leaves, candles, and the little beat

we've been quite busy these days.

we planned and organized a progressive dinner murder mystery party for our youth group last saturday evening. it ended up being a lot, a lot of work, but the evening was a smashing success, so it was totally worth all of the work.

a recent evening power outage forced us to realize how unprepared we were for such events. we had two small flashlights (at least both had batteries), but only a few candles. jeremy had homework to do, so he used the laptop (thankfully the battery was charged to begin with), and i sat and read with a flashlight. it was a nice change of pace for the evening. thankfully, the power came back on just as i was getting tired of reading by flashlight. and now i know to stock up on emergency candles.

our little one is starting to show an interest in the potty. in fact, she has pooped on the potty twice in the past week. we give her a lot of praise after she goes, and she is very proud of herself...but she really seems most excited about the fact that daddy has to clean it up - and she specifies that daddy has to clean it up. i'm just glad that i'm not the parent she has chosen for that task.

i had an appointment with the midwife today and we got to hear the baby's tiny little heart beating for the first time. amazing.

the leaves have almost all fallen. about a week ago, we spent a lot of time outside raking and doing yard work. of course, now that it's a week later, more leaves have fallen and it looks like we haven't done any yard work at all. our girl was thrilled when the neighbor's cat come over for a visit while we were raking. she loves all animals - especially ones that she can hold. the cat was very patient and let itself be carried around for a little while. our girl was beaming! thanks cat.