"The tree is broken...Daddy will fix it"

And off she goes!!

I have not had a chance to write recently.  Things have been pretty much the same.  The heat has been brutal, so we've been spending more time outside:

Zev LOVES this splash pool that my grandfather bought for him.  Give the boy a bucket and either some water or some mulch, and he's a happy camper for at least two hours.  Note the crazy hair:  I don't know what we're going to do with this.  We're not going to cut his hair until he's three (Jewish thing) and it gets a bit unruly (we tell him he has 'crazy hair' and I put 'shmotz' in his hair every morning).  The boy looks like Kramer most of the time.  Eh, at least he's not trying to hit on any women...

Girls are both close to starting to cruise around.  Meorah is very adept at the 'swimming/Superman' movements babies do right before they are able to pull themselves along the floor.  Its funny watching her:  she gets on her tummy and is trying so hard to move around, then gets really frustrated and starts to yell.  She just ends up spinning herself in a circle.  Tzelia does the same thing:  both are great at getting on their tummies, and then they get stuck there.  I tell them they just need to learn to roll back over, because every time I flip them back, they just immediately roll onto their tummies again.  Not too bright. They'll have to get by on their looks.

Jason and I had our five year anniversary a few days ago.  We had a babysitter come over and went out for lunch.  Such a small thing, but really enjoyable.  The night before, I asked him what his favorite moment in the last five years was.  His response:  seeing my reaction to that first 'real' ultrasound when I was pregnant with Zev.  That would definitely be up there for me, too.  Other highlights:

1) Telling Jason I was pregnant with Zev (we did infertility treatments for all the kiddos, so it wasn't a complete surprise, but still fun to share)
2) Our vacation to Yosemite.  Beautiful hiking and the first time I stayed in a bed and breakfast.
3) Walking around the city after our wedding in our wedding garb and people stopping us to ask if we had just gotten married.  Well, duh!
4) Honeymoon in Jamaica, even with the horrible horrible sunburn I got and the...intestinal bug we both got
5) Telling Jason we were having twins (granted, also a yucky experience because we were in the ER at 2 in the morning because I was bleeding and we had Zev with us, but still rather fun)

More of course, but those are a few of the (clean) highlights.

Got some bad news yesterday:  the tree in our backyard has to come down ASAP.  There is a new crack in it, so it needs to come out immediately.  The tree is a few hundred years old and the largest tree in the neighborhood.  We will lose ALL our shade in the backyard, and our entire landscaping was designed around this tree.  It is very upsetting.  But it would be more upsetting if the tree fell on our house (although, as Jason said, it would mean we could get a new fridge!  Ours sucks) or someone else's house.  There is an extra 3K we were hoping to hold off on.  Not to mention the extra $$ to redesign the backyard, which we'll probably put off until next year.  We're in the Money Pit.  The tree, my surgery, one of our cars needs to be looked at, we just replaced our roof....I could go on.  Jason did just get a new job that came with an over 20% salary increase, but come on people!!  In addition, when Nicole comes back to work for us in Sept, we're going to start taxing her, which means our out-of-pocket expenses for her are going to go up 10% since we have to cover her Medicare and SS.  Sigh.

Think I'm going to take a personal day tomorrow.  Too much crap to do and I can't do it with three rug rats around.  While I do 'enjoy' this time, part of me is really looking forward to when they are more independent...