Recent Events

• I'm going to start blogging more regularly at www.feministmormonhousewives.org and share my various thoughts on feminism and Mormonism and who knows what else.
• Today we had Sophia's birthday party. I can't believe she's turning 5 already. We did a little treasure hunt, let the kids decorate two carrot cakes I bought at Costco, and then they played outside chasing the bunnies, the rooster, and just running around. I think everyone had a good time. 
• I am starting my CASA training next Saturday. After they initially turned me down, because they thought I had to be a citizen, it turned out that I can become a volunteer after all, and so I rushed through the application process to have everything ready before the training starts. I'm really excited to participate in something that I consider meaningful service. It will also be good prep as well as a good resume point when I try to apply for grad school. 
• Did I mention that we hit a deer with our car a few weeks ago. Everything happened so fast, we couldn't even swerve or do anything to avoid it. Luckily it was only a small deer, and the damage to the car was not as bad as it could have been. However, it still cost over $3000 to fix it. But luckily again, our deductible was only $150. So happy. Hitting the deer was nasty. We totally gutted the poor thing, and there was poop and guts smeared all along the side of our car. The stench was KILLER. Sososo bad. Henry and Sophia got out and tried to see the dead deer, and Henry made sure to take a picture the guts of the dear that were just laying on the road. Good times.
• Alba is talking so much now. I keep being surprised at hearing her talk in full sentences and being so much more articulate. Recently, she's been playing a lot with little baby dolls/stuffed animals that she'll take care off/put down to sleep etc. She's always had a very  nurturing side, while always having been also the more adventurous and wild child of the bunch. She's always so sad when Sophia and Henry leave for school and work.
• Emilia is just growing up fast. I just realized that it'll be just a few weeks and she'll turn 1. Argh. Where does the time go? She's standing on her own a lot. I thought she might already be walking by now, but she's not taken any steps yet. However, she's definitely been way more expressive about what she wants. She also tries to get into everything. And go where the other girls go. I can tell she wants to be part of everything, and she's not the little baby anymore who's content with the lame stuff little babies might be ok with. She wants real play and real entertainment. It seems to me that she definitely has a more energetic and curious side to her.
• Sophia seems to love math. She loves counting, and adding and subtracting and stuff. I keep being surprised by the basic math stuff that she figures out on her own or enjoys. She's also really into science. It's so exciting to me, and kind of terrifying as well. Those areas always make me so nervous, but I'm happy to see my girls being curious. Anyway, so Sophia can count to 100 easily, and has figured out some stuff such as 3x100 being 300 (she asked Henry once in the car how much 100 plus 100 plus 100 are. He said 300. She said "right" because it's three hundreds"). I think she's a genius.
• Henry's practice is doing well. We're trying to scrape up the money to have a down payment to buy the building of the practice. We had a huge chunk of money sitting in the bank and I was pretty happy thinking we had the money we needed. Then suddenly, one day I looked at the account again, and it was half of what was in there the day before. From one day to the next Henry basically spent a few tenthousand dollars, paying a credit card bill and loans. Sigh...