What a week! Actually nothing much has changed from last week to this week. It's been a quiet happy week, full of nothing exciting. But in a lot of ways those are the best weeks of all.

Well, excuse me but I do have a bit of news. I'm an aunt (again, but this time on my side of the family). My sister Sarah had her little boy, and he is a doll. He came a month, yes a month, early and he is doing well and home from the hospital. So happy thoughts and congratulations to Sarah. (And I won't mention the fact that I'm jealous that she didn't go late, like I did with EVERY SINGLE ONE of my pregnancies--the ninth month is hellish).

On to other news. Beth has once again entered The Young Writers and Illustrators contest that is put on by Reading Rainbow every year. She and Rob are currently working on a podcast so that she can share the wonderful story and illustrations with you all. It was something that we had talked about, but Beth would never sit down and do it, until three days before it was due. She had the idea in her head, but just didn't put it down on paper. I'm really proud of her yet again.

Caleb is experiencing a mild case of croup. Nothing too major. He's fine during the day, but man at night the cough is fierce. It wakes me up, but he seems fine. No fever though. He is a little more hoarse than normal though. He skipped church today since we didn't want to spread it around.

Jacob is really expanding his vocabulary, and fast. I really think that the second day of speech therapy is making a huge difference. Today unprompted he said bread, about the bread for Sacrament. He calls Caleb--Acob, and that is the name he also uses for himself. Jacob and Caleb have too many similar sounds, and it is difficult to go from the hard C sound into the slide after the vowel. So that is a current focus. But Jacob is great at signing, and picking those up super fast. He is also putting his words together. Yeah! He'll talk someday.

Things are going pretty well for me. I need to buckle down and get my second draft of the book done. I know what needs to happen, I just need to get back into the habit of writing. It has definitely helped that I have comfy black stretch pants that I wear when I write. Really, but I won't answer the door in them. So it's a difficult trade off. Not really though--I value comfort over fashion, and I always have.

Rob is having a big reunion with his Hickory church friends that he grew up with. It should be lots of fun for him. They are a bunch of good guys. I am so happy that he could have such good friends that were good influences for each other during those difficult teenage years!