Saturday Seven

1) I am now a van mom. The combination of expecting baby #4 and our Total Money Makeover has caused us to sell our SUV and buy a minivan. (Used, of course!) By doing so, we shaved off a pretty nice chunk of our debt, making us closer to our debt-free goal! I think I'm going to like being a van mom. There is so much space! And the automatic sliding doors....now that's what I'm talking about.

2) I'm thinking about changing my last name to "Nightingale." You know, like Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse. For the past two weeks the stomach flu has camped out at our house. Fun. Cleaning carpets, mattresses, forcing Pedialyte down with medicine droppers, having to get up 15 times a night, and all the rest that goes with the stomach blues. I have done more laundry and given (and taken) more baths in the past two weeks than the whole year combined. All three kids were sick; then Jacob decided he hadn't had enough, so he got sick again. He is finally feeling better and I am so ready to hang up my nursing hat.

3) Whenever I see, hear, think, etc., about the word "nightingale," I start singing the song from Walt Disney's Cinderella. You know, the part where the stepsisters are practicing their music and singing "Sing, sweet nightingale. Sing, sweet nightingale. Aahhh, aaaahhh, aaahhhh, oohhhh, ahhh, aahhh." They are singing so badly the cat leaves and then he hears Cinderella, who is scrubbing the floors, singing in her beautiful voice. And then the cat starts pouncing his dirty feet on her clean floors and she.....Is it obvious I've seen the movie a hundred times?

4) I'm blogging from my new computer! Yea! We finally broke down and bought a new laptop since our other one was about to die, or maybe fry, on us. Seriously, the kicker was when I started smelling electrical burning one afternoon while checking my email. Austin said "TURN IT OFF NOW! AND UNPLUG IT!" We figured a new computer would be a lot cheaper than a fire. Or having the computer blow up in my face.

5) Chloe is sporting a black eye. She and Luke were chasing each other last night when she fell and hit her eye on the rocking chair. She hit right under her eyebrow and immediately had a big knot. Poor thing. Today it is purple and swollen. She looks like she's been in a boxing match. Maybe we should teach her to say "Yo, Adrian."

6) I've never seen the Rocky movies. Or the Rambo movies. Is that considered un-American? I'm guessing some people out there think so. I'm not a big Sylvester Stallone fan. My parents wouldn't have let us watch them anyway. We didn't have a TV until I was eleven and then it was only the channels you could pick up by antenna. I would have to go out onto the side porch in sunshine, rain, or snow, and turn the antenna pole around slowly and wait for somebody to yell "WHOA!" Any of you have that same memory? Those were the days.

7) Apparently, I have bushy eyebrows. I was getting my hair highlighted a couple of weeks ago and I was using a new stylist. She is Asian and speaks with a thick accent. She asked me if I wanted my eyebrows waxed and I told her no. While she was trimming my hair, I was looking at my eyebrows and decided they could use a little shaping up. I never can seem to get it right with the tweezers anyway. So I asked her if she still had time to wax my eyebrows. She said, (with her Asian accent) "Good. They too bushy. Too bushy." And I'm paying for this kind of harsh criticism? Sheesh. :)