Demolition!!

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Work has begun on Aliya's new room! Yippee!!

Amazing Accident!!!

This accident in Utah is unbelievable. The truck went through the concrete barrier (where the people are standing on the right side of the picture), flipped over the culvert, and landed on a 25-foot wide strip of land, 1 foot away from the edge of a 200-foot high cliff. I bet the driver had to change his Underoos after that one!








































http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/06/utah.crash/index.html
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Revolving Door

We've had lots of visitors in the last couple of weeks. First, my brother Elijah and his girlfriend Kristin came from Tennessee for 4 days and promptly got roped into doing the morning drop-off route for me (much harder than it sounds). The third day was a snow day so they got to spend LOTS of extra time with the kids. Last week Elijah called with the news that the day after they arrived back home, he proposed!!! I can't believe my baby brother is getting married!

The next arrival was Ben's Aunt Aiesha who unexpectedly got a visa to come visit from Morocco. Aiesha stayed with us for a few days and was so bored that she wanted to go back to Ben's sister's house so she could do some work (cleaning, etc.). While she was with us we took her to the N.E. Aquarium where we had this photo op.

Another surprise arrival was Amine, the son of some friends from Morocco. He was on break from college in Quebec, so he decided to come visit us. Hopefully he wasn't expecting a week of peace.

Our next visitors will be Grandma Ginny and Grampa B, who are coming this week to help us work on Aliya's room.
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They're Playing Her Song!

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Norah's nickname is "No-No", mostly because she's such a little maniac so we're constantly telling her "NO!". It's fitting that her favorite song (Black Horse in a Cherry Tree) has a lot of "No's" in it. A couple of weeks ago we were at Joe's American Bar & Grill and I was feeding Norah some of my ziti. When she got sick of eating it, she stuck half a piece of ziti on her finger and started waving it back and forth and singing "No no...no, no no no..." It was so cute!

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Our other favorite activity at Joe's is to wear the napkins.

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findaFLUshot.com

The 3 rules I try to live by are:

~ Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
~ A stitch in time saves nine.
~ A place for everything and everything in its place.

I absolutely HATE it when I don't follow these rules and it results in wasted time or money. I'm usually very susceptible to suggestion, so when Helga mentioned the website findaflushot.com, I would normally go right to the site, find a place and time to get a flu shot, and then follow through and get one.

Well, getting a flu shot was a task that fell through the cracks (kinda like getting an IUD, which was on my list until the opportunity passed and Surprise Baby Norah came along). Ben was struck by the flu about a month ago and he took to his bed for 4 days. He said it was the worst he had ever felt. For the first couple of days I thought he was just being a crybaby, but a couple of weeks later I got it. I seriously felt like I was dying. In addition to the fever and respiratory symptoms, the headache and body aches were unbearable. I was SO tired but I had a hard time staying asleep because of the pain. I resorted to using my Hypnobabies (self-hypnosis for childbirth) techniques and that helped a little.

To make matters worse, it was school vacation week so I had to make sure the kids didn't wander off or burn the house down while I was passed out. It was 4 days of hell, then about 3 days of recovery, and a full week to dig out from under the pile. Through it all, the kids were fine...they all had flu shots. Next year, I will too!!!
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