"how do people make it through life without a sister?" -sara corpening

I sure hope our daughters will have a close relationship like my sister and I have. We are further apart in age -- about four and a half years -- but we shared a bedroom for about 15 years and she's one of my best friends. This Valentine's Day she handed me her first ultrasound pictures to tell me she's going to become a mom soon; I'm excited for them! I love you, Elisa!

Shboogoo is often better than I am at making her baby sister laugh. They like each other. This first photo of our girls was taken on Black Friday (not by me), the rest are from February or March. Ooh, I love my two girls! They probably get tired of me saying that.

"nobunny's cuter"

eight months

Good morning, adorable little one! You're 8 months old! . . . I took all of these with my phone because my camera was missing. The first three were at my sister's place.

L's big sister made this fort for them.

This bib says "Girls just wanna have fun." (I won't give her food on the couch again . . . she moves around too much.) During this month she tried butternut squash, broccoli, bananas, apples, prunes, peaches, barley, puffs and bread. She eats whatever I give her and is a happy baby most of the time.

She started crawling on January 31st (at about 7.5 months old) and has gotten faster since then.

while he was here

I procrastinated putting this post together. They are quite possibly the best-documented two weeks of our lives.

My husband's leave began at 1 a.m. on a Friday after a lot of travel time. When we got home he wanted Shboogoo to show him around our house, since he hadn't lived in it before. We -- everyone but the baby -- went to sleep at 3:30!


I loved watching him hang out with the daughter he already knew (this photo shows that he gets tired suddenly),

and get to know our other daughter.

He blessed our sweet baby in our house, with 46 people there.

We made a snowman in our backyard.

We had Christmas morning with Daddy! (He also opened presents from our parents, on other days.)

This was after we bought an area rug for our living room. The rug arrived late, so he was gone by the time they delivered it.

We went out for ice cream with friends.

That night the girls slept at our neighbor's. We went to dinner and a sold-out basketball game with my in-laws; it was so fun!

I wanted to take a picture of my yummy meal (I think there was pasta underneath?).

With more friends, we had dinner and played a video game.

The four of us walked with the double stroller.

He took pictures of baby L.

And I took this one of her.

We went to his brothers' place.

His daughter fell asleep like this on his last night here. When he put her in her bed she asked, "Why do you have little drips on your eyes?"

Some other things we did: He kept asking me, "Where would I find . . . ?" He took care of things around the house, such as making sure the smoke detector had a battery and shoveling when there was snow. I was able to go out and do a few things alone while he was with the girls. He got to feed the baby solids and see her crawl for the first time! We cooked together, and spoke in sacrament meeting, and brought pudding to his grandma on her birthday. We watched a recorded John Mayer concert, House, and movies, and introduced his dad to Lost. It was relaxing; we weren't too busy.

We had my sister and her husband come at 11 p.m. the last night so the girls could sleep while we went to the airport. Here's where the two of us sat and talked for a little bit. We talked about the fact that I've taken him to the airport for Army stuff many times, but this should be our last big goodbye!

Yep, that's 5:20 on a Sunday morning (I went right back to sleep when I got home).

I seriously love the back of my husband's head.