weeeee.....

we made a very exciting discovery the other day while driving past the elementary school where ella will be attending kindergarten...we have a neighborhood park only 0.5 miles from the house.

last weekend (or so) john and i walked the kids down there to play, and josiah rode his first swing. if you listen closely, you can hear him giggle.

the kids also rode a slide, but the video of that isn't as exciting. we did get some cute pictures of that though, darn my kids are good looking!

afterward we walked over to the neighborhood pub and threw back a couple. we let ella entertain herself with the camera- she's getting pretty good at taking photos.

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john left for six days this morning.

that's a cake walk comparatively so it almost doesn't deserve blogging. but i'm not so much blogging about his being gone, or how lonely i am or busy i am or anything like that. i'm blogging about it because something occurred to me last night when i got home from dropping him at the boat.

when we say goodbye it's like i take a big breath and then hold it as long as i can. when i inevitably exhale, there's a funny, unpleasant smell in the air. pretty soon my brain gets tired of being reminded of this funny, unpleasant smell and it ignores my nose- but the smell is still there. i smell it, ella smells it and i think even josiah smells it a little. when john comes home, no matter how long he's gone, that funny, unpleasant smell disappears and all of a sudden i'm reminded of what clean air smells like.

the sad thing is that what i really need to do is not hold my breath at all- just breath it in and get myself used to the smell so that i can carry on without constantly thinking 'what is that smell?' that way i function quite normally throughout the day and am only reminded when i crawl into bed by myself that something isn't quite right.

how that for a heavy post on a monday morning?

well, i'm off to the gym...maybe i can lose a pound before he gets back!!!

it's beginning to look a lot (less) like christmas

well, the holidays have come and gone. i know this because i finally took down my christmas tree and various ornamentations and packed up the cd's full of christmas music. i always hate looking at our home after the decorations are gone and the music's stopped- it seems so boring, cold and lonely without all those festive holiday reminders.

we had a great christmas at The Castle this year with all sorts of DiBernardo relations decending upon the little town of Temecula. uncle louie even dressed up like santa claus. we've been trying to explain to ella, gently, that there is no such thing as santa claus. this is harder than you'd think, because every time she sees someone dressed as santa she tells me that he IS real and that she just saw him. so, i thought it was going to set us back that not only did she SEE santa, but he brought her presents and she got to sit on his lap. well, ella's a pretty savvy girl because when she told me that she'd seen santa she said, 'and isn't that funny, because it was really just my uncle louie dressed up. he's so cute." so, i guess she's getting it. and she's right, her uncle louie is cute!

the holidays were so much fun.

even more fun is the fact that we aren't preparing to say goodbye to john for eight months like we did last year, and we'll do a year from now. and i'm not hooked up to an IV right now because pregnancy gives me "hyperemesis gravidarum" a.k.a. puking so much you can't stay hydrated or nourished. ah, the good old days.

2007 was a good year- we have a new little man in our house who has completed our family (yes, that's right...mommy got her tubes tied). 2007 was also a tough year- yucky pregnancy, john missing 8 months of it and all sorts of other things. it's promising to know that all of these things are sanctifying us and not just a random series of unfortunate events. if that were the case, i wouldn't be able to stand it.

in 2008 i would like to figure out a way to get a play station and DDR (that's dance dance revolution for you non-DDR nerds). i'd also like to figure out a way of balancing husband, kids, work, bible study and working out.

any suggestions?

springfield, here i come

so cool. i was wandering around "the web" this morning and i found a website that allows you to "simpsonize" yourself.

and if i do say so myself, i make a great simpson character.