Happy Birthday from Rachel

Dear Grammy and Grandpa,

I drew you a picture today for your birthdays! I chose a pink paper because I like pink. I drew with a white crayon like I usually do but was a little disappointed to see that it actually showed up on this paper. So I put that crayon back and instead used a light pinky-orange color to do most of my coloring. It matched the paper perfectly! So perfectly that you can hardly see any of my scribbles at all.

I also used grey because Mommy said that you like pink and grey, Naunie.

I asked Mommy to help me trace my hands. It was so fun we did it over and over again! I helped. Then I wanted Mommy to trace my feet, so I stood on the paper. It was harder for me to help trace my feet than my hands because my legs kept getting in the way.

I even traced my nose for you!

Mommy said she wished she had the camera ready so that she could snap my picture when I put my nose down to be traced. I don't know why since you can clearly see that my nose got traced. Oh, well. Mommy is so silly; she's always taking pictures of me.


When I was finished with my picture, Mommy asked me to sit on the couch and hold it up nicely for you so that you could see it. So I did! Didn't I do a good job? I was concentrating so hard on doing a good job, that's why I couldn't smile!

I hope you both had happy birthdays. It was fun to get to see you today. Thank you for looking at my belly button. Sometimes my bellybutton gets lonely because no one ever wants to see it. I don't know why.

I love you lots and lots and I'm taking care of Mommy! Happy Birthday again!

Mommy and Daddy both say hi! And my bellybutton says hi, too!

Love, Rachel

Primary Nativity

At the branch party yesterday the primary performed the nativity pageant we've been working on for the past couple of weeks. It turned out alright, but was rather stressful for me (and Phyllis and Michelle) because Simmone, who was basically the "director" and who is also our pianist, and Deneece, the chorister, both ended up sick at home.

We were left to scramble around and get everything organized, but, as I said, it turned out fine. Carolee played the piano, I led the music, Michelle and Phyllis cued the children. It was...busy. We had the children bring their own costumes but brought garland for the angels. It was a good thing we did because there ended up being several more angels in attendance than we'd ever had in primary. Several of the Arab males in our branch have families, but their families aren't members of the church so they only come to parties, which is great!

All the children that showed up wanted to participate, though, so we had plenty of angels. A heavenly host, really.



Grant was the star--he's the one wrapped up from head to toe in garland. It was itchy, apparently. He was so funny though! When his part came up he stood up on a chair and stretched his arms out wide, smiling for the whole world to see. He did an excellent job!


We had a hard time taking pictures because I was leading the music and Andrew was busy chasing Rachel and Sam around. And the layout of the chapel is really awkward and there's this huge pillar right in the middle of the room. We did get a few pictures, however, focusing mainly on Jacob, Emma, and Megan since their parents weren't there to watch them. Jacob and Emma were Joseph and Mary; Megan was an angel.

Mary (Emma) and Joseph (Jacob)

Megan was upset about her dress all day. It's the same dress she wore to be a fairy for Halloween.

"It's not an angel dress, it's a fairy dress! I can't be an angel in a fairy dress!" she cried.

Emma told her that fairies and angels are almost exactly the same thing.

"No, they're not," she insisted.

"But they both wear pretty dresses," I said.

She perked up a bit when Andrew brought out the garland and we made a halo for her. But then, about a half hour before we left for the party, she was goofing around--walking on her knees or something like that--and she fell over and landed on her head. She got a huge goose egg on her forehead and cried about how angels don't have bumps on their heads, etc. So we brushed her hair and pulled it down kind of in front of her face so that it covered the goose egg and she was happy enough to leave the house.

She was supposed to wear a shirt under her dress, but when the time came to get on stage she was so concerned about it and started crying, so Michelle helped her take off her shirt and go out in just the dress. She ended up being a rather immodest angel, but I don't think anyone noticed. I think you can see the goose egg in this picture...on the right hand side.

Angel Megan

The Young Women sang Mary's Lullaby for the primary. It was so beautiful. They rehearsed so long and hard for it, learned the harmony, and memorized all the words. They did a great job! Jessica is in the bright turquoise shirt.


