Some more firsts...

Well, last week ended a little rough in the van Riessen household when I had to go to the E.R. last Thursday night for a kidney infection. Thankfully Steve was able to take Friday off because I was knocked out all day until the antibiotics kicked in that evening. Not fun... let me tell you.

But I perked up over the weekend and was ready to take on a new week. I think I must have been feeling a little cocky as I have gotten more confident in my parenting ability of all three kids. I went out for the first time ever with all three kids without any help (solo mission). I just HAD to get out of the house. It took me until 11:00 a.m. to get out the door, but I did it! We went to the mall to pick up a few things, get Molly's hair trimmed and have lunch. And then today we celebrated another "first" when I invited one of Molly's little friends over to play. Keilani's daddy had surgery yesterday and I figured not only would it be nice for them to have one less child in the house, it would be great for Molly to have someone to play with. And I'm happy to report that it went really smoothly, considering I had two babies and two 2.5-year olds to manage. The babies slept and the girls had a blast blowing bubbles in the backyard. Here's Molly and her bubbles...


...and here's Keilani and her bubbles! Don't you think Keilani and Molly could be sisters?


The other "first" this week was that Garrett started smiling. I caught the tail end of one of those smiles in the photo below. There's nothing like the smile of a son to melt a mother's heart! He's a handsome dude!