i heard this song and it really captured how i feel about my girls:

Every night i kneel beside you
and whisper in your dreams
and tell you just how much i love you
just how much you mean
then you grow older before my eyes.

Every morning you stand before me
and welcome me inside
that world of yours that's ever changing.
a lifetime of surprise

And there you stand, the boy i love
just like you are, just like i love.
Say goodbye to the boy of yesterday
and goodnight to the little things that we once knew.
Then say good morning to you.

Everyday my love grows stronger,
but like the river's song,
whispering that i can't stay longer
it's time to move along
and say goodbye a million times.

For here you sleep
this child i love.
Say goodbye to yesterday,
and goodnight to the little things that we once knew
I'll love the man that tomorrow brings
by saying goodbye to the boy i love today

by john canaan

that last line is the hardest for me. my girls are so precious and i just wish they would stay like this forever. i wish that i could just have this time permanently etched in my mind. i try, but the memories still slip away. i can remember some things about michealah and some of her cute quirky things that she did when she was 4 but the 7 year old michealah has replaced the 4 year old. she promised me she would stay 4. in some ways i wish she could have. i remember when she was a baby i would look at her in the mirror as i carried her asleep to bed and i was always struck by how fast she was growing--by how far her legs hung down. now if i were to carry her, her legs wouldn't be all that far off the ground! i hate how busy we get living our lives and getting things done that we take the people around us that we love for granted. i mourn for those lost opportunities.

i finally did it

i have a very sore butt. that is because it is thursday. thursday is one of my weight training days. so is tuesday. my butt wouldn't be sore if i actually went and did weights every thursday. fact is i haven't gone since november. fact is i took being pregnant as a good excuse to stop going. fact is i could never motivate myself to go. fact is, marilla, that i needed karen to get me to finally go. so i finally got someone to go with me so that i would not be able to back out. funny, even as i was making the "appointment" i was thinking in my head 'noooo i don't want to go' so today i finally went and i already have a sore butt. all the running i have done could not have saved me. speaking of behinds and running, nat asked me why people's bums move when they walk. then she demonstrated to me a hip-swaying kind of walk. i write a lot about my exercise...i wonder why. today was the enrichment relief society party. we were all supposed to bring a 5 dollar or less gift that reflected one of our talents. i thought about this for some time and couldn't think of anything to bring. i don't have one of those outward types of talents--like sewing or knitting or scrapbooking or being crafty at all. sure, i run, but what can one bring related to that? a bottle of yucky gatorade? so i struggled. i asked brent and he was no help at all. then today i called delanie to see what she was bringing...and then i remembered that i can speak a second language. how is it possible that i could spend sooo much time developing this talent and then completely forget it? i guess it is because i don't use it. that talent is covered with dust in some back closet. i wish i could use it more. now i'm so rusty that i have little confidence when talking to someone. i always think that they must be thinking...why is she trying? i would understand her better in english...haha maybe i think that way because i would often think that in japan. i hated it when people would speak to me in their broken english. (once i knew japanese that is) i think i took it as a bit of an insult that they thought they needed to use english--that my japanese wasn't good enough. then on the other hand, i hated it when missionaries said i was a good missionary because i was so good at japanese. i wanted to be a good missionary for other reasons--speaking the language well does not make you a good missionary. i miss japan. i want to go back. if brent got a good job there i would really consider it. this is the longest i have been away. i wish it wasn't so hard to go there.

"if you don't find it in the index, look very carefully throughout the entire calalog"

that is from the sears roebuck catalog which is quoted in the sisterhood of the traveling pants. at the beginning of every chapter there are little quotes and that one just hit my funny bone. i stayed up waaaay too late last night reading the book. i kept saying 'just one more chapter' but it just didn't work that way. when i went to bed (there were no more chapters, if you know what i mean) i encountered the laundry basket full of clothes, or more importantly brent's work pants that needed to be washed and dried before work the next morning. arrgggg! i had totally forgotten about them! originally when i had seen how late it was, i had decided that it was too late for me to get up early for my run, but now i had to choose: stay up now and wait for the washer to finish and throw his pants in the dryer or get up early for my run and do it then. i opted for the getting up early--hoping that i would actually be able to just go back to sleep. i really did sincerely try. i hardly opened my eyes as i transferred the laundry to the dryer, kept all the lights off etc, but it was no use. i was awake. so i succumbed to my wakefulness and went for my run. you'd think that getting way too little sleep would affect my run, but that just isn't how it works. in fact i think i clocked my fastest time ever for 3 miles. the lack of sleep will just affect the rest of my day. i feel sluggish now. it is such a beautiful morning. that is partially to account for my not being able to sleep in. i just can't sleep when it is sunny and the birds are singing. the neighbour who always takes mic to school wasn't there this morning. hello! thanks for the warning! so nat got dressed in record time and the girls rode their bikes to school. i pretty much pushed nat the whole way becuase she just can't ride fast enough yet on her new little bike. but all that was ok because it was beautiful and sunny out and in spite of my lack of sleep, my head couldn't help but fill with the possibilities on such a day. there is much to do and i have to figure out how to cook a whole chicken so that it won't be yucky to brent and me who only eat boneless skinless chicken breast....is it possible? we shall see. gotta go.

ps: HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAREN!!!!

