1/2 Raspberry, 1/2 Lemon

Tonight, we celebrated my father-in-law Dave's 17th Heart Day (a few days early). For those that don't know what that means, it has been 17 years since his heart transplant! (See Lulu.com for his book.) He had a heart transplant on Easter Sunday in 1991.

Every year we have a heart cake of some sort. This year was a nice white cake with 17 hearts. When my mother-in-law described it, she said that half had raspberry filling, the other half had lemon filling. When we all dug in, we realized that wasn't entirely true. Apparently somewhere in the translation from Sylvia to order-taker to cake-maker, the message got mixed up. They mixed up the raspberry and lemon fillings and spread it over the whole cake. So EVERYONE had raspberry and lemon fillings mixed! So... technically it was 1/2 raspberry, 1/2 lemon... but they mixed them together! Who does that?? Well, regardless, it was yummy!

Happy Heart Day, Dave!

The Leprechaun

When Ben was in kindergarten, he came home from school talking about the leprechaun and all of his crazy antics. We weren't sure what exactly he meant until after St. Patrick's Day when we found out about all the mischief the leprechaun caused at the school and at friend's houses. Mike and I had never known about the leprechaun before. The following year, we once again didn't realize that the leprechaun had quite a presence in our neighborhood... until after St. Patrick's Day when we once again learned of all the mischief he caused.

So, last year, the leprechaun visited our house on the eve of St. Patrick's Day. He did little things (turned the sofa around and moved the coffee table). But, unbeknownst to Mike and I, he even left snow tracks! There were tracks leading from our neighbors' house to our back door and then on to the next neighbor's house (a rabbit??) The kids were convinced. The leprechaun MUST have hit our house.

This year, the leprechaun hit again. Amazingly, he did everything while I was typing on the computer that evening. He flipped the coffee table upside down, moved the dining chairs into various parts of the main level, put beanbag chairs at the dining room table, swapped out several pieces of artwork, rearranged all of the kids' quilts (Ben had Tommy's, Tommy had Reagan's, Reagan had Ben's), and switched out the kids' rugs. Oh, and later in the day we saw that he even replaced my candles on their sconces with Campbell's soup cans and put Tommy's firetruck in the fridge. That naughty leprechaun.

We celebrated St. Patrick's Day with some green angel food cake that night. It took a long time convincing Ben that it was indeed his favorite cake. They thought it must be mint.

She's not my friend; she's my sister!

If you keep up with the OurJourneytoFour blog, you'll know that our family is one step closer to gaining a new member!  We learned today that we received our Letter of Approval.  That's about 1-3 months faster than we were being told.  We were thinking our travel would definitely occur over summer vacation.  Nope... now it looks like we'll go during the school year.  Maybe May!  I'm personally hoping for early May in the hopes that my dad can travel with us.  

Today was a busy day of doctor visits (CT scan for me trying to figure out my mysterious abdominal pain and a doctor checkup for Reagan).  During one of the long driving trips today, I was talking to Tommy.  I said, "Tommy, did you know that we are going to go get Gracelynn soon?"  (Bad idea... 3 year olds have no concept of time and thus "soon" means today.)  He responded, "We go get her today?"  I told him no, not for a few weeks, but it's much quicker than we thought.  I tried once again to get him to understand that this little playmate is here to stay and will live with us.  So I said, "When she comes to live with us, you two can play games together and go on the playground out back."  He got excited about that.  Then I said, "You two will be good friends."  He said, "No mommy.  Gracelynn not my friend.  She's my sister."  :-)