OK, so being Mommy-to-Three means there are many days when I am certain they love me not, so it’s nice to have some of the other kind, too.

So, we’ve been working on laying our sump-pump line underground and well away from the house. Pause a minute here– for you Westerners– there’s a lot of groundwater in the Midwest. So much so that it literally seeps from the ground into your basement, if you have one, which we do. So most people with dry basements have what’s called a sump pump which sucks the water out of the ground and pumps it out and away from the house. When we first bought our house it was discharging right at the foundation, which, as you can imagine, didn’t help much. We still had a wet basement much of the time. So we took a line above ground, to temporarily (um, about a year) at least get the water on a downward run away from the house. Unfortunately this meant we had a muddy backyard pretty much all the time, and the roots were continually being washed bare from our favorite big tree. With salt water. Yikes. Not a good plan for long-term. So in the process of digging a trench, laying the pipe underground, etc, we had to remove the board that was closing off the area where the pipe came out of the house to make things easier. Unfortunately, we kinda forgot to put it back on. Consequently we had this visitor…

  Read the rest of this entry »

I finally got a hair cut. This may not seem like a big deal, but ever since I was pregnant with Keane (who is now 2 years old!) I decided I wanted a really GOOD haircut. I never did find anyone that would do anything interesting with my hair in Indiana, in fact they all seemed to give me a blank look when I said I wanted something spunky and interesting. So I waited. And waited. Nearly three years without a haircut because I refused to go unless I knew I would get someone who would really do something great with my hair. I finally found out there is an Aveda salon here in Lansing, and my twin likes to go to one in California and highly recommended it, and the online reviews were great, so I decided to give it a try. It was a wonderful experience. I took a friend along with me to help me decide on a style I would be happy with (she is phenomenal at noticing color, texture, shape, etc). The wash and cut includes a head, neck, and shoulder massage with peppermint, camphor, and some other oil– I walked in there with a terrible headache and it was totally gone after that! Totally worth going there just for that. Here are my before and after photos:

For those that want to see many more pictures of our trip, I’ve posted a larger segment:

http://picasaweb.google.com/conan.heiselt/Florence?authkey=UUf6brBVcpU

My apologies that it’s taken so long to develop this post about our wonderful journey to Florence, Italy. And that it’s SO long! I have about 500 photos to sort through, lots of beautiful memories, and until yesterday, little or no internet connection. Here, at long last, is the brief summary of our wonderful journey to Florence. As our 11th anniversary was just a month away, we decided to make it, as much as possible, a romantic Honeymoon getaway. We took an extra day to explore, and I’m so very glad we did. Once Conan’s conference started he was gone until 10pm or later most nights, so it was wonderful to have those couple of days to explore together.  Read the rest of this entry »