We are back from the beach, somewhat sunburned and wishing for more. We had a great time and although Arden got an ear infection halfway through our time in Corolla, we still enjoyed it very much. The house was amazing. I took pictures and when I get around to developing them, I’ll post some. I now want heated floors and heated towel racks along with a steam shower in MY bathroom. It was luxury . . .

Tonight as we were feeding Arden her bottle, Lily informed us that she wanted to “take Arden”. We asked her where she wanted to take her, and she told us “to the garbage can. I’m going to throw her away.” Isn’t she loving and sweet? She was somewhat devilish and mean to Tori while at the beach, but now has asked repeatedly where Tori is and why she is in Texas and not in our guest room. I feel like telling her, “If you were nicer, maybe she’d have stayed!!!” Can’t do that, I suppose. She’s going through her very terrible twos and hopefully it will be over soon. Potty training is not going so well, but considering there are only 2 out of 18 kids in her class out of diapers, apparently I’m not the only one having problems with this.

Things back in Richmond are moving along. The moon is out of alignment or something because everything has been going slightly wrong. First Jennifer ended up on bedrest with more than 2 months of pregnancy left. I vacillate between feeling like I’m going to puke with worry for the baby and wanting to close the business up so I can go do laundry and feed her. She’s still working from her “bed office” (not home office) and that’s helpful in terms of keeping her sane and keeping us in business. I also had my follow up visit with the plastic surgeon, who took one look at my upper stomach and said, “Ooooh, that’s not right.” Okay, out of all the things you want to hear come out of your doctor’s mouth - that is not one of them! Basically my muscles didn’t stay stitched together and now I have this lovely “balloon” of skin and it won’t go away unless I have additionally surgery in the next 3-4 months. The surgery isn’t as major as the original surgery, but it’s still major and will put me back on no lifting for ANOTHER four weeks. Maybe by then Arden will be walking and it won’t be such an ordeal. In addition, we came back from Corolla and the roofing guys had shown up to fix our cedar shakes. Whatever they did caused every ant, spider and silverfish to converge on our house. We are overrun with bugs and hoping Western Pest can detonate a small, insect-sized atomic bomb in here. It’s just gross - one ran across my arm while I was typing this. Ewwwww.

Here are a couple of pictures from the beach. Of course, none of Arden - those will be posted later. These came from grammy’s camera and apparently only Lily was at the beach when she took these.