Oh, I am brave....

Yesterday I took the boys to the grocery store...all by myself! It's only taken 9 weeks to get the courage. I did take them on a mini grocery store excursion last week but that was only for milk so can't really be counted. The trip was a success. We have also gone to the sprinkler park, a park on base, and playgroup in the last week, although there was always someone else there like a friend.

I had this brilliant idea last week. I decided there was no point in trying to do it all so I called our normal babysitter and offered her a job two to three days a week for an hour. I was thinking this would be the perfect solution to my "I have no time to be a normal person" plight. I wanted to use her so I could exercise and then take a shower. This arrangement started on Friday and it was so wonderful to exercise in silence; I could hear my own thoughts! She was supposed to come on Monday, but forgot so she said she would come today. She never showed up and she is leaving town for ten days tomorrow. So, I guess my idea wasn't so brilliant after all. I think I'm just going to have to find someone else.

It has been raining here a lot this month. We are supposed to get rain all week. We are fortunate enough to not be in the same situation as my brother Jason and his family, who live in Iowa. We are getting quite a bit of rain though. I am a little nervous about checking out our storm shelter for fear that it will be full of water again which isn't so wonderful since it is tornado season and we've already used our shelter twice this year. I'm not sure which would be better: being safe in a shelter with mosquitos, flies, and maggots with water up to our ankles, or being in our bathroom tub when a tornado comes by. It's a toss up. And then of course Mike will have to wear his "I'm cleaning out the storm shelter and don't want to get attacked by mosquitoes" outfit again. Ugh. I hated helping him suck all that water up

In other news, I am really enjoying Isaac lately. He is such a teaser! I don't know if I've ever mentioned his "evil eye." It is hilarious. He has been giving it quite a lot which means he's acting shy, he's teasing, or he's in trouble. He has been healthy for eight weeks now and I think that is the longest he's ever gone without being sick. I am loving it. He is trying to count and say his ABC's. It sounds like this, "A me ne...g h z. Now I know, now I know." His counting is like this, "2, 7, 8, 7, 7, 8, 7." It's pretty funny.

He has been saying, "Potty, potty," for the past two weeks or so. We go and put him on the potty and he sits for a split second and then says, "All done." Well, on Saturday I was out running errands and I came home and Isaac was all wet. I asked Mike why he was wet and Mike said that while he (Mike) was taking a shower Isaac started saying he needed to go potty. So Mike said, "Ok, go ahead and sit on the potty." All of the sudden Mike hears Isaac cry and he peeks his head out of the shower only to see that Isaac had fallen in and his legs were up in the air! And then of course, Mike didn't change his clothes with toilet water all over him. Gross.

Here is one of my favorite pictures: two of the four handsome boys in my life.