On the road again

We'll be heading out for Azle again tonight, to celebrate the 4th with our families, to be with Matt's mom for her next dose of chemo, to help with Brent's surprise party, and to visit with Brad. Matt had to pull some strings to get Thursday and Friday off, and I've had to use some mad laundering and packing skills. And we also had to cancel some plans with a couple we've been eating out and playing cards with lately. But I think we'll be ready to blast off once Matt gets home.

I want to say things have been crazy this past month, and that's why I haven't posted. But they haven't been any crazier than normal, besides Kara and Jenn's visits. I've just felt like I had more important things to do than typing an update on our blog. We've been working on getting Natalee potty trained. No where near done with that. Right now we're just trying to plant the seed in her head that going potty in her pottychair is good. We put her hand in a cup of warm water, and we give her a Reese's Piece and a Mini M&M just for sitting down on the little chair and trying. But we've only gotten her to go once. We don't yell or make a big deal if she doesn't. She just doesn't get more candy. When she does potty in the chair, she gets two Reese's Pieces and a Mini M&M of each color, on top of what she got just for trying, plus a lot of hugs and verbal backpatting. Right now I think Matt and I need to learn to watch her better and know when to take her to the potty chair, what my mom calls 'catching her.' And just keep trying.

I've been reading a lot lately, mostly A. C. Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman. I've problems with both of them for different reasons, but they're still good reads. But I'm very curious to see the U.S.'s reactions if they not only make The Golden Compass into a movie, but the sequels as well. People have always mentioned in conjunction with that series how odd it is that it was so popular in Great Britain and the rest of Europe, but never really caught on in the U.S. There's a reason for that. We'll see how it goes.

Matt's also been picking Magic: The Gathering back up. Matt has a few co-workers who play it, and so he's started getting back into it, going out to play with a few of them almost every weekend for the past month and a half. It's good for him to get out and do something fun and challenging like that with all the stress he has on his plate. Natalee and I just miss him when he's gone, since he's been working so much overtime lately, and then goes out for 6-8 hours one night out of the weekend to play Magic. But he loves it, and he and I play Lego Star Wars on the PS3 the rest of the weekend. There's something wrongly gleeful about ripping the arms off a Lego Stormtrooper, or going around slapping up other Star Wars characters with your little Lego hand.

Hope everybody has a safe and happy Independence Day. (We'll actually be doing something fun this year! Huzzah!)