Hold onto Hope

Next Saturday, October 10th, I am taking Mary and Emily with me to do a 2 mile Walk for Life around Lafayette. This walk raises money for Matrix Lifeline Pregnancy Center in the Lafayette area. Matrix provides assistance to pregnant women and families with young children and offers guidance to women looking for alternatives to abortion. If you are interested in sponsoring our walk, please add a comment or email me at michelle@elmills.com. They will send you a letter to collect the money. Here is more information if anyone is interested.

A few pictures and our fun weekend

Our new back-to-school mantra goes like this: "No...No...No." We are learning that for us, less is more right now. So far our weekends have been a great balance of housework and relaxation. It helps that Brian is finally to the point that he desires a clean and orderly house too, and that our kids are old enough to actually have real cleaning jobs so I have lots of help.

On Friday Brian and I went out on a date--one where we actually hired a sitter that isn't related to us. And paid her money. We went to the Seeger football game. Romantic, huh? It was a lot of fun! What we love more than lots of things is talking in the car, so it actually was just perfect for us. When we got home we rented Sunshine Cleaning and I would highly recommend it. I watch about 5 movies per year anymore because they mostly are garbage in my opinion. This one was thoughtful; with well-developed characters and only a little bit of ridiculous sex scences (even though it is rated R).

On Saturday evening we celebrated Brian and his mom's birthdays at his parents' house. He got a laptop for his birthday!! Wowzers. An ipod and a laptop within 2 months. We are almost not technologically in the dark ages anymore.

We spent lots of time doing nothing this weekend. Which is new for us, but we sure like it. Today we found a u-pick apple orchard between here and Indy and picked about 30 lbs. of apples. We used our new Jack LaLanne power juicer and made apple juice (which is actually more like cider) out of some of them when we got home. We also juiced a veggie mixture to use as a base for the chili that I simmered all afternoon. It had carrots, swiss chard, onion, tomatoes, and celery in it. I'm sure it's healthy, but boy was it ever ugly.

In closing, if anyone has any ideas about how to keep a girl from taking her diaper off and peeing in her crib every day, please inform. Or maybe just get me some more laundry detergent.

Overheard in my van

Aunt Laura, you'll love this one.

As we were driving through downtown Lafayette the other day, we passed by Trinity UMC. Elijah exclaims, "1869 !! Mom, that church was built in 1869. That's the same year Henri Matisse was born."