Andrew, Jessica, Carolee and I also sang a number in the pageant: A Shepherd's Carol. It's a round and Simmone was supposed to get a group together to sing it, but she forgot. So at 5:30 when we arrived at the church I grabbed up Andrew, Carolee, and Jessica and we practiced for all of 5 minutes. We did not sing as well as the Young Women, but I think that's okay because there were a lot of other songs sung by the congregation, and more importantly by our primary.

Nothing invites the spirit into a room like a choir of children singing, especially when they're all angels!

Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn't go?

We were outside on the lawn of the church villa eating a lovely Christmas dinner yesterday when Santa arrived in his bright red suit.

"Ho, ho, ho!" he laughed and, like the pied piper, was followed by a trail of cheering children all the way into the church.

But not Rachel. She screamed and ran to me, instead. I took her inside to meet Santa and she was not impressed. She watched with horror as each of her friends went up and sat, willingly,* on his lap. She could not believe her eyes.

Finally it was her turn. I tried to get her to walk up to Santa all by herself, but when it was obvious that wasn't going to happen I went up with her. She totally wigged out. That blur in the pictures? That's her.


She didn't want anything to do with Santa at all. When he tried to give her a present she shoved it back at him and yelled, "Nooooo!"

The best picture of Rachel (with Santa) that we got

I took the present for her, anyway, since I knew she'd want one and we retreated to the farthest corner of the room (by Rachel's insistence) to open it. Inside was Kaleidoscope the Cat, which Rachel thought was totally awesome. They also got a little package of candy, which Rachel devoured in no time flat.

Rachel and Sam comparing clinging to their toys

The funniest part is that Santa was Brother Fife, not some strange man in the mall. He did have a good makeup job, though, and it took me a while to figure out the true identity of our branch's Santa. Maybe next year Rachel will be more willing to visit with Santa.

*Sam, Lydia, and Finn also were not so willing.

Straight from the dinner table

Today was kind of crazy. We went to bed shortly after midnight last night--Andrew and I were up writing and editing papers, respectively. It felt like our heads had just hit the pillow when I heard some stirring from Sam's room.

"He'll go back to sleep," I thought. But he didn't.

About 10 minutes later there was a full-on temper tantrum going on in there, complete with yelling, kicking, and screaming. If he knew profanity I'm sure that would have been involved.

"Sam," I said gently, "What's wrong, buddy?"

My question was answered with even louder screaming and flailing limbs directed at my face, so I backed off and started 20 questions.

"What do you need, Sam? Do you need to go potty? Do you need a diaper change?" More screaming. "Do you want to read a story? Do you want your mom? Do you want some milk? Do you want Brother Heiss? Do you want to go to sleep?" More screaming.

After a few minutes I went back to the bedroom and told Andrew it was his turn. He fared no better than I. And his screaming woke up Rachel so she was now screaming, too.

So I got her up and we both joined Andrew to see if we could get Sam to calm down. I got him a cup of milk while Andrew continued to question him. He refused the milk and kept on screaming so we kept on guessing.

"Do you want to watch Lion King?" I asked. I think we've watched that a good 50 times already and we've only been here 4 full days.

Sam stopped screaming. He stopped flailing his arms. He stopped kicking his legs. He took a deep breath.

"Yeah," he said. I had guessed correctly.

We gave him the milk and Andrew cuddled him while I cuddled Rachel.

"We can't watch Lion King right now because it's still time to sleep." I said, but it wasn't that easy to convince him to go back to bed.

45 minutes later and Sam had finally quieted down and I was able to turn my attention on getting Rachel back to bed.

It was a sad moment when the alarm went off at 6 AM! Most of the kids, including Rachel and Sam, woke up a little grumpy. So today wasn't a very good day and I was quite grumpy myself by dinnertime.

Still it was humorous. Always humorous. I am so happy that Rachel's starting to talk now because I really want to hear about what goes on in that little head of hers.

I made stroganoff for dinner tonight. Emma and Megan didn't really want to try it since it had mushrooms in it. Sam said it was "nasty." Who knew he even knew that word? Eventually Emma and Megan decided that plain noodles were bland and tried the sauce. They seemed to like it. They ate everything on their plates, but I'm not sure that counts as evidence because this is what Emma said,

"Sister Heiss, we've had such wonderful meals while you've been here...so..."

Long pregnant pause.

"Can we have McDonald's tomorrow?" she gushed out.

Everyone else seemed to enjoy dinner. That or they were great actors. Plus, Emma doesn't like strawberry ice cream (or fruit at all) so her opinion doesn't really count.

And she was very appreciative of Friday's dinner--we made pancakes with blueberries (and special blueberry-free ones for Little Miss Fruit-Hater Emma)--so appreciative, in fact, that she drew us a picture.

The likeness of Rachel is amazing. That's pretty much what she looked like on Friday. I wish we had taken a picture of her in her dress so that you could see how exact this drawing is of her. The drawings of me, Andrew, and Emma not so much. But that's pretty much Rachel right there. In fact, I didn't even need to take a picture because Emma drew her so well.


If you can't read the words, it says, "Thank you for the pancakes! From: Emma, To: the Heisses"

Emma's speech bubble says "They taste delicious!" and the sticker she's talking says, "Good job!"

Rachel's speech bubble sticker says, "suh-weet!" I wish the flash didn't erase it--it also has a monkey face on it and I think it's hilarious.

Anyway, later this evening Emma was in the kitchen and I heard her yell (at the dishes?), "Die, fi-end!"

I didn't have the heart to tell her that's a one-syllable word. She was actually doing her job and I didn't want to interrupt that. She's been having a hard time dealing with her dish duty--she has it for the whole month, which might seem like a long time but then she gets two months off so in the end it works out.

She was pretty upset that we had ice cream after she loaded the dishwasher (with Jessica's help) and Megan was sweet enough to wash the dishes, by hand, for her. Megan just wanted to play in the water and I told her that she could...if she washed the bowls and spoons. So there she was, happily washing away when Emma walked into the kitchen and yelled,

"Hey! That's my job!!"

Seriously?? She's been complaining about having to do the dishes all week, and here's her little sister kindly washing the dishes for her. I pulled her aside.

"Emma, think about it for a minute."

"But she's doing my jo-ob!" she whined, again making a two-syllable word out of one that should be singular.

"Exactly," I said.

She looked at me and cocked her head. A coy smile spread across her face, "Oooooh..." she said.

"And don't yell at your sister," I sighed, "It's not nice."

Don't worry; we still want more children. They're just too funny to pass up, exhausting as they are. I can't imagine not wanting children. One of my childhood friends, Lindsey, is also playing mom right now and she's decided that she never wants kids and babysitting just reminds her of that fact.

Let's remember that Lindsey...can barely manage to take care of herself, let alone children....C. and I both have to work Thursday. WHO IS GOING TO PICK UP THE KIDS? I start to flip out more because 'whoisgoingtopickupthekids' isn't a conversation that I've had with C. Conversations involving children are more those involving NOT spawning anything from my uterus, EVER.

I can't tell you how sad I felt when I read that. My life would be so empty without Rachel; I can't imagine giving up my birthright willingly. So many people I know are having a really hard time having children naturally and it's really, really hard for them to deal with. Families are essential.

They are also kind of hard, but once the kids are all in bed and you write down all the funny things they said during the day it makes it all worth it.

It's a hit!

Staying in the Lewis household has really expanded Rachel's vocabulary. This morning Sam and Rachel followed me into the kitchen, squabbling, as usual. They really are good friends and like to play with each other--it's just that Rachel is an oldest/only child and is used to getting her own way and Sam is the youngest/baby child and is used to his older siblings giving him his own way. Since they both always want their own way they run into a lot of conflicts.

Oh, and Rachel thinks she has to hold/touch Sam all the time and he's not too fond of constant hugging. It's kind of nice for me because she doesn't follow me around all day long holding onto my legs. Instead she follows Sam around.

Anyway, they ran into the kitchen yelling and screaming.

"Achel! Push!" Sam tattled.

As soon as he said this Rachel shot back, "Sam! Hit! Hit!"