i love spring break! i really think that i enjoy and appreciate it more now than i did when i went to school. it has just been so nice to not have to go any where and to have mic home all day. i've had a lot less nat time because she doesn't need me when she has mic. but i've had mic time during nat's naps. i just feel like we've bonded a lot this week. i made a list of chores that needed to be done and the girls each picked one a day. they were actually excited to do them--except that they had to clean their room first. it really has been helpful. it just feels like there isn't enough time to give mic chores when she is at school. 3 out of the five days she doesn't get home until almost 5 and i just want her to have down/play time. she still has to eat dinner and do at least 20 minutes of homework before bed at 7:30. and that isn't counting working on her math with her. is it just me or is she just too crazy busy? she is only 7 afterall. anyways...only a few more months until summer holidays. except for after that nat will be going to school too. we went swimming for family home evening. it was really fun. usually when we go to the pool i can't wait for the time to pass so we can go but we all had a good time. maybe because the girls are getting older. mic wanted to go down the slide but brent insisted that he was too big and that he gets stuck. he would not hear me at all when i told him he was thinking of the other pool. after a rather roomy ride down where i sat up the whole time i convinced him to come up and he went up really reluctantly. he ended up really liking it. then another night brent made popcorn and we all watched a movie together. i guess it doesn't sound like that much but we were just able to be all together a lot--even brent because he actually was home at the same time every evening. yes. for those of you that haven't heard yet, brent is not working for stoneart any more. mic is reading this right now and she said "he isn't?" so it isn't necessary a well-known fact. so we are back to square one with what brent is going to be when he grows up. aaaahhh! grow up already! well maybe we are not at square one, we are at square 2. right now he is thinking of going back to school and getting an advanced diploma...but i just don't want anymore student loan debt! so we'll see. the police thing still looks good to me. it just seems more secure and more immediate..but it doesn't use his education.
i have a problem: when i see dvds on sale i can hardly resist buying them. if it is one i like and it is on sale--we're talking 10 bucks or less it takes a great deal of will power to walk away and then the deals still haunt me and i consider going back to go get them. it just seems more worth my while to buy then to pay to rent one. but i am amassing too many dvds as of late--because i found mtm sells them really cheap. well this is really taking the form of a long rambling, so i'm going to stop.

last weekend brent and i went to the temple with laura. laura gave up driving with her friends and being with them in the temple to take brent and me. we went over to vancouver friday night and so we got to see a bit of the "big city." brent wanted to go out to eat there so we made sure we caught an early enough ferry. then when it was time to choose where to go he was all non-committal and without a care where we went...or so he said. so, having read so many accounts of laura's yummy outings, i chose thai. brent still attempted to put up the front of he didn't care, but apparently he did care if i chose thai food because he was not familiar with it. i was confident that he would like it so i dismissed his little comments such as "i know this all you can eat sushi place in richmond" (what?? he doesn't even like sushi) or "how about there?" pointing to a indian restaurant, "what about red robins?" once he resigned himself that we were going out for thai, we discussed whether to go downtown or metrotown. once again brent claimed to have no opinion but as we drove downtown he kept saying things like "if we go to metrotown, we can look for new shoes for me" and "you need more hairstuff--we should go to metrotown." as it turned out, brent really liked what he ordered and so was satisfied. he got a little bored as laura and i wandered around some shops--but that would have happened in metrotown too. but i know my man and what keeps him happy. so on the way home we went to a gelato place. they make many an interesting flavour there. the idea is to browse and taste as many flavours as grabs your interest. i think brent tried 2 at the most before choosing his cone. he isn't into browsing or even being that adventurous at that. he got vanilla chocolate chip and hedgehog. laura and i tried (among others) kimchi...it was...yucky. it tasted like freezer burnt cabbage mixed with a slightly spicy garlicky aftertaste. my discovery was chocolate basil. it was surprisingly yummy. the basil really complimented the chocolate. i had that with hedgehog. it was a good combo and the chocolate basil got yummier and yummier as i ate it. brent was done before laura and i had even chosen our flavours, so he got another one. this one was...vanilla chocolate chip and vanilla chocolate chip....he finds what he likes and sticks with it. the owner, who according to karey and elicia is always grumpy, was in a very friendly mood and brent had a little chat with him about the different flavours. the grossest one he's ever made was chocolate truffle with smoke salmon. he's also done bacon and eggs. he'll do any flavour you ask him to.
laura and i were able to get to sleep at a relatively decent time, but the 7:30 alarm woke me with a jolt. laura got straight into the shower, but now i was awake with my morning bladder. to make matters worse, the cat allergies were closing in on me. so i got up and wandered around the living room, kitchen and laura's room desperately looking for something to blow my nose with, but there was nothing. it was tortuous waiting for laura to finish. we stopped at the dutyfree shop on the way down to skip through the long line. we listened to vinyl cafe. i was sitting in the back and got on laura's nerves by saying what all the time. at the temple we saw a boy of interest to bethany. he was much smaller than i had imagined, but puny seems to be a draw for her. it has been a long time since i went to such a late session and i was a little worried that we would miss a ferry, but instead it turned out to be very relaxing to just go at our pace. the session was packed and we were all in the back row (including wee boy of previous interest to a certain long cylindrical green vegie) the advantage of being in the back was that we were to first to... move on if you will. the disadvantage to a later session is that all the good food is gone when you hit the cafeteria. the entree that i wanted was gone and i made the mistake of just ordering a different one when it was clearly not something i would really like. ahh well. next time i'll know better and i'll have a plan b before i order. in spite of a long line at the border we got back with time to spare for catching the ferry. sot i requested that we get my watch that i'd left on laura's dresser. i live by my watch. i need it. just after we passed the exit to go to tswassen we got stuck in traffic because of an accident so we didn't have enough time to go back to catch the ferry. laura drove us all the way to horseshoe bay. that is a long way out of her way. she didn't complain. that is the kind of girl laura is. there is just something about going to the temple...it is not like i felt any strong feelings while i was there, yet there has just been more peace in my heart and in my home since going. i don't always notice it, but it has been along time since we've been able to go, so i guess it stands out more. i love to see the temple.