Mom, God Can See You

We have a very important announcement: Elizabeth had her third baby! The baby's name is Ann Marie, and she arrived on Friday. Caleb and Kyle are both trying to be helpful, Elizabeth says. All of them look great! (I stole the picture from their website, so if you want to see more, check out The Simmons Family link and scroll down to Ann Marie's Hospital Pictures.) We will be visiting them to meet Ann Marie this Saturday. Elizabeth sounds great and is actually celebrating her birthday today as well. Happy birthday Elizabeth!

Sunday was spent doing several things. We had lunch at Central Market, and let the kids play awhile before going on the Cool House Tour. (Oddly enough, we ran into Elizabeth's in-laws, Joey and Paula, and Matthew and Jennifer's family, who had driven in from College Station for the home tour. Jennifer is Elizabeth's sister-in-law and Joey and Paula are her father and mother-in-law.) This tour is made up of several Austin-area "green" homes that have been modified in some or many ways to be environmentally friendly. We only saw 4 of the 8 homes on the tour, but the houses were spread all over town, and it would have been difficult to get to them all. These homes were being lived in and the owners graciously opened them up to any Austinite willing to pay $10 a ticket (kids were free). Needless to say, there were several volunteers manning almost every room in the houses to answer any questions, but probably to prevent theft. Shoes had to be removed in each house. Anyone who knows me well knows I am not fond of feet so I wish I had worn socks instead of flip-flops. I had to traipse around bare foot (like the majority of the visitors) all over these houses. If I were one of those homeowners, the hundreds of barefeet would have bothered me more than some dirt.

At the summer camp, the kids have a dedicated time each day for board games. Both of them have picked up on chess, which has impressed me to no end. I am learning by watching them play with Rod. I am not joking when I say that both of them can hold their own very well. They already know all of the tricky rules. Sponges, that's what they are.

On our way to camp and work this morning, a car pulled out in front of us and we nearly hit them. I had to slam my brakes hard. When we passed the lady who did it, she looked dazed and had a crazy smile on her face, and was going about 5 miles an hour. I looked at her and kind of waved my hands in a "what was that???" gesture. About a minute later, Evelyn informed me "Mom, God can see you." I told her that I was quite aware of that, but that I was behaving respectably towards the person that very nearly caused an accident considering that she could have hit Kenneth's side of the car if we had been 5 seconds ahead, but thanks for keeping me in line.