Rainy Days and Mondays

Say Hey Blogtrotters,

The ladies are 364 days old today. If you're viewing this tomorrow or in Australia then they are 1 year old. After the craziest year of our collective lives we are truly thankful for all the help, love and support from everyone we know. We are also thankful for the rain, it gave us not only a brief reprieve from the heat, but an excuse to use our sweet new rain jackets, thanks Auntie Jill. Tilly loves that rain jacket. Sometimes we just put her in it when she's being fussy and let her walk around the house despite the relative dryness.

To go with being big girls, Nene and Papa (the morrises) got them some kickin new shoes.

Pics: Elinor in the pink rain coat, Tilly Bean in the yellow. Playing with sticks, playing in the tacky garden and walking around.
PJs: E in white standing, T sitting in pink, both are looking at the AC repairman with utter reverence.
Shoes: I think it goes Ellie, Tilly, Tilly.
Video: same jackets, those are our neighbor Frank's flowers, but to my knowledge he doesn't check this blog so just don't tell him that we go over and have our unruly daughters destroy his garden.

Summer Fun

Hello Bloggtrotters,

Nana and Grandpa(the tiggemans) were up this weekend. That's why there are so many photos on the blog this week. (that's also why the pics are of a higher quality than usual). It was a short visit and the 105 degree heat really limited how much we did. The big exciting news is that the girls were granted access to the hallway, and by extension, their room. Grandpa installed a gate (see below) and we have plans to allow access to the kitchen when they are a little more stable on their feet. As soon as they realized that the door to the hallway was not bared, they went crazy with screaming and running and chasing and falling and laughing. They loved it so much! They've begun to chase each other and when when one catches the other they fall down in a fit of giggling. It's really cute, of course. Recently they have become much more aware of each other, most of the time it's really sweet. Sometimes it's painful.

Nana and Gramps also gave us a new lighting fixture for our up coming anniversary. 5 years. That was the original contract so after negotiations with our agents, Abby and I have decided to sign a 3 year extension for just over the mid-level exemption. There is a team option for the forth year, most likely that one will depend on my knees holding out.

Abby and I were excited to get our Fantasy Football invite. Joe Frank was smart enough to grab "World Wide Prestige" as his team name before anyone else could. I felt entitled to the team name because I haven't had a carb since 2004. Speaking of fantasy sports I think this is the year I finally take home the Golden Broom in my Fantasy Sweeping League. I'm in first place with a 35 clears lead. With 5 weeks to go in the season nothing is written in stone, but I'm gaining momentum going into the playoffs. I'm pretty confident because I haven't scored less than 5 1/2 clear sweeps in any week and I average about 18 dustpins per fortnight. My OBP (Optimum Brooming Percentage) is .482 and I'm brooming around .387, we haven't seen those kind of numbers since Ted Williams was brooming for the Boston Clean Socks. Anyways, things are looking good, I'll let you know how things turn out.

Pics:
Ellie in orange(you glad i didn't say banana?) and Tilling in blue. they've really gotten into books lately. that's also tilly naked doing her new thing. when she's really excited about an object she hunches over her shoulders and does a really goofy laugh, if you didn't love her before then you should look into it. that's Ellie of course saying "Ta-Daaaa" or some such.
Feeding: i don't know which is which, but they like to feed you their food now. i am especially fond of slimy, half chewed grilled cheese sandwich bites. Mmmmmmmmmmm...

Tilly in blue and on Abby's lap, i have Ellie

Ellie is the first gate picture and Tilly is the "Oh, my a gate" type baby.

Video: that's Tilly coming at you first and the one that is playing with the lunch bag. Ellie is the one in the hall. oh, thanks to the FM Gilbert PTA for the lunch bag. Join your local PTA!

Blogtrotters, Good times. The girls had a great time hanging out Todd, Melissa, Zack and Andrew at Paul and Debz house. They really loved playing Rock Band and listening to awesome rap songs while playing the maracas. Also that pie was real good. Other than that we didn't do a whole lot last week. We're going to try to go to the DMA tomorrow for some free family thing. They ladies had a great time there last week. Tilly "hooted" at a lot of the art. (if you haven't heard her new "hoot hooting" then you're missing out)

Our AC is on the fritz so that's not good, luckily it was the coolest day of July and it's back on. NASCAR is kind of dumb. Harry Potter movie comes out next week. Other random thoughts.

Pics: Tilly did that to her hair herself, Ellie in the yellow pants (2), Tilly is the first one on the second row and Ellie is in the middle (they are both chasing me, which is kind of a fun game when you think about it), and that's Tilly sitting quietly and reading.
Video: Ellie in yellow pants and Tills in blue