Happy Birthday, Jennifer!

Here's wishing the best of birthdays to the best of friends. I love you.

Who likes underwear?

I got a chain letter in the mail today. I kind of hate chain letters, but my sister sent it to me and my other sister sent it to her, so I feel like I kind of have to send it on. The letter claims to not be a chain letter, but only for fun. It's a panty exchange. I send a pair of panties (new with tags on) to number 1 on the list (sister Claire) then send the letter to 6 people and get 36 pairs of panties in the mail!! (exclamation points not mine) It would actually be pretty disturbing to get 36 pairs of panties in the mail. I do laundry once a week, and I don't even think I have room for 36 pairs of panties. I think I'd have to buy a new dresser. Some sort of panty dresser. At least it spells out that they are to be new, so I know my sisters haven't gotten into something kinky.
Anyway, I don't want to send out this letter to my friends, because I want them to still be my friends, but I feel kind of bad letting it drop, because I love my sisters.
So, any of my readers want to jump in front of the chain letter bus? Volunteer to receive a chain letter from me and to send a pair of panties to my sister Leah? You can make them as wierd as you like, she deserves some sort of payback. Then, feel free to let it drop. I really don't need 36 pairs of panties sent to me. Or, if you are excited about getting a plethora of panties in the mail, by all means, send it on.

Sometimes I really love my neighborhood

Yesterday, I was pushing Levi on the swings at the playground across the street. There was a 7-year-old girl on one of the swings and we had a nice conversation. She asked me where I was from and I told her I lived across the street. I asked her where she was from and she said, "Russia". I couldn't tell - she had very little accent. She told me that they had moved here not too long ago and lived near the Russian embassy and that she went to Russian school. She is in the second grade for American school and the first grade for Russian school. She asked me if I am trying to learn any languages. I told her that I am not. She told me that she is trying to learn Spanish and French, but that she is not that good at it. I told her, but you already know Russian and English, two languages is pretty good. She said, "I know Russian, but my English isn't very good, I still need to work on it a lot."
It was pretty humbling, but it a good way. I don't need to be smarter than a seven-year-old, and I'm excited that Levi is exposed to such people, and such a diverse group of international cultures as he is, simply by playing at the playground.

Levi was almost called...

There has been a lot of talk about baby names lately and it's been making me think about how hard that process was and how many potentials we went through before we landed on Levi (1 day after he was born). I really love the name Levi now and think it fits him well, but I don't even think it was a forerunner until the day we decided. Anyway, when we were pregnant, we made a list of some names we liked and had our friends and family vote on it. Today, I found one of the pieces of paper with the list on it. How fun. We distributed the same list on different pieces of paper to different people. This particular one was voted on by Aunt Leah, Uncle Peter, Swennie, D, Marisa, Trevor and Cate. Here are the names we liked and how many votes they got (just from these people, since it's the only paper I found):
Aiden (6)
Alden (2)
Alexander (0)
Antony (1)
Baily (2)
Benjamin (1)
Caelan (1)
Daniel (0)
Dorian (0)
Eagan (2)
Elliot (4)
Ephraim (2)
Graham (2)
Grant (1)
Hadley (1)
Harrison (1)
Hayden (2)
Ian (2)
James (2)
Jonah (1)
Judah (0)
Kieran (2)
Lachlan (2)
Levi (1)
Marcus (3)
Max (1)
Milo (2)
Oliver (1)
Oscar (3)

As I got to the end of the list here I realized that this list was made at a point when we had only gotten to the O's in the baby name book, so there were a few more on subsequent lists. The ones that come to mind now are Rueben and Welton. Some of the favorites before we decided on Levi were Harrison and Milo. The one person that voted for Levi was Trevor. The 6 people that voted for Aiden were everone but Trevor. Also, it's interesting that the name we chose happened to be one of the 4 tribes of Isreal that are included on this list. Rueben was later included as well, I guess we just like those tribe names. Zebulun was never included.