17 March 2006

Happy St. Patrick's Day, wherever your ancestors came from!

Yes, I know the girls aren't wearing green. For a redhead, Mairi has surprisingly few green clothes. When she got dressed for the day, she changed into a mostly purple dress that has a few green stripes on it. Nora may stay pink, unless she gets these clothes totally messy. She generates enough dirty laundry without unnecessary clothing changes. :-)

Time for a family update!

We're all still battling various illness, but seem to be on the mend. The most recent attack on our good health has been from a head cold that really gets into the sinuses. Nora finally came down with the cold accompanied by the lovely barking cough. All that being said, I've decided that these are the last illnesses for a while and I will accept nothing less than complete good health for the month of April. So there!

Despite the various illnesses, last weekend we went to Detroit for a mini Spring Break. Our friends Lee and Bridget had come down to Tony's to celebrate their birthdays, happily bringing Dan and Judy with them (and their respective daughters, Crystal and Alicia — please forgive me if I've misspelled either of your names!). After getting to town Friday evening and having a lovely dinner with Uncle Dave and family, we spent much of Saturday at the Detroit Zoo. Such fun! We managed to squeeze in swimming at our hotel twice on Saturday (the second time with several of our friends joining us), and once more Sunday morning. On Sunday my friend Dameon (whom I haven't seen in far too long) drove up to join the crowd, and we all went to the Great Lakes Mall for lunch, talking, and a bit of shopping. We left the area far later than anticipated, because we were having too much fun to tear ourselves away.

In other news: Mairi is finally showing signs of being ready to leave the diapers behind, praise be! She also got accepted into the summer program at ECDC (the child care option on campus) and will start going there mornings twice a week in June. We haven't decided for sure, but most likely she will continue on the same schedule in the fall — better get that application in!

Nora remains content to walk along the edges of things, but it's clear her balance is getting better and better. At this point, I think she is capable of walking but simply hasn't realized it yet. She has about five words now: mama, da or dada, kitty, hi and bye; and "kitty" in particular does a lot of work — any animal is a "kitty." Being at the zoo with her was a hoot, as we saw llama kitties, and turtle kitties, and snake kitties, and polar bear kitties ...

Chris and I are doing fairly well, other than the whole being sick and being sick of being sick thing. He's been wanting to start running again, but with the cold settled in his chest didn't think it wise to force the issue. I'm busy at the office, especially with a project to photograph key pages of our Medieval and renaissance manuscripts (part of the Digital Scriptorium initiative) which is due by mid-May. Neither of us have had much time for projects, although of course Chris does bits of this and that with his audio stuff and I crochet whenever I can snatch a few moments for it. :-)

That's all for now, I guess. I hope it's getting to be spring wherever you're at, reader — I woke up to more snow (which thankfully didn't stay).

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