January 24-February 7

Saturday (the 23rd) was Eva's birthday party.  Bryan was on a retreat with the guys from church, but the girls and I attended the event before heading over to the Klein house for dinner.  The party was at Run Around Fun Town, which is pretty much an indoor playground for kids.  There were bounce houses and slides and lots of toddler sized playthings (kitchens, grocery stores, tiny treadmills, etc).  Olivia and Gretchen stuck together like glue, apparently by mutual consent.  I think Gretchen was overwhelmed by the number of people and Olivia felt it was her duty to take care of her younger sister.  At one point I took Gretchen to the bathroom, and when she came back she couldn't find Olivia.  She turned in aimless circles, searching, while I pointed Olivia out, to no avail.  Finally, I caught Olivia's attention and told her Gretchen was looking for her.  Olivia immediately ran to Gretchen and jumped in front of her.  Gretchen threw her arms in the air with a joyful exclamation and gave Olivia a hug for a good twenty seconds before Olivia grabbed Gretchen's hand and led her off to the bounce house.  :)

I think the next big thing was on Thursday when I drove up to Ann Arbor to take care of various musical things at Shar.  My bow is now rehaired and I have new strings on my viola.  I got an old violin appraised (found in mom and dad's basement when they moved), and learned that it is a German commercial model, probably worth repairing someday but not now.  The bow that was with it would apparently "make a wonderful tomato stake."

On Friday, I left for a two day trip to Toledo.  One of my Christmas gifts from Bryan was a nice hotel room in Toledo and an overnight trip with some friends from church.  The only child invited was Juliana, who is three months old.  Bryan and the other men took care of the rest of the kids while the mothers vacationed.  We got massages, enjoyed the heated pool, ate ice cream, watched movies, played games, visited a tea shop, and saw a musical.  We had a lot of fun.  :)

Sunday night was Jacque's play and she was fabulous, of course.  The whole play was quite amusing.  Bryan and I have season tickets to this particular theater, and our friends the Creightons, the Kleins, and the Alison were able to join us.  We made sure to cheer loudly for Jacque at the end and pay special attention to her when greeting the cast after the show.  We even went through the line twice.

Other notes:
-Olivia and Gretchen call Alison "Alice."
-Kaitlyn claps her hands and stands unassisted.  Story about the standing next week.
-Shadows are "shades" in our house.  This was first noticed over Thanksgiving in Florida when Olivia was jumping on Oma's shadow and talking about how she "got your shade!"  I was reminded of it this week when my shade was gotten.  :)

Pictures:

Olivia and Elias dance:

From the weekend in Toledo:

Olivia and Gretchen looking cute:

Olivia reads to Gideon, Kaitlyn, Ephraim, and Gretchen:

The girls at play:

Bryan built Kaitlyn a tower to knock over, but she thought the DVDs looked like more fun:

We found Olivia and Gretchen playing like this: