Well...

It's official.

Morton, Melissa, Matilda, Melvin, Morty Jr. and Mildred are here to stay. Apparently our house rocks.

I was right in the middle of emailing my friend who sent me the ultrasonic pulse things (a.k.a. Scare-Away-Mice-Gear) and asking her how to tell if they were working when Ben suddenly called to me from downstairs!

I raced downstairs and he told me that he had just seen Morton racing from the dining room into the kitchen! Yuck. I just knew that rice hadn't disappeared all by itself! We are suspecting it's our neighbors who are harboring a mouse nest in their home since the only people who have called about mice problems are us and the people on the other side of our neighbors.

Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.

Hopefully they will be scared away with our new mouse armour!
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The weather has turned colder again, probably for the last time. I think our brief streaks of beautiful Indian summer weather are over. And now we supposedly face the worst winter Chicago has seen in a long time, if ever.

Wonderful! I just love a good, hard, cold, never-ending winter! Oh wait. That's what we have every year here;) At least we aren't in an apartment with little to no heat and parking on the street this year!!
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We have started reading the Magic Tree House series with the boys since Samuel started reading it in school. Hopefully it will be good! The books are simple enough for Samuel to read and will help build his confidence:) He's a great reader but I think he's afraid to read chapter books since they seem so grown up or something. There is a girl in his class that is on the 5th book in the Harry Potter series! I couldn't believe it when I saw it ~ 1) that she can read that well at 6 or 7 years old and 2) that her parents would even let her read those books that young. Wow.

Zakkai's teacher pulled me aside this afternoon to tell me a funny story about him. I guess in gym today this girl was trying to organize a game with everyone and all the classmates cooperated except...you guessed it! Zakkai.

The girl went up and told the teacher, "Zakkai won't let me talk and play this game!" So Mrs. C. called Zakkai over and asked him, "What's up, Zakkai? Why won't you let Emily organize the game? Why don't you want to play?" And Zakkai (and I can picture his expression quite clearly in my head!) shook his head and said, "Well...she's just too much!"

It made the teacher laugh and she gave him a big hug:) He's such a little character!

And Eliana was as sweet as pecan pie today:) She just wanted to be near us while playing and kept coming over to me, pulling up and laying her head on my leg. Then when Ben got home, she would not let him put her down. She just wanted him to keep on holding her and she was so happy! Of course, he is easily sucked in by her charms.

I can literally watch the stress melt away from Ben's face as his precious little girl lays her head on his chest and then looks up at him and says, "Hi!" He asks her questions and she'll say, "Yeah?" So cute!

This afternoon I banished the wild hooligans...er, the boys upstairs to their room to play so I could skype with a friend and Eliana stood at the bottom of the stairs for the longest time calling up, "Da? Da?! Dayayaya!" She wanted her brothers to come down:) They entertain her all the time, eliciting the most adorable giggles! She can see them better in the car now that she's in her "big girl" carseat and they play peek-a-boo with her and sing her songs. I love it!

And to leave you with a smile....here's something my dear hubby sent to me:)