Another amazingly, spellbindingly, incredibly interesting week at our house

Here goes:

On Monday I let Moira and Ellie splash around in my shower, which makes Moira extra happy:

This is the only decent (and I don't mean photography skills--ba dum ching) picture of either girl.

Later that day we went to Grandma and Grandpa Orton's house and ate ice cream and played and talked.

On Wednesday Chris and I switched our drivers license's from Ohio to Washington with both girls in tow in less than an hour. Perhaps doing it so quickly was a very bad idea because in our new license pictures Chris looks like a thug and I look like an addict. But maybe I'm just describing typical drivers license photos? I don't know. I had one really great ID card picture from BYU that I have kept all this time just because I look so great. I'm so upset about my ugly picture that I put the BYU ID in my wallet window and I'm hiding the license.

While Ellie was at preschool (it's W week), Moira and I found an awesome vintage cabinet for free out by a neighbors garbage can and I rearranged all the seats in the car to fit it inside. It needs a little bit of love and then I'll write more about it, but you just can't beat finding something wonderful for free.

In the mean time, Grandma Orton asked me if I was painting everything (because I still have paint in my hair) and it would appear that I am. Here's the latest--Mom and Dad found a cute toy chest at a yard sale right around the time Moira was born, very functional, with a safety latch and a TON of storage. But, it was bright green and yellow and orange with checks and circles which are (and I quote) Not [Ellie's] favorite colors, so I painted it to look like this:

Ellie wanted the whole thing pink and I wanted the whole thing brown, so we compromised by making the inside pink and the outside brown. In the picture it looks streaky, but in real life it looks more like wood. Almost too cute to hide in her room, so we're using it as coffee table/toy car for now.

What else?

Oh, I took the girls to a local hispanic market on Friday because the store's been mailing out coupons for cheap Western Family milk and I wanted to enrich my children's lives with a cultural experience. Very fun--I got to speak two sentences in Spanish, buy chorizo, and couldn't hear the girls fight because of all the blaring mariache music. And the store had mangos for 30 cents each. I don't know when the idea of cheap mangos and practically free milk became something to get excited about, but dang it, I love getting a good deal.

We had Danny and Katie and the girls over for dinner on Saturday because their oven exploded on Friday. From what I've heard, there were flames coming out of the back and loud noises and shrapnel inside the oven. Yikes. Luckily, no one was hurt and we're all hoping that this means they need a brand new oven instead of just a repair.

Chris and Shawn had us over for dinner tonight and we feasted on delicious grilled steak and chicken with a blue cheese sauce that was so yummy. And then we talked and laughed for the next few hours while Ellie disappeared to play with Ashton and Aubrey and Talmage, and Moira disappeared to eat cat food before she took a liking to Talmage and followed him around like a fan club. (Seriously, cat food? We'd just had STEAK.) She figured out their baby gate first thing, so we couldn't keep her contained. She's busy busy busy. Lately, she's started really talking in gobblety gook that she thinks you should understand and, get this, she calls herself "MoiMoi." Just like Ellie does. She demands books and uses all nineteen pounds of her body to move you where she wants you. She's also capable of moving kitchen chairs so she can climb anywhere. Trouble with a capital T. Thank goodness she's still too short to open doors.