a busy weekend

health wise, we're almost all better. nina and i are still coughing a lot, and still have intermittent (but mild) sore throats, but hopefully it's safe to say we're over the hump. hopefully.
on saturday morning we were feeling so much better (especially me). this was due in a large part to the fact that both girls had slept in their own beds until 6 am, thereby letting their mommy sleep THROUGH THE NIGHT!! do you know how huge this is? i have no recollection of having slept through the night since before maggie was born. i'm pretty sure there were some nights when i was pregnant with maggie that i slept through the night. i don't recall exactly, and neither does nick, but i think it must have happened. surely this wasn't the first time in 6 years and one month that i've slept from 11 to 6, uninterrupted? sadly, it could be, but it doesn't matter. it hasn't repeated since, and i don't even want to know how long it's going to be until it happens again, but it did and i am glad. isn't that sad? it's ok if you think that's sad, i do, but such is my life.

(*edited to add: oh my gosh, i just looked back at what i had written on friday night's blog post. i'll copy and paste it here so you don't have to scroll down. i wrote, " i've had some rough nights with maggie and could really, really use a good night's sleep tonight. but i'm glad that i've had the energy in the middle of the night to take care of maggie."
wow! if anyone read this that night and said a prayer for me, thank you. and please feel free to add my sleep to your prayers any time!)

anyway! i woke up with energy. we all went out to breakfast at the ebb tide since we had almost no food in the house (being too sick to shop, with 2 sick kids and all). what a treat! then we headed home, packed up some sandwiches, and visited the gray wildlife park. what a fun place! i'll let our pictures tell the story:


agghh! a bear! and what a cute little face it has!



after we saw the deer, an albino raccoon, looked for a woodchuck but couldn't find it, a skunk, and an opossum, we took this nice wooded trail through the woods.



a moose! this was the second moose actually, the first had the nice big antlers. but we didn't get such a cute photo with the first moose, so you can see the littler one. this was probably a child moose.




the canada lynx! they were everyone's favorite. spunky! and dangerous!




on the way home (after some yummy chinese food) we stopped at DeLorme, which has the world's coolest globe. the moose thing was just too much fun, but maggie had wandered off by the time i convinced nick to do it. so don't be expecting this pose on the christmas card, i can tell without even bringing it up that nick won't go for it. and that's the kind of compromise-minded wife i am, so i won't even bring it up, even though i think the 4 of us making moose antlers with a moose in the background would make a fantastic christmas card. well now i've brought it up, but that's just what happens when you have a blog.