Rex on the way to conference.

Rex digging in my bag.

Rex trying to drive us back to the hotel after lunch.

Rex trying to eat my leftover tacos.

Rex guarding the car while I am gone.

Tuesday we went to VBS and when the girls were home and in bed I started thinking about my packing list. No worries, I have plenty of time. At 3:15 the phone rang. “Hello.”  Mike’s Mom: “Louanne, I fell and cut the heck out of my hand!” Me: “What? Do you need to go to the hospital?” Mike’s Mom: “You better talk to them up here.” (Assisted living center director gets on the phone) “Louanne, if you can you better come up here and get her and take her to the hospital. She is going to need sutures. We don’t want to take chances.” Me: “Okay, I am on my way and will be there as soon as I can.”

I pick Linda up and get her over to the emergency room literally around the corner from where she lives and we get signed in. The wonderful staff at the hospital get Linda all taken care of and we are out of there. They tell me what I need to buy for her and when she needs her stitches out. At this point it’s way past her meal time and Linda is diabetic so my next goal is to get some food in her system. I get her back to her little room at the assisted living place and all settled. I tell her I will be back tomorrow with all the bandages and everything else she needs in the morning. I call Mike and tell him I will grab food and head home. At that point it’s almost bedtime for the girls and I think, “No problem. I have all day tomorrow.” I make my packing list, start a little packing pile and get some sleep.  The girls and I get up on Wednesday and we are like machines in the morning. We hit 8 places in 2 hours to get everything done. I get the girls some lunch, we play and they head down for naps. Mike gets home from work and we start to pack the car.

Mike tosses the bags with beach chairs into the trunk and a little mouse runs out! It’s just sitting there in the trunk.

Mike takes a quick photo and says that we need to get it out and he is afraid it’s going to go down a hole so he needs to get him quick. Can you guess what happened? The mouse bolted down the hole. So Mike takes everything out of the trunk and removes the liner and pulls out Nadia’s car seat and looks all over the place. No mouse! Mike finally gave up the search and we put the car back together. I was having visions of it eating the electronics of the car!

We head into the house not believing that delay when we were trying to get the car loaded up. Mike goes to rinse something in the sink and turns on the disposal and feels water hit his legs and feet and sees it coming out of the cabinet door. He stops the disposal, opens the cabinet and it’s filled water and shredded Mac n Cheese! WHAT?!? So we have to pull everything out from under the sink – it’s all covered in water and mac and cheese. C-O-V-E-R-E-D! Then Mike tries to figure out what happened. He sees the problem, fixes it and then decides he has to head to Home Depot for a mouse trap and something for the sink. I finish cleaning everything off and get it back under the sink. At this point it’s like a comedy routine around our house. What else can you do but laugh?

We have dinner and I take the girls up for a bath. Get Amelie out and in her jammies and tell her not to try and get back in the tub while I wash Nadia’s hair. I start to soap up Nadia and feel Amelie right behind me and I tell her to stay back because she is always trying to toss stuff in the bathtub when it’s Nadia’s turn. Well she falls over and she starts screaming. “ear moooommmmyyyy!” I grab her and sure enough her ear it scraped and very quickly turning a bright shade of purple. Mike brings up a gel pack and rocks her while I finish with Nadia and all I can think is, “I am ready for this vacation!!”

So now at 10:45 pm the girls are sleeping, the car is packed (complete with mouse traps under the seats…seriously), the clothes for tomorrow are laid out and I am ready for the BEACH!

Louanne: “You’re right, he can’t.”

Nadia: “He’d look really cute though.”

• Nadia was listing off her toys, “Spiderman, Green Goblin, Batman, Joker, Blue Beetle. They’re my crew. I love them.”
• Nadia was talking to Batman on her cell phone in the car. “I’m not asleep, my mom and dad are not asleep. If my dad was asleep he would drive off the road and into the grass! No I don’t think we are going to make it all the way to Gotham City.”
• When we finished our devotion and prayer one morning last week I said, “Amen.” Nadia said, “I know what Amen means, I can open my eyes now.”
• Nadia singing in her room last night, “Amazing grace how sweet the sound. I love my mom of course. I once got lost but now I’m found. I love my mommy and daddy.”
• Nadia: “What are we doing today?”

Louanne: “It’s Mother’s Day and we are going to church.”

Nadia: “I wish it was Batman Day today.”

Louanne: “There is no Batman Day.”

Nadia: “If he was REAL, there would be a Batman Day. That would be cool.”

(She proceeded to tell the Children’s Church teacher that it wasn’t Mother’s Day, it was Batman Day)

• In our Gotcha Video I hand Nadia her “yellow baby” which turned out to be her favorite comfort toy. We wanted to get something for her little sister and this weekend we let her pick one out at Target. She also picked out the matching blanket. Then she said, “And I want to hand it to my sister in China.” (I got a little teary since she wanted to do the same thing for her sister that I did for her)
• One day last week Nadia announced “it’s a perfect day to go outside!”  So I sent her out into the backyard. When the neighbor dogs barked at her she barked back.
• Nadia was biting her pretzels into numbers. She would say, “here is a 2 here is a 3”
• Nadia was looking for something and all of sudden she yells out, “Great Scott! I don’t know where it is.”
• Grammie came over for a playdate and I went to introduce a mentor. When I got back Nadia said, “I had so much fun I forgot about you!”
• While eating dinner one night Nadia said, “No soup for you!” to Mike. She was the only one with soup and has never seen Seinfeld, but we cracked up laughing.

I am thankful that this hilarious girl is our daughter!

This leads to a massive search for him and then she runs back into the kitchen. So of course at this point I follow to see why she needed him. Here is what I saw:

The 3 wise men as passengers and Baby Jesus as the pilot.

Call the Nestle Crunch Hotline at 1-800-295-0051. When asked if you want to continue in English or Spanish, just wait quietly for about 10 seconds and then you will smile. Keep going and press 4 to listen to the next set of options. Then pick 7 or any of the other options. Don’t give away the surprise if you have done it. It’s really cute and funny!

Quebe Sisters Band

If it’s possible for a 2 year old to have a favorite band, they are Nadia’s Here is a little video I put together of Nadia singing along to “So Long To the Red River Valley”