Hello!

Kids are in bed, am finally sitting down to the computer for the first time today....*sigh.* I was going to post earlier today but...that's how that goes. Had a fun day with Karen + our littles. Coffee and open toddler gym at our local gymnastic center today. Just picture a swarm of toddlers climbing through tunnels, swinging from the ceiling, and bouncing on trampolines. It rocks.

There's a nice interview of me over on Smile and Wave today if you're interested, so go over and take a look. Thanks Rachel!

Have been working hard on "Celebrate the BOY!" stuff so if I seem less sew-y lately, that's why. Schedules, sorting through emails, and sewing for an entire MONTH of boy posts that I am co-hosting with Dana of MADE coming up in February. We've pushed the dates back to February 15-March 15 to give us a little more time to plan (and email back all 200 of the people who sent us tutorials and ideas for the month...hokey pete!) so don't worry if February arrives and you don't see boy stuff. It's coming mid-month, and if anything this will make it even more awesome. For those of you who are waiting to hear back from me with a post date, please don't freak out. I'm on it.

Oh yeah and we're also moving the first week in April, so that should make things pretty exciting. A few people have asked about it because I vaguely alluded to it in a previous post and then didn't mention it again. That's mostly because we don't really know where we're moving to. We have no one to blame but ourselves, because we haven't really started looking...gah! Although I think we've narrowed it down to staying in Michigan at least. Maybe back to California (again) but that's a long shot that I'm really doubting. Overall the situation is good; we're selling our house, which we bought at near-peak real estate value six years ago, to someone who really wants it (believe it or not we a got a note in our mailbox asking if we wanted to sell. Yeah, it was kinda crazy) so we decided to be just go with it, take advantage of the opportunity and rent for a while. Hopefully cut back on expenses and all the stuff that goes with owning a home like replacing a sewer main and the roof. And maybe have a little more space? That's probably too much to ask, but anyway, that's my non-update on the house situation.

This afternoon after Clementine's nap we played with our marble run (Quadrilla) for nearly two hours. This toy is ridiculously awesome. It's one of those toys that's expensive enough that I probably wouldn't have ever considered buying it for our kids, but one year Mr Rae asked for a basic set for Christmas and got it, and then we were addicted. The basic gist is that it's a bunch of blocks and rails and spirals that you can build all kinds of different marble runs with. We even have the extension set that has little xylophones in some of the blocks so as the marble falls through it plays musical notes which elicited squeals from Elliot at first. I really need to take a video of ours sometime. OK, after quick blog search, One Crafty Mumma posted about theirs on her blog so you can see some pictures if you like. I can't seem to find them for sale online but our little downtown toy store still has them, I think *slight panic at thought they may be discontinued.* When I think about how many more hours of play it gets than the rest of the $20 toys in our house, it was totally worth the investment. OK how did I end up talking about this? Can't remember anymore.

Time to go watch Dr Who reruns!