And, in other news ...

We had a great time in Indianapolis visiting our cousins and spending Saturday at the indoor water park. George liked the "Lazy River" the best and Estelle went down the 4-story tall "Tube Slide" a couple times. John and I both tried the fast water slides and once was enough for me. Made out of blue plastic, dark, loop-de-loops, with water flowing through and then plunging you at top speed into the pool at the end - yikes! I'm with George, the Lazy River was a good way to go. We got to celebrate Gumpy's birthday last Sunday and brought home plenty of great blueberry muffins. With everyone so involved in our busy lives, it is nice to take time to just enjoy each other's company. John took a new job that he will start in May. He says May 8th but I think that is a Saturday so it is probably not right. He will have about a 45 minute commute, that he's not particularly looking forward to, but with the limitations on grant funding through the government, he's happy to have a "real" job doing something he's experienced with. His title will be Research Scientist and he'll be designing assays. What the heck is an assay, you might ask ... a test kit for scientists to use when doing specific kinds of experiments. Sounds like fun eh? At least he will get to work in a casual atmosphere and - he says he's only 5 miles from McDonald's... weirdo!

Teeth

Well on Saturday Estelle lost her first tooth (courtesy of George hitting her in the mouth with the computer keyboard when she was bugging him for a turn to play at pbskids) and then the second one came out on Sunday. I had my camera at the office so didn't get any pictures with only one tooth missing, and it is kind of hard to see that she is missing any at all because the new teeth have already started to come in. But, she is very happy to finally have her name on the tooth chart at school - the last one in her class to lose any teeth. The tooth fairy was very generous ... $5 each! The teeth are saved in a little silver cup just like John had when he was little.

Some Pictures

OK - the top picture might look kind of dark but it is John dressed in his Queen Sancha Ball costume for Mardi Gras, then Estelle is in her Storm jersey ready to go to the hockey game... and my encounter with hockey (since I didn't get to go to the game) - the only recognizable hockey celebrity ... who happened to be in Columbus on Friday night for his team's game there. Apparently his father, Wayne Sr., was wandering around the exhibit area at the speech & hearing convention singing songs in Italian and swiping people's candy bars. Very interesting!

Life

Let's see ... life around here has been ... BUSY! Things are gearing up for the neighborhood Festival and it seems like I'm doing a little about that every day. We've set an internal deadline for ourselves of April 1 to have all the details worked out and it is coming up very quickly. I've started on the taxes and getting ready for the Easter Egg Hunt, so when both of those deadlines occur on April 15, I should be done. We got the materials for George to sign up for Kindergarten. I know he's looking forward to it although he'll miss his many friends from preschool who will all scatter and go different places. We've re-scheduled our trip to Indy for next weekend and Estelle is really looking forward to seeing her cousins. She still hasn't lost those two loose teeth on the bottom even though the big teeth are halfway in already. It looks funny to have two rows. Oh, and she moved up to "Kippers" in gymnastics so she's enjoying learning some new skills. One of her friends from Sunday School is also in her class.