Welcome Hayden! :)

Steve's cousin Kristin had a little boy yesterday, and named him Hayden. He joins Kristin, Dad Mark, and Big Bro Chase. Congratulations!

Jared has nesting cups that he sometimes puts on his toes while sitting down. So cute.

He also has a play parking garage that is lots of fun. The three cars that came with it have magnets on the front and back, so they can form a train if you want to. Jared was frustrated the other day, because the cars wouldn't stick together like he wanted them to. I figured that he was too young to understand magnet polarity, so I just let it go. :)

Jared also will not just go up or down the steps now. Since he can go both ways, he like to go about halfway up, then start down again, or vice versa. This makes traveling between floors a long process. If I get impatient and pick him up, he'll scream if I don't let him put his hand on the handrail for the journey. Sometimes that doesn't even work though.

My friend Lisa visited us from Cincinnati last weekend. She left her husband at home with the two kids, so it was quite a treat for her (although she missed them a lot.) Lisa has been my friend since 4th grade, so I think it is one of life's miracles that we've kept in touch so long. After we see each other for a little while, it's like we haven't been apart. Jared warmed up to her very quickly, and made her read all of his books to him many times. Just Lisa and I went out to lunch, which was a nice little getaway for both of us. Luckily, she was also here to watch Jared while Steve and I took care of the water in our basement...

We were very lucky. We only had about 1" of standing water, and it was mostly in our laundry room that has a cement floor. We had just showered, so the water was soapy, but not smelly or gross (thank goodness!) Steve called the county water's emergency phone number and they sent a guy out in about an hour to check it out. Luckily for us, the blockage was somewhere between the sewage cleanout valve in our yard to the street, which means it's the county's problem. The guy cleaned out the blockage, and we didn't have to hire a plumber - yeah! Our nice neighbors let us use their shop vac to suck up the water. Then we dried out the floor with fans and ran the wood stove for a while, which worked nicely. The next day, Steve mopped the floor with some water and bleach to disinfect. We got off pretty easy for our first home emergency.