liela's here!!!

i am DYING to show you some pictures of my new niece, liela michal sherf, but what kind of a sister would i be if i deprived nicole of the chance to show off her baby to the world before i do it??? a bum, that's what i'd be. so i'll give her 24 more hours....got that, nic? you have exactly one day until i plaster liela's cute little mug all over the internet. no, i'm just kidding. but let me just tell you she is CUTE!
but i still have my end of the story to tell, so here it is.....
monday morning i was going to watch ava while nic went for a regular doc appointment. i was going to take the kids to gramma sanders about 10am to dust and hang out until nic was done and she could meet me to pick up ava. about 9:30 nic calls me to say, "i'm going for an ultrasound so i'm going to be pretty late." no biggie. i'll just wait a while before we head to gramma's. i couldn't get in touch with gramma b/c she was outside, so she had no clue that we were planning to be late. a little while later nic calls back to tell me, "i'm staying." i actually said to her, "are you punking me?" to which she replied, "no, i'm not punking you! i'm staying at the hospital and i need some things from the house."
this i can handle. so i thought.
i got a list from nic, grabbed my keys, got both kids packed up and headed to nic's house to get her last few things. i get there, pull both kids out of the car, get up to the house and ...... hmmm.... that's curious.... my 'nic and mike' house key is missing. then it hit me. the last time they asked me to watch jackson i had to leave my key for mike's brother to use the next day. problem! so i had to get both kids back into the car and i went home to double check one more key ring.... yeah, my 'mike and nic' house key was gone. wonderful. the next option was to drive out to the hospital, get mike's key and come back to the house for the stuff. that was pretty much the only option. the problem was.... i had to go get my mom first so i could drive nic's car home. oh, boy. it was a driving crazy time, but i got my mom, got the keys from mike, got the exploder, and got nic's stuff. by then it was lunch time so we hit a drive thru for the kiddies and went to gramma's.
crisis averted. so i thought.
that night i was in charge of taking care of jackson. i headed over about 8pm to put him in the house. i went in the front door, walked to the back door to find it OPEN! freaked me right out. i can only guess that nic was in a hurry to get j out that morning and in her pregnant state forgot to shut the door. well, i slammed it shut, locked it and bolted. i was alone with connor...what else would a chick do? so i went home and waited for nathan to get home from soccer. he went over and checked everything for me and let j-dog in. it was all fine, but i still freaked out. nathan just said, "i went over with cleats and shin guards ready to tear anyone open that would stop me." what a brave man. :)
phew! i need a vacation from this new baby!
i knew i had to take care of jackson one more night. easy shmeasy. so i thought!
we walked over there tonight after church to find the gate OPEN!! what in the stink is going ON??? our hearts dropped and nathan thought he was going to have to call the police. then he looks over to the neighbors house and says, "hey, isn't that jackson?" the neighbor had seen him get out TWICE and nabbed him for nic. oh, brother! what a crazy couple of days, and i didn't even have a baby!!
but now all is well, and jackson is locked safely in the house.
so i don't have any liela pics but i do have some connor and ava pics!! don't worry, i'll have TONS of liela pics later.

i brought a few things to keep connor busy... ava loved it too.
just before i took the picture i said, 'look at me' and this is what connor normally does when he hears that. he throws his head back to look up. hilarious.

yeah, uncle mike, i see liela....but doesn't aunt nic's bed have buttons i can push?

this is where we had to give connor fruit snacks so he would be quiet for five seconds.

big sister cheese!

there was a cute little reading table in the waiting room. they loved it..... for about five minutes.