures. We had a blast seeing Susan and Eddie and their two children. Too bad we all don’t live closer to each other . . . We also really enjoyed seeing Aunt Dana and Uncle Richard. Arden especially misses them since for once in her life, people paid more attention to her than Lily (Lily was a little out of it after going to the emergency room Friday night with a fever over 105, and only wanted her mommy and daddy). Arden is probably wishing we would have left her down there!

Anyway, things have been busy between trying to buy another company (the deal fell through Monday night), determining whether or not to go full time at work, dealing with sick children, and worrying about my impending surgery and how I’m going to get through 4 weeks without lifting anything heavier than a milk jug (uh, Arden weighs more than a milk jug . . . ).

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a 1000 words, so that’s about all I can do at the moment.

The first picture is of Lily at the zoo - the second is of Arden and her new habit - sucking on chins!!! She particularly liked Aunt Dana’s. It must have been yummy.

Lily has a new role - yoda wannabe. Everything is phrased in Yoda-Speak. “Gummy bears I would eat”, “Glass of water will I drink”, etc. It’s hilarious. A lot funnier than her “remove the diaper full of poop at naptime” routine.

There have been no posts as Steve and his friend Tim are here, tiling their brains out and making our bathroom into a work of art. Free time has been spent in the yard mulching - we had 12 yards delivered to split with our neighbor, and we’ve barely made a dent in it. We planted some new stuff, cleaned up the deck, and at least the outside of the house is presentable.

Mother’s Day was nice - we took Lily to the park and met Alex there who was hanging out with Matt. After that, it was a fabulous gourmet meal at McDonald’s (guess who picked the restaurant). McDonald’s, for those of you who don’t know, is affectionately referred to by Lily as “Mac-a-donal’s” and she is particularly excited about their “play-arrhea” (sounds like diarrhea - means Play Area). For dinner we all went to Pasta Luna and I ate like a pig. It was delicious!

It’s back to work tomorrow, so there won’t be any posts until the weekend. I hope all of you in cyber land are doing well.

Yes, it’s been far too long. I got a yucky sinus/respiratory infection, and was out of it for the better part of the week waiting for the first round of antibiotics to work. They didn’t, I got worse, and two visits to the doctor later + one Z-pak, I’m feelin’ fine. I still sound like a 1-900 operator, but that has its perks.

I turned 34 today. It was pretty anti-climactic, as all birthdays beyond 21 have been. I worked all day, felt annoyed for most of the day, and got into an argument with someone within Association for Accounting Marketing about starting a local chapter here. I love it when people from outside of the state tell me all about the accounting firms within the state. Hello, I live here - and work in the industry. I’m, uh, familiar with the way things work around here.

Speaking of which, we now have some clients in Northern Virginia, and Jennifer and I both agree that it is very, very refreshing. Richmond is incestuous within the business community. Everyone knows everyone. It gets old after a while. It also has major benefits. It’s nice, however, to work with clients who don’t know the same people we do, and have no preconceived notions of who we are, or who we aren’t. The billing rates are nice, too.

Lily is doing fine, but killing my mother while we wait for Barony to have an opening for her. She poops in her diaper during naptime, removes it, and usually ends up splattering her bed with tidbits of excrement, all the while screeching happily, “Grammy/Mommy, I made a BIG poochie!” It’s disgusting and really, really irritating. I wish she’d screech BEFORE she pooped so I could put her on the toilet, but so far no luck. She is totally potty-trainable in terms of her maturity, speech, and understanding of the concept - it’s her iron-clad will that is keeping her from doing it. I wonder where that came from.

In a couple of weeks, Mike and the girls and I will descend on Aunt Dana and Uncle Richard and meet up with the Savage family at the Asheboro Zoo. I am so excited I can hardly stand it. We don’t get out much, so therefore, it doesn’t take much to thrill us. I haven’t seen Susan and Eddie and Jenna in a hundred million years, and I’ve yet to meet Colin, so that’s pretty exciting too.

My big brother Steve is here from Michigan, laying tile in both of our upstairs bathrooms and generally helping us out a ton with our big bathroom remodel (thank you tax return). I am hoping my few good connections down here will help convince him to move here permanently. The more family, the better. Good lord, did I just say that?

Today I realized that we really need a vacation. With the exception of one night away before Arden was born, Mike and I have not taken a vacation since we went skiing in Colorado. That was when I found out I was pregnant with Lily. I need 7-10 days off. No email, no telephone, no work. I feel fried and crispy, but we’ve got a lot of work product to shove out the door before the end of the summer. Thankfully Sara has been helping us out. She’s a project manager above all project managers, and every day, Jennifer and I thank the lord above for her presence. She has saved our sanity and maybe one of these days she’ll make some money with her own company - I don’t doubt she’ll be extremely successful if she puts her mind to it. If anyone needs a professional organizer, she’s the one to straighten you up.