She hit herself just to make sure I knew for sure she meant to say hit.

Isn't it great how educational family living is? Rachel has learned how to tattletale and to say hit all in 4 days. Amazing!

Flashback Friday: Why our song is our song

Some relatives gave us some money for Christmas, which we quickly spent...mostly on Amazon.com. Our entertainment in Egypt is rather limited. We have satellite TV but 90% of the channels are music videos or shop-from-home stations. Mostly we watch MBC 1, 2, 3, and 4. If we watch at all, that is.

We rarely turn the television on. Occasionally Rachel and I will watch some cartoons that were translated into Arabic from English from Japanese, or sometimes if we know there's going to be a good movie on we'll schedule a time to watch it. But mostly we do other things, which is great.

But there are times we just want to watch a movie and we don't really have many to choose from.

And our Christmas collection is pretty skimpy. We don't even own Elf--except for the fact that we just purchased it from Amazon--and it's "our" movie. How could we not own "our" movie?

Lucky for us, the Lewises own it so last night after we got all the kids (their kids and Rachel) in bed Andrew and I sat down to watch it together.

As per his request I'll explain why it's special to us for this Friday's Flashback.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that we got married in December, right around Christmas. Everyone told me it would be awful and that I'd regret it forever--the date, not the marriage--but I don't. Granted, it was a little stressful at the time with finals and the wedding and Christmas just around the corner but I think it would be stressful no matter what time of the year we had gotten married.

We chose our date for a number of reasons:
a) Finals were over. Not a huge deal because I was only taking internship credit and Italian so I only had one final. I believe it was on December 13th, so it was a couple of days before the wedding.
b) We wanted to get married before Andrew left for his study abroad in Amman, Jordan. Mostly so that I could go with him because we couldn't bear to be separated for that long.
c) We wanted to get married before my brother David left for his study abroad in Brazil. Mostly because I wanted him to witness our wedding because my dad wasn't able to be there.
d) The temple was available that date.

Our most pressing issues were really B and C. David was leaving for his internship in Brazil in January and wouldn't be back until April. Andrew was leaving for his study abroad in Jordan in May, just days after David arrived home. And we really didn't want to be married that soon before moving to the Middle East together. Not that that would have been a bad thing and no offense to anyone who's done that (ahem, Joneses...Schillings?) but I just figured that getting married is stressful enough and didn't want to throw culture shock into the mix.

So we got married in December. The 16th, to be exact. A Friday. At 3 o'something in the afternoon. In the Mt. Timpanogos Temple. In sealing room 6 (or 4...I can't remember but I have it written down).

Wouldn't it be romantic if I could actually remember all those details off the top of my head? Unfortunately I've entered the haze otherwise known as 'motherhood' and my memory just ain't what she used to be.

We had our reception the day after we got married, which was nice because then we weren't all exhausted and/or jittery. The day after our reception we went to church in our new ward since we hadn't left for our honeymoon yet.

I had to introduce myself in Relief Society and said something like this, "I'm Nancy Heiss and I just go married. We moved into the Dillenbeck's old apartment..."

"Oh, when did you get married?" someone asked.

"Friday," I answered.

"Well, no wonder you two were so cuddly!" someone else called out. Many other embarrasing comments ensued. I just sank slowly into my chair, beet red. I couldn't wait to get out of there. And lucky for me we did get out of there and all the way to Italy.

That sounds romantic, I'm sure. The only reason we went, though, was because I had already been planning a trip to Europe and couldn't cancel my tickets. Some friendly people at my father-in-law's office pooled together to buy a ticket for Andrew, which was so very nice of them!

We flew out December 20th and had to fight other passengers to change seats with us so that we could sit by each other on every leg of the journey. It was kind of a hassle, but worth it because we just couldn't bear to be separated.

With it being Christmastime and all the radio station that you can listen to with the headphones (that they used to give out for free but now charge you for) was playing Christmas music and since Andrew and I like Christmas music (and since we were given headphones for free) we were listening to it.

When Baby, It's Cold Outside came on I tapped Andrew on the arm. We both pulled our headphones off.

"I like this song," I mentioned.

"Okay," he mumbled sleepily, put his headphones back on and started dozing off again.

Perhaps it's because I had only recently became aware of the song, or perhaps it's because the song suddenly got really popular in Italy in December 2005, but either way we heard the song all over for the rest of our honeymoon. All over. In metro stations and train stations and air ports and restaurants. We heard it so often that it kind of became the unofficial theme song of our honeymoon.

After spending a day in London and touring through Rome (Andrew's mission stomping grounds) we went up north to Vicenza to visit my...aunt.* It was a lot colder in northern Italy than we were expecting. It was rather drizzly and my coat, we found out, was not waterproof. After spending a half-day in Verona and freezing our little tushies off, we decided to call it a day and go back to the Eldredge's to relax and warm up.

No one was home so we decided to watch a movie. Andrew chose Elf because neither of us had remembered seeing it before. Imagine our surprize when Buddy and Jovie started singing Baby, It's Cold Outside.

Andrew and I both burst out laughing because we'd heard that song so many times already it was getting to be ridiculous. It seemed as if fate was trying to assign us a "song" and since we didn't previously have a "song" we stopped fighting against the inevitable and adopted Baby, It's Cold Outside as our song. And Elf as our movie because, hey, why not? It's just one more reason to get sentimental and lovey-dovey.

*What do you call someone who was your aunt's best friend growing up, who was also friends with your mother, who married your aunt's husband's cousin, who is also distantly related (like 3rd or 4th cousins) to your mom and aunt anyway? I don't know, either.

Growing up we mostly just called them "The Turkey Cousins" because they lived in Turkey for several years (their dad is stationed with the army as a civil servant/school administrator guy). When I was little and we were visiting my aunt at the same time they were I asked my mom if they even spoke English. That's how much I thought they were actually from Turkey. They don't live in Turkey anymore (they don't live in Italy anymore, either) but I still call them The Turkey Cousins.

Fear Day, and other quotes from the Lewis children

Dear Sara and Kevan,

Just in case you were missing your brood, we thought we'd share with you some of the lovely things they've been saying and doing the last few days.

We took Sam and Rachel swimming on Thursday morning; we had a pool at our disposal and we couldn't resist. Sam wanted to spend most of his time in the baby pool, therefore Rachel wanted to spend most of her time in the baby pool, therefore we both spent most of our time in the baby pool. We had fun, even if it was a little crowded and cold.

"Brudda Heith! Thplash Achel!" that means, "Brother Heiss! Splash Rachel!"

"Heiiiiiiith! Heiiiiiiiiith! Baby poo told!" that means, "Heiss, Heiss! Baby pool cold!"

"No, Achel! Thplash Tham!" that means, "No, Rachel! Don't splash Sam!"

"No Wache, No Wache, No Wache," means "No Rache, No Rache, No Rache."

"Doe, Brudda Heith, doe!" meant "Go, Brother Heiss, Go!"

Sam wasn't the only one talking up a storm. Rachel was also having a fun time. Most of what she said was nonsense, but she did get a few words out.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yessssss!" was said as she walked from one side of the baby pool to the other.

"Dada! Nooooo!" was yelled when I took her out of the baby pool and into the big pool. She wanted to stay and play with Sam and Daddy but I was too cold.

Rachel has been copying everything Sam says, even outside the pool. She's repeated Pispaus Tee (Christmas Tree), Brudda Heith, and even said potty today.

We are also getting a kick out of the other kids.

Megan and Emma declared today "Fair Day" as in "let's all be fair and equal." Somehow I don't think they thought we were being fair. Megan drew me a picture, kind of as an invitation to Fair Day, but I think her original plan was to try to make me feel guilty about not being "fair."


I wasn't sure if I should be afraid or not. I think my favorite parts are the "not" and the frowny face that are scribbled out. "Happy not fair fear day!"

In conjunction with the absolutely fair day Emma and Megan were having, Megan said this, "Emma, will you please get me another piece of paper of whatever colour you are going to use?"

And lastly, from Jacob, "That's the main artery in my leg! You pinched it!"

How could you not laugh everyday?

