There's no way this is comfortable

Kids' bodies must be made of rubber and play dough. I'm pretty sure if I slept like this I'd be telling Emily for years, "Remember in early 2010 when I slept funny? I still can't turn my head to the left without my right leg aching."

And behind door #1...

When I was packing for my trip to St. Louis, Lizzie decided she wanted to come along:

First Impressions

Joe and I met at an ice cream social. It was the second day Joe was in Michigan. He said he saw me amongst the crowd and thought, "Now there's an attractive soul." My first impression of him was that he was an incoming reckless freshman (his arm was in a sling and thought maybe he'd done something immature to warrant it). Turns out the long thoracic nerve in his shoulder was dead and needed to regrow; in the meantime nothing was holding his shoulder blade down if he raised his arm. He gets the A+ for accurate first impressions... I flunked that one.

We both went home for Thanksgiving and met some of each others' family and the same was planned for Christmas. My family was having a family reunion, however, which meant he would get to meet all 7 of my siblings, 5 of which are brothers. No pressure.

Although my brothers were certainly going to size Joe up and make sure he treated me right and deserved me, I think they also wanted to make a good first impression. Apparently, there was a discussion that certain things were to be kept in line (i.e., manners) so Joe thought I belonged to a good, intelligent family. And I do. My brothers have always been great examples of educated, hard working, righteous men. However, boys will be boys. And there are 5 of them. It turned out Joe's introduction to my brothers skipped the formalities.

Travel plans ended up being that Joe and I arrived later than most at the cabin where the family reunion was at. We were with my oldest brother Mark. Upon arriving, my brother John came out of the cabin to greet us and help bring in luggage.
His first words were, "We've got a gas problem."
I immediately said emphatically, "Not yet!" with furtive glances towards Joe and the possibility of dashing all of my dreams with the wrong first impression. Both brothers were smirking.
Turns out, there was an actual gas leak in the cabin's furnaces. Ahem.

Joe told me he loved me during that reunion. So first impressions aside, it all worked out for the best.

We were THIS close to getting the daily blog post

Alas, we didn't get a post up yesterday. We were so close to keeping our promise of having a daily post. Sigh. Now all the trust we've built up with friends and family through the years is irrevocably lost.

Moving on, Emily and I have decided that to 1) have some quality time with Lizzie and 2) preserve our sanity each Saturday one of us will take Lizzie on a Daughter Date. We'll alternate weeks, and whoever gets Lizzie that week gets to take her to do something for two hours, and the other person gets to do whatever they want (sleep, nap, doze, play video games) for those two hours. Those two hours are guilt free. This was our first week, and I took Lizzie to a park where we played, I pushed Lizzie on the swings, and we saw lots of squirrels. Lizzie would point and scream "Sacrhamahciuoeriaa!!" when she saw a squirrel. I'm sure coherent words will come some day. Here are some pics:


Meanwhile, at home Emily, with her two guilt-free hours to do anything she wanted, took a nap (wise choice) and then...cleaned the bathroom!?! I hope she doesn't think she's established some sort of precedent, because when she has her daughter date with Lizzie I don't think I'll be scrubbing the toilet. I guess we just have different ideas about what is relaxing.

A couple conferences

The last two weekends Joe had conferences. The first was The Michigan State University Comics Forum. Joe has helped organize the conference for the last two years. Joe's brother John came into town to go to the Comics Forum, and then they both went on to St. Louis for the national Popular Culture Association Conference.

Lizzie's first sledding experience (it was over a month ago...)

During our embarrassing lull in blogging it snowed quite a bit here in Michigan (the sun also shone quite a bit, it rained quite a bit, it was night pretty regularly...it was a really long lull). One enterprising resident of our apartment complex made a rather large mound of snow, which happened to be just about the right size for Lizzie to sled down:


Why yes, that is a trash can lid serving as an improvised sled. It was clean and sanitary, and just the right size for a little gal like Lizzie. But Lizzie had the most fun riding on Mom's lap:

Things we do to have FUN around here

Build forts out of couch cushions

Play peek-a-boo fingers underneath any and all doors: Lizzie runs to a door and shuts it leaving the parents on one side and her on the other. Then she pokes fingers underneath and giggles like a madgirl when we grab them. Then she knocks on the door when she thinks the game is over.

Bubbles! Lizzie got regular sized bubbles and Joe got mega sized bubbles in their Easter baskets.

Chillin' with Hulk and Baby with her oh so becoming winter hat.

Getting ready with Mom in the morning (sometimes Mom realizes she wasn't paying enough attention to exactly what Lizzie was playing with on the counter top)

Treating the crib as a jungle gym= bouncing and laughing and falling down (this trick may come back to haunt us when there aren't rails on every side)

Cleaning. Lizzie sometimes has to be the one to say, "Enough is enough- those crumbs on the kitchen floor have got to go."

Baking treats and tasting our wares.

It's been THAT long since we updated this blog?

So we've been pretty terrible bloggers of late. So, here's the plan: some sort of blog post will appear everyday this week. It might not be a huge post (as you'll see with this one), but something will show up daily.
Today's post consists of a single picture from Lizzie's first Easter egg hunt. Lizzie thought she had found the mother of all Easter eggs, but was a little disappointed when she tried to put it in her basket: