March 27- Lunch date

Today Ella and Sterling (and Mommy too!) joined Daddy and his co-workers, SSG Anderson and SPC Montalvo, for lunch at a local restaurant. Daddy particularly liked this restraint because in addition to their floor seating they offered western table and chairs. We had a spicy red pepper dak (chicken) with cabbage, potatoes, and rice sticks cooked all together in a large wok style pan at the table. It was very good, but since I don't care for spicy foods, I consumed almost an entire carafe of water! Ella tried some on the potato (rinsed with lots of water to get the pepper off), but Sterling thought he'd just stick to his Gerber green beans. He already has acid reflux bad enough, he certainly didn't need to make it worse with any spicy food!
Sterling and Ella received a special care package from home today with their favorite treat in it. Two boxes of Nilla Wafers- one for each baby! They were most excited to dig in.
She is just shy of having enough hair to make piggy tails. Tonight I tried giving Ellabell a new hairstyle. I don't have any of those tiniest hair ties, so we had to use bitty bows, which didn't help matters any. Her piggy tails are more like little sprouts of stay hairs at this point, but I think in a couple more months we'll have full blown piggy tails. I cannot wait! You all thought I went crazy with the bitty bows, just wait 'till I find somewhere to get those little pony tail holders with flowers and ribbons and such on them. This poor little girl is in for it!
I keep a basket in my closet (which adjoins the bathroom where the kids bathe) full of rubber duckies that haven't made it to the bath tub yet. For those who don't know, rubber duckies have a limited life span. They tend to get full of moldy water after a few uses, no matter how hard you try to squeeze the water out after each bath! So, we try to keep a nice stash of replacements. Lately the kids