my girls and a happy birthday to my sister!

i love having emma and elise be so close in age (i can only say that now that they're both older!). they love sitting next to each other in the car and are almost always holding hands. so sweet. i pray that they will be the best of friends in the years to come. on father's day, allan took lucas and emma to go see toy story 3 in 3D so i got to spend the afternoon hanging out with just elise. we went to browse at a fun little gift shop and i ended up buying a mini euonymus that i love! i'm not a huge plant person. it has to be the right plant for me to want to water and tend to it regularly. it sounds a little lazy, i guess, but it's true. we also went to a local nursery that has the coolest stuff, including several koi ponds where we get to feed the koi. the neat thing is that allan and i had a koi pond in our last house and we ended up donating all of our koi to this nursery when we got rid of our pond. i have no idea which koi were ours, but it was just neat to think about it. elise loved feeding the fish and refused to leave. she kept asking for more fish food and when i wouldn't buy any more for her, she searched for the ones that dropped on the floor. allan and i can already see that she is one determined little girl. good in many ways, but not in some. our girls are growing up way too fast. the other day, emma told me that maybe she would "shrink down" instead of grow up so that she can stay my baby. awww! must have been something i said to her at some point. sounds like me! i love my girls and am so glad they have each other as sisters. i'm also thankful to have MY sister as a sister. she's caring, considerate, fun, funNY, reliable, and extremely resourceful. she loves the kids and takes as good of care of them as if they were her own. she's my best friend and we all love her! it's her birthday today...happy birthday, vick! we love you!