What I'm doing? Is not talking about work today.

You're welcome.

So we had a very good, if busy, weekend.

Matt had some computer trouble last week - as in, his hard drive appeared to have gone all wonky on him. So we invited the Brandts over for dinner Friday night, and while Emma and Penny ran around the house screaming like the excited little girls they were, Braz hauled out his kit of computer repair tools.

It took him until almost 9:30, but he did it. Yay, Braz! I hope the late evening didn't upset Emma's schedule too much. We gave up and put Penny to bed nearly an hour later than usual; I was shocked that she actually didn't fight it too much, and slept right through the night.

She even slept in a little Saturday morning. By "a little," of course, I mean "about fifteen minutes."

Saturday afternoon, we had the Hickses over. K.T. had conceived a desire to grill, and volunteered meat from her own freezer. (Her dad owns a very large parcel of land, and lets hunters roam it for deer. By common courtesy, they give him part of their kills, but K.T.'s dad doesn't like venison - possibly because he's one of those crazy people who like their meat cooked well-done, and venison turns into an even harder hockey-puck than beef if you cook it past medium. So he gave most of the venison to K.T. YUM.)

So Jess and Penny ran around the house (and porch) screaming like the excited little girls they were, while the rest of us lounged around and talked and generally had a fun time.

Penny has started to edge into the true toddler "mine!" phase, but I think that was actually mostly okay with Jess, because she seemed to get a huge kick from handing things to people. Especially Penny. Even if Penny didn't want whatever she was handing her. 'Twas funny.

By request, I picked up some corn on the cob to have with our dinner. I didn't think the babies would be able to do more than lick butter and salt off the cobs, but both of them made respectable inroads, with some help.

At one point, both babies were playing on the stairs, and Jess tripped and fell into Kevin, who was keeping an eye on her. She thunked her head hard into his collarbone, and between the pain of the thunking and being scared from nearly falling, she burst into hysterics.

Penny insisted on descending the stairs, as well. She hovered around Jess and K.T., asking, "Happy? Happy? Happy?"

It was cute.

Sunday was apparently a sleepy day. I slept in until nearly 8:30. Then Matt went back to bed for an hour, himself. And when we put Penny down for her nap, she conked out quick and slept a full two and a half hours, whoo!

But we finally got all the chores and errands done, and late Sunday afternoon, we drove down to visit my parents. (It had, after all, been nearly 2 weeks since they'd seen Penny. We're pretty sure that was the far end of their limit!)

They were thrilled to see her, and she got to practice drinking soda and juice out of a real cup, rather than a sippy-cup. And she ran around and laughed and screamed like the excited little girl she was.

We did get to hear Penny's name for my dad - when we were leaving the comic book store, she didn't want to get back in the car until I said, "We're going to go visit Grandmom and Grandad," and then she let me lead her back to the car, happily chanting, "Bapa! Bapa!"

She said it again when we pulled into their driveway, and Dad came out to greet us. So until her diction improves, I guess my dad is Bapa.

We made it home just in time to have dinner and give Penny her bath, and then read her a few books before putting her to bed.

It was a really nice weekend, with good friends and family and really wonderful weather.

Now... Back to work. Alas.

As an aside - those of you who may have noticed that I've been a little slack about putting up May's page in the photo album - fear not. I didn't take any decent pictures in the first couple of weeks, and then I was going to update the album last week... but then this stupid project landed on my head. I hope to get to it sometime this week or next.

--Liz