Right now I'm listening to the most recent Girlyman album - their live "Somewhere Different Now" - and really wish they were playing near us so I could actually see them perform again. Each of the three have such exquisitely different voices from each other. Love them.

The majority of today has been spent with the kids in the water. Accalia went to art class this morning, but after lunch the kids hopped into our pool for a while. The neighbor girls weren't around until close to 3 p.m., and at that point they came over to play for a while. The younger one then left to spend the weekend with her dad, and the older one eventually left to do some shopping with her mom. After supper, I took the kids to the kiddie pool at a local park and we were there for a couple hours until Ella fell backwards, struggled to get up and was pretty freaked out about the whole incident. When we came home, the older girl was out in her pool, so Cole and Accalia have spent another hour or so out with her. They're inside now, though, and hanging out and watching some toons. Ella's in here with me playing computer games and applauding the Girlyman songs.

Amy, I agree with you about the impact we can often have on people who enter our lives and just seem to do nothing except cause stress or other negative emotions. I think about that whenever I seem to have a lot of contact with someone who seems to cause me more stress than anything. I do hope that one day our neighbor girls can look back and remember living next door to a family who wasn't always talking down to each other or trying to control whatever was happening. Honestly, I'm very, very eager for the first day of public school - August 20th - because I know we'll at least have our sanctuary during those school hours without the on and off (or sometimes constant) presence of these girls. I know it may be difficult enough to maintain harmony as we all adjust to a new baby, so I'll need all of the help I can get in that respect.

There's nothing else too notable happening today. Cory, unfortunately, will be spending the majority of this weekend working for the pizza man. I'm not quite sure what the kids and I will be doing tomorrow or Sunday. I think I'll be trying to take advantage of one of the few remaining weekends before baby arrives to keep trying to accomplish things. LLL work seems to be picking up again, too, which is fine since that means I may be able to tie up a bunch of loose ends there before the baby arrives, too.

Speaking of pregnancy, I've noticed over the past few days that my sense of smell is returning. It's very odd after being mostly without for at least six months or longer. So I'm walking around the house smelling different smells and thinking, "How long has this smelled like that? Why didn't anyone tell me?" Not that there's anything that would completely repulse visitors, but it would still have been nice to know.

Okay, I'm going to try to tackle a few LLL emails while all of the kids are happily occupied.