Roller blades, dentists and fish

The past couple weeks have been nice--no crazy schedules, no holiday planning, no long drives. Just living. And I love that. The older the kids get, the more I realize that cliche saying is true: there really is no place like home.

One day it was really warm (like 60 degrees!), so Lance broke out his new roller blades in our parking lot.

For a first real try, he did a pretty good job. He had been practicing in our hallway inside the apartment and it had paid off.

There was some of this...

...and a little bit of this.

But mostly this. He's still slow and wobbly, but with a little practice, he'll be just fine.

Jude had a good time riding his new bike. He's still trying to get the pedaling down and ended up going backwards most of the time.

Lance soon traded in his roller blades for his trusty bike and he and Killian whipped around our circle several times

Love the choice of shoes, Lance.

It is that time of year when Lance needs a dentist check, so we made an appointment for Jude, too.

Lance setting a good example. He did a good job--no cavities!

Jude was NOT too sure about sitting in the seat, though, and even laying on Daddy while watching "Thomas the Tank Engine" wasn't enough comfort to get through the appointment without some loud tears. Hopefully he wasn't too scarred and will be better in 6 months.

After our appointment, we went to the pet store so Lance could pick out some fish for his fish tank Santa brought him for Christmas.

This lady was VERY nice and helpful and Lance came home with a black molly, three zebra tetras and two shrimp.

He had picked out a couple albino cory cat fish a few days earlier at another pet store.

Here is his tank all set up in his room. It's actually red in real life and the black and white fish swimming around are beautiful. You can kind of see the black molly and the cory cat fish next to the lava rock. We've had a couple casualties since we introduced the fish to the tank (it can happen because the tank needs to "cycle" in the beginning, so you end up sacrificing a few fish here and there before it stabilizes), so we'll be headed to the store again to replace the fishies we lost.

And that's about the extent of our excitement these past couple weeks. Lance is spending this weekend up in Fairfax with his dad while the rest of us hang out here in Charlottesville and try to get some last-minute things done before this baby arrives. I'll be 37 weeks on Tuesday, so I guess he could come any day now, although I think I still have a bit to go. We'll see! I'm not sure I'm at the point yet where I'd prefer him out instead of in. Most days I'm just excited to meet him and anxiously await delivery day, but on those days when I flop into bed at night exhausted, I realize that while it would be much more comfortable to not be pregnant and it will be nice to get my pre-pregnancy body back, it's much easier for me that he's still inside instead of out. It's nice to have only one kid's diaper to change and to be able to sleep through the night (mostly) without getting up every 2-3 hours. I have to admit I'm also a little bit nervous about being outnumbered--2 adults to 3 children--but I think we'll be okay.

So, stay tuned for baby updates! (Oh, and if you have any good boy name suggestions, pass them along! We're pretty sure we like a certain name, but I'm still not 100% sold, so send those good names our way!)