What do we live for

if not to make life less difficult for each other?

Here's a picture of George Eliot, the lady who penned this line. That wasn't her real name, by the way; she used a male name figuring people would take her more seriously that way. Interesting, huh?

I digress.

This month is a pick-your-own visiting teaching message, and I'm curious what you chose. I picked President Monson's talk What Have I Done for Someone Today. When Chris and I first got married we had this vision of doing or being "something for someone somewhere" each day. I'll admit I've been less than perfect at remembering that vision, but reading this quote and this talk gave me a strengthened resolve about it. I can honestly say I'm way less wound up and stressed about stuff when I stop worrying about my own life and start thinking about making someone else's life easier. Today when I visited two of my girls, I asked why this is an important principle. One of them said, "Because it's not about us." I ponder that seemingly simple response, and I'm very affected by it.

So anyway, what did you choose?

I know, I can't tell them apart either.

Birfday with an F

We get to see Craig and the Pionkes almost any time we want to these days. So when Craig's birfday came around, and Karly planned a little surprise, we got to go. Amber and Karly put up decorations, and then we all watched for Craig out the window and argued over how we would jump out to surprise him. The picture of his feet is the one I took when we yelled "surprise" - guess I wasn't looking. He didn't know Karly was going to be there, so that was a sweet little reunion to witness. It was a fun night. I'm happy to have such good friends kinda nearby.

That Intelligender's Full of S, Man!

You may remember that I took the gender prediction test and it said I was having a boy. But we had our ultrasound this morning, and it's definitely a girl! The anatomical evidence of her femininity is in this first picture. The second one is just so you can see her lovely face.

Chris and I both got all teary when Dr. Urso told us the news. We had been feeling pretty sure it was a boy, mostly because of the gender test. We had even settled on a name. But every time I said out loud, "I think it's a boy," there was a little tugging in the back of my mind. I even said to Chris on the way to the appointment this morning, "You know, there's still a good chance it's a girl." And the other day I came across a girl name I really like. I guess somewhere I still had a feeling it was going to be a girl. And it is. I'm delighted that Olive will have a sister so close in age. It's still weird to think there's more to life than Olive, but I'm sure we'll like our next girl a little bit. Anyway, that's our big news. Chris is sorely outnumbered!

Yankees Win!

Chris seriously laid out the attire he wanted me to wear today (top right picture), and Olive had her pink Yankees hat (courtesy of Uncle Dave) on all day. Our house is happy tonight - Yankees Win!!!

Proof of her Personality

Olive's personality is coming out more and more these days. So far it seems like she's funny and stubborn. See what I mean?

She's been doing this a lot lately. I marvel at how she got the idea to do it in the first place, and at how she remembers to do it over again each day.

When she doesn't like something, she makes these stiff little karate hands and she grunts. I'm scared of this possibly being an indication of how she'll react to being told no throughout her life. Yikes!

An Olive for Halloween