She made it to Six!

My little Olivia Grace was born 6 years ago today. She came out with the funniest little face, and it's gotten cuter and funnier as she's grown a personality to match it. She's such a little stinker, but she's loved by everyone who knows her, especially her mommy. Happy birthday, little Livvi. I love you (and miss you!). For Livvi and everyone who knows her, here are 6 reasons I love Oliva Grace Reynolds, born July 23, 2002, at 12:30 pm:

1. The face, people! Look at the face. Do we even NEED five more reasons?
2. The booty shake. Livvi's got a booty shakin' dance that'll knock your socks off.
3. The brain. Smart as a whip. The girl was reading and doing Google internet searches before she even started kindygarten.
4. The squish. I just love to pinch (and even bite) her squishy little arms and cheeks and legs.
5. The mystery. You just never ever know what's going on in that head of hers. (It's probably better that way, too)
6. The humor. You can't believe the stuff that comes out of this kid's mouth. She likes to quote Nacho Libre ("Do you not realize that I have had the diarrhea since Easters?").

Happy birthday, sweetie! Mommy loves you!

Just taking up space

There's a reason I haven't posted in a while. I've been without my children for close to a month now! And the sad reality is that there is just nothing in my life worth posting about when you take the kids out of the picture!! Oh, woe is me. They're spending the month of July in Washington state with their dad and grandparents (thank you to grandma and grandpa Reynolds for hauling them up to the northern border on what I'm sure was a less-than-enjoyable road trip). I miss my kids! But what I miss almost as much is having a sense of purpose. What in the WORLD did I ever do with my life before I had children? Everyone keeps telling me to enjoy the quiet and the boredom, and I know that I should because it will all come to a crashing halt here in about 10 days or so. After that, the insanity of figuring out my future and putting plans into gear begins. Wish me luck with that. Meantime, here are some pics of the kids from the last month. You may have seen some of these on BLB's (Bethany's) blog already, but the rooster ones were just too cute not to post twice:

Here's something worthwhile that I've been doing (to show that I'm spending at LEAST an hour a day being semi-productive)--last Monday, at the gentle urging of a friend, I started a little workout program called P90X. What's that you say? You've never heard of P90X? Well, to steal a line from the advertisement, "This ain't your momma's workout." You may wonder what the "X" stands for. I'll tell you: EXTREEEEEME. All I can say is, "Ouch." My friend and I are doing this together, and we spent most of last week crying on the phone to each other about our various aching body parts. See all those dvd's lined up in the photo? That's right, different workouts for different days. We are now into day 10, and we've done 9--count 'em, 9--workouts. We get one eentsy beentsy break every week. Lucky us! But I will NOT complain. It kicks my butt for an hour or more every morning (at 4 am, thank you very much), but it feels gooooood when it's done. Good!!! GO ME!! (oh yeah, and my workout buddy, too--go you!!)