Heiss Holiday Humbug 2008

Perhaps I'm a little obsessive, but I've been thinking about this year's newsletter for at least 2 months now. Truthfully, it's probably been longer than that. Mostly I've been thinking about it because sending them out last year was a mess.

Last year was the first year we sent a Christmas newsletter out--you'll notice this newsletter is still volume three. Yes, that's because we forgot to send letters out the first year we were married. We wrote one. We just forgot to send it out and by the time March rolled around it just seemed a little silly to send them out. So we just didn't.

I'm terrible at things like this. Did I ever mention I never got around to finishing the thank-you cards for my wedding? That's probably going to haunt me to the grave. I'll be on my deathbed sobbing, "I didn't send out thank-you cards...and I habitually emailed out my Christmas newsletter...but I promise I'm still a good person!!"

At least this year we're emailing our letter because we live in Egypt, unlike last year when our lame excuse was that we didn't want to spend money on stamps (although if we lived in the States this year I would bet money that we still wouldn't want to spend money on stamps). Regardless, emailing just feels more valid this year.

Unfortunately I've procrastinated far too long and I didn't get our address book as organized as I'd hoped to this year (or at all for that matter) so if you got this twice or not at all, I'm sorry. It's not our fault we both like you and you happen to be in each of our address books...or that we never got around to adding you into our address book. Maybe next year I'll be organized. No promises.

Now without further ado I bring to you the Heiss Holiday Humbug 2008 (fully downloadable with the click of a button):


Our family weblog is epically long; I’ve written around 500 blog posts this year alone [edit: this is my 507th blog post this year...yikes]. So while I don’t expect you to read every word I write, I would feel obtusely redundant if I actually wrote a Christmas letter. Following last year’s trend I am using this opportunity as a shameless plug for Heissatopia. Just follow the links....

Two thousand and eight started out with a bang
I contuted my elbow; in a sling it did hang.

From that moment on the year only got better
Which I’ll summarize here in our Christmas newsletter...

A goal on my life list says, "Bake wedding cake."
That goal was accomplished, a big undertake.

For part of the cake we tried keeping pet fish
But each of them found a quick way to perish.

Andrew, in April, donned grad cap and tassel,
Left BYU, and became somewhat less vassal.

For although he stayed working there as his vocation
Our post-graduation freedom gave way to vacation!

We went on a road trip to see San Diego
And got real nice tans to boost up our ego.

Later we took off to Grover for camping.
The cabin had gone through a lot of revamping

So we slept in the newly constructed loft,
Rachel in a crib, us on mattresses soft.

Soon after that Rachel turned one—
She’s growing up fast and it sure is fun!

By this time she already knows how to walk.
She jumps, spins, and climbs and is starting to talk.

Our parents are sad that we took her away
To Cairo, Egypt, where we plan to stay

For two or so years—Andrew’s doing his master’s.
(We’ve been in school so long I wish he’d go faster!)

He’s currently studying at AUC
And in our spare time we get all touristy.

We’ve already hiked down inside the Bent Pyramid
And found it quite dull, dreary, dank, dark and humid.

But Egypt is great! We’ve our share of adventure;
Our future is unequivocally up to conjecture.

What’s in store for next year? I cannot divine.
But Merry Christmas and Happy Two-Thousand and Nine!

Love from,
Andrew, Nancy and Rachel Heiss

And that's basically what we did in 2008. Obviously we did a lot more than that since I wrote hundreds of entries about our life...feel free to peruse the archives if you're bored.

Don't touch me, period.

On our way out of the Khan, Courtenay decided to stop and barter for one last item. She had been searching desperately for a badge to sew on her backpack--she has a little badge from places she's been: Arches, Nauvoo, Israel, etc. But she hadn't been able to find anything to sew on her backpack from Egypt. Not a pin. Not a badge. Nothing.

We eventually did find a badge of sorts. It was really ugly and of shoddy workmanship, but she bought it because it was the only one that we were able to find. She spent the rest of the time after that finding other things that might work--a key chain, a little woven carpet purse, a flag. Anything.

