Maisie has always loved helping me. When we lived in Portland, one of her favorite things to do was help with the laundry. She actually still loves it and now I find all sorts of things in the washing machine. A lot of the washing machines are front loading in Europe, so they are at just the right height for her! Lately though, laundry hasn’t been enough for little gooby.  She wants to help with MORE! So I have given her the chance to help in the kitchen! She LOVES it! Her “responsibility” has been helping with the salad. At first, I was a little peeved at the size of lettuce bits she was tearing off, but then I thought, “WHO CARES!?!?”  Isn’t it better for her to help and be a part of something then the lettuce bits to be just the right size? So now every time I…

Justin’s mom had asked us if she could buy Maisie a new pair of shoes, since Maisie was growing out of her shoes so quickly! We had accepted her generous offer and asked if she would get a pair of white or brown converse for Maisie. If you know my mother in law, she did NOT come back with a boring colored pair of converse, but VERY much her own taste wrapped up in a little pair of converse! Hey, at least she didn’t stray from the converse! I was a bit unsure about them at first, but now that Maisie is wearing them all the time and LOVES them, I think they are pretty cute!! Thanks Grandma Ann!  Here are a couple pictures of Maisie wearing her shoes! They fit her now! A little bit big, but they work!  So you as you can see from the pictures above,…

As we all know, I went through a little blog crisis the other day, but as I recently commented on my last post, I will not be quitting my blog. But I do have to say that I’ve been doing some serious thinking on this whole blog/facebook/myspace/twitter stuff. I can’t help to think that it is all a lot of pretend relationships. I know that there are valid friendships that you keep up with on facebook, but how much time I’ve wasted looking at people’s lives that I will never even have a conversation with is embarrassing and disturbing. Especially because in that time I could ACTUALLY be investing in someone who I do know or am in a real relationship with. I’m not saying that I am going to quit reading blogs completely or stop facebook or myspace, because I do enjoy those things, I just need to get…

I’ve been having this feeling lately of feeling alone. I write on my blog to try and help me feel connected to people, yet it just makes me feel more disconnected. It didn’t used to feel this way, but now it does. I don’t know why, really. Nothing has changed that I’m aware of. It just feels so empty. Sort of like a one sided friendship. Like I am giving of myself and not really receiving anything in return. Not that I am supposed to expect something in return, but I sort of thought that it would help me stay connected to people from far away, but really I don’t think it is. Maybe it is helping people stay connected to me, but I don’t feel that. All I feel is that people know what’s going on in my life, and I have no clue what is going on in…

I have two more videos from Spain here. To me, they really show how much Maisie has grown up, even in that week in Spain! The first one is of her “swinging” from the slide bar in Barcelona. She went from being cautious climbing up the slide, to swinging from the bar and dropping herself onto the slide. This video is even a tamed down version of how she would swing. The second video is of her jumping. She learned to jump with BOTH feet at the same time while in Valencia while we were sitting at this cool little cafe (with really bad live music). I think she was pretty proud of her herself for her new jumping skills!