Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday was one of the best days ever for many reasons. First, it was our 5 year anniversary, and second, it was just one of my most productive and enjoyable days ever. I got up early and did my running and workout video. Then, while Jillian took her morning nap, Annabelle and I worked in the garden. After doing about an hour and a half of preparatory work (removing wood chips, applying top soil, and mixing it with the old soil), we planted our first flowers. My mom is huge into gardening, and I wish now that I paid more attention to what she did to make her flowers grow so beautifully. I have never really done any gardening at all, except the occasional weed-pulling that my mom requested. I'm excited to see how my flowers do this first summer.
After Jillian woke up and ate, we all went outside again and played with a new bubble wand that Annabelle got. I am loving the fact that it's finally warming up. It's so nice to be outside. However, I think we're only going to get a few days of this nice, spring weather before the summer heat hits. Oh well. You can hear Jillian in this video laughing and making noise. She was sitting in the stroller just out of the view of the camera. She was fascinated by the bubbles.

Here is Annabelle singing Twinkle, twinkle, little star, while accompanying herself on the piano.

After taking a nap (I know, a nap! That's another reason why it was such a good day!) and getting ready, Michael and I bid the kids and the babysitter goodbye and went on a much-needed, much-anticipated date. We went out to eat and then saw Robin Hood (other than the fact that some of the workers at the movie theater kept walking around during the movie throwing free stuff like t-shirts and buttons into the audience, I thought the show was very good).
We came home just as Annabelle woke up. She was crying and I think it's because she's getting sick again and her throat hurt. I finally got her calmed down enough to go back to sleep ( this is after several incidents, including going to the bathroom, eating a cough drop, and vomiting). Thinking that I was in for a long night of Annabelle waking up crying, I was shocked to hear noise coming from her bedroom. Not the crying I was expecting, but instead she was..... laughing! I'm not kidding. Only 5 minutes before she had been crying and gagging and now she's talking to herself and laughing. It was truly bizarre. Here's a video of her making herself laugh.
Note: The video was shot in the dark hallway outside her room. I didn't want to go in her room because then she probably wouldn't have kept doing it. What she's doing is singing the wrong words to Row, row, row your boat. She changed the last line of that song to "life is but a bowl of spaghetti", something she read in a Dora book. And you may have to turn the volume up pretty loud to be able to hear her.

Anyway, after 5 years of marriage, I can still say that I made the right choice in marrying Michael. He is such a good man and I love him so much. He does a great job at providing for our family and is a great husband and father. I have more than I ever thought I would have after 5 years and I look forward to celebrating many, many more anniversaries with him.
And here are our beautiful girls!