5 for Friday

Looking through my recent blogs, I see that I've been adding a lot of pictures and not much text. I think I'll work on writing more. But, of course, I'll post pictures of Wendy's birthday party and first cake experience this weekend.

My friends in Jefferson City are off to a church couples' retreat this weekend. I wish we could go! We went a few years ago, and had a fantastic weekend. It was fabulous - I hope they all have a great time of rest, renewal, and eating. (This place feeds you really well!)

Down to this week's 5 for Friday:

1. Self-cleaning ovens. I recently ran the self-cleaning cycle on my oven - we've had the thing for a little over a year, and I hadn't cleaned it. It heated up the kitchen quite a bit, and boy! did it smell awful. But I remember when we were renting in our first years of marriage, cleaning the oven with the "Easy-Off Fume Free" stuff. Nothing in the name of that product is accurate. It's not easy, and it's not fume-free. So I'm very thankful that I can just push a button and lock the oven door and it does its own thing.

2. Whole milk. Since Wendy's now a year, we've switched her from formula to whole milk. Much, much cheaper! She's tolerating the milk well, too. Tomorrow I think she might get her first peanut butter sandwich! :-)

3. Minivans. Last weekend the in-laws brought the wonderful new-to-us minivan in trade for James' old rusty '77 AMC Hornet. I'm so glad! The van is so much easier with Wendy. We've had a lot of running around to do this week, and it's been much easier than it was with our other car. Somehow we keep inheriting vehicles...we've got three in the driveway right now, and all of them were given to us by different people.

4. Real pizza - not the frozen kind. Last night I splurged and went to get Papa John's for us for dinner. For those of you who did not know that we now live in the boonies, let me just say this - there is no pizza delivery to our house. In order to get real pizza, it involves calling to order, driving 20 minutes to get it, waiting in line, and driving 20 minutes home. A bit different from our time in Jefferson City, when I had Papa John's on speed dial.

5. Good baby photographers. I could not do what these people do! We get Wendy's pictures done at Portait Innovations in Franklin, TN. They do any kind of portraits, but they're really good with babies and toddlers. Wendy was crabby, since she refused to take a nap on the way, but they still got more than 20 great poses, so that it was hard to choose. My aunt went with us, and she said that when the pictures were done, the guy who put the most effort into entertaining the baby came out of the studio and leaned against the wall and sighed. I'm sure he was worn out! You can see most of the good pictures on my facebook page, if you're interested.