The Women's Retreat with my church has come around again, and I'll be leaving in just one hour for two nights away with my friends, learning about God's rest. Ahhh.

I always think I'll miss Noelle (which I always do) but she sure knows how to make it easy for me to leave. She's been a total booger today, ending with an awesome 45 minute nap and a refusal to watch her current favorite movie while I finish packing. So instead she's following me around, scamming all the snacks I'm trying to pack, whining that I won't let her have any cookies, and messing with my suitcase. A few days away is just what the doctor ordered, I think.

I've been feeling pretty ill as of late, which is fine with me because it gives me some reassurance, but as I told Andy, just because I'm glad for it doesn't mean I'm going to suck it up. Basically at any given time I am nausated, starving, or in some kind of pain, or maybe even all three! It's good times. Someone asked me if I felt well enough to go to this retreat, and I said that I don't feel well enough NOT to! Being at a retreat center with no children or housework is exactly where I need to be. It always seems like perfect timing!

Most of you already know this, but baby #3 is finally on his or her way! We are 7 weeks pregnant, and I am a ball of anxiety but also so thankful and excited. We had an ultrasound on Friday and everything looks great so far. Baby is measuring the right size, has a strong heartbeat, and everything is where it should be. Our due date is October 13, so 2 weeks shy of what Charlotte's was. My current prayer is that I wouldn't let fear get the best of me, and that I would start to feel this baby moving as early as possible to give me a little bit of relief. I would love for all of you to join in those prayers!

This morning we discovered the possibility that maybe our early waking, sleep hating toddler has actually been being kind to us after all. Relatively, at least. Andy woke up at 6, running late for Men's Fraternity at church. He opened our bedroom door and noticed that Noelle's light was on. (We recently got her a lightswitch extender for this very reason, hoping she'll turn her light on and play a while before starting the "DAAAAADDY!!!! WHERE ARE YOU??? ARE YOU COMING???" calls). He tried to be quiet getting ready, but she still must have heard him and started calling out to us.

When I went in, I asked her how long she had been awake, and she told me 10 hours. Now that's obviously not true (although pretty funny), but it does make me wonder, maybe she wakes up much earlier than we think and entertains herself for a while. One time when my parents were here and sleeping in her room, they said she talked quietly to herself for almost an hour before requesting their attention. So I suppose it could be worse if indeed she is entertaining herself for a while and STILL asking for us before 6:30 every day. I swear, I am going to have the only teenager in the world who doesn't like to sleep. I just can't see it ever changing at this point.

We love our DVR (Digital Video Recorder for those of you still not in this century) with all our hearts, and we've come to rely on it almost exclusively for our TV watching needs. We always have one episode of each of Noelle's favorite shows at the ready, and we never have to worry about when something is on because it will just be taped for us to watch at our leisure. We never have to watch commercials, and we can pause and rewind live TV. Amazing.

This past season, we decided we had way too many shows recording and felt like we needed to cut some out. We used a system of giving each show a priority rating and then cutting out the ones at the bottom. There were some shows that we had a hard time letting go of even still, though, so we thought of a new idea. Tape the entire season, then save it to watch all at once later on when the current shows stop playing new episodes. Brilliant!

Except that our DVR messed up. We started watching Amazing Race last night, and realized that mysteriously the first 4 episodes were no longer there. Then several other episodes were mostly cut off by 60 Minutes running over into the time slot. So basically out of 11 episodes we had about 4 hours total taped. Awesome. DVR, you disappointed me. I'll still never leave you, though.