The Case of the Missing Sock and Baby News

We left our condo in Sanibel after solving one of life's greatest mysteries...where did Doug's sock go?!? In preparation for our early departure, we had all of our clothes picked out the night before and while Doug was getting ready, his socks were carelessly left unattended. One member of our chatty clan, we'll call her Ydialay, was see sucking on said sock and this was the last time it was seen. When Doug finally decided it was time to put on his socks, there was only 1 left. It's important to note that putting on socks is always the last thing Doug does before leaving the house and this always drives me batty, so this was especially amusing to me. When he discovered his sock was missing he immediately started shouting. The Erickson parents were with us and I'm not sure they've ever seen their son so upset, but the rest of us know to expect this from him on the dreaded days of travel...he becomes TRAVEL DOUG. Some of the phrases he yelled were, "Come on", "GEEZ", "Who took my sock", "FIND IT ", and "I thought we were going to leave early". These were repeated several times with increasing aggitation. I have to mention that several times we asked him if he might have packed it and he vehemently denied any such thing. Also, his parents were scouring the condo trying to help their frantic son. Finally, most of us started laughing hysterically, except for Doug and his dad. His mom kept saying, "I just knew something like this was going to happen." Finally, Lydia (oops, I mean Ydialay) said, "I hid it." We immediately started questioning her concerning its whereabouts and she said, "I don't know." At last she said, "I hid it in the bedroom." So, we went on our quest for the sock. After we had turned the room upside down, she finally admitted, "I'm just teasing," which caused Doug to go into super-spaz mode. With some more urging and time ticking away, he checked the suitcase one more time and voila...the missing sock was found. He rather sheepishly admitted he had found it and we were on our way out. There were no other major mishaps and we arrived back in the frozen tundra safely. We had such a fabulous vacation and this last event left us with some more priceless memories.

In other news, Elise has been changing by leaps and bounds. Since she started crawling, it seems she is unstoppable. She pulls herself up on everything and tonight while we were eating dinner, she was playing with a toy in the family room. After we had been eating for a while, I looked over and there she was in the dining room. She had crawled up the two stairs from the family room into the dining room. All I can say is, "Slow down baby girl." Also, she has been waving, clapping, and tonight she finally said, "Mama" after what seems like months of saying, "Dada." I just love watching our children grow up. It's just amazing how special God made each of them.