At a carpet purse stand we were met with a man who asked Courtenay how many hearts she'd broken that day.

Playing along Courtenay answered, "Oh, only 6 or 7."

"No," the man answered, "Hundreds!"

Courtenay just laughed and continued looking at purses. I, on the other hand, was incredibly bothered because the man had his hand on her arm the whole time. I hate it when Arab men touch me because I am a woman! I should not be touched. Ever! I have a husband and they should understand that if they don't want other men touching their wives they shouldn't be touching me. Just because I'm American doesn't mean I need to be treated differently.

So far I've been pretty lucky here. I've only been touched once--and only on the arm. It was just the other day on the metro on the way home from Coptic Cairo. I got separated from Andrew and ended up a little ways down the car from him. This guy came up and stroked my arm. Purposefully, I'm sure, since he stroked up and stroked back down.

I glared at him, almost snarling, and he apologized profusely and backed away.

Arab women here do not get touched by Arab men (as a general rule), so I don't think they should have a double-standard for American women.

Cross-gender touching in America is a little more common, however. It's not unusual for guys and gals to give hugs to each other. Courtenay hugged Andrew goodbye when she left, which was fine and normal by American standards...but a little weird by Arab standards.

Anyways, this vendor was touching Courtenay's arm while they were bartering, which was really bothering me. It wasn't bothering her too much, but then he said,

"I will give you this for free if I can just stare into your eyes."

"Okay," Courtenay said, going cross-eyed.

I stood there for a minute, unsure of what to do, while Courtenay continued to cross her eyes and ye olde creepy guy stared intently at her face. He appeared to be leaning, and his lips were quivering. In all honesty he seemed to be going in for a kiss...

So I clapped my hands loudly and yelled, "Alright! That's enough!"

"I was only joking," Ye Olde Creep insisted.

I was not amused, nor was Courtenay.

"Well it isn't funny to a married woman!" I screeched.

He muttered something that sounded apologetic, but probably wasn't. And we still ended up buying that purse from him even though he didn't say sorry and said he'd give it to us for free if he could stare at Courtenay's face, which he did. Sheesh!

I want to see what's funny, too!

On Friday night we held a little hefla. The Schillings brought over a Brian Regan DVD and some cookies and popcorn, and I made some pumpkin cake stuff. Rachel was still up when they came over, but it was definitely past her bedtime. Still, we couldn't really put her to bed before she'd had any dessert since she already saw it. That would just be mean.

So we let her stay up and visit and eat some cake and cookies. And then we put her to bed.

She didn't cry or fuss at all. We figured she was just really tired and wanted to go to bed. Plus we had let her stay up and eat cake and cookies, which was nice of us, so she was probably just returning the favor.

Then the girls came home and we got a little bit noisier and then some of the girls left again and it got quieter again and we continued watching Brian Regan tell his fabulous jokes. He had just told one particularly funny joke.

Perhaps it was the empty card joke--why do they even have a section of cards that are blank inside? I'd like to be the guy who does that for a living. What do you do? Oh, I make cards that are completely blank inside. Ha, ha. Suckers!

My favorite part was when he was saying that sometimes he writes, "Sorry you're feeling a little blank inside. I know how you feel because sometimes I also feel a little blank inside..."

That's probably not what we were laughing at because only I seemed to find that funny. I don't know why. But then he went on to say that even though there is a "blank inside" genre for cards and a "birthday for twin girls ages 4 through 8" section and a "birthday humorous" section, they're missing the "condolences humorous" section.

Then he went on to say some silly limerick that he'd made up. "Sorry about your Uncle Fred...glad it wasn't you instead..."

Something like that.

And we were all laughing so hard. When we quieted down to hear his next joke we heard Rachel's laughter floating into the living room through the bedroom door.

"Ha, ha...?" she said.

It was a loaded sentence, saying a whole lot more than just, "Ha, ha!" It also said, "I'm still awake an hour and a half after you put me to bed and I've just been sitting here quietly, and patiently waiting for you to come get me. Why won't you let me join your party? I want to see what's funny, too!"

Her tone was just to die for and got us all laughing again before Brian Regan could even get to his next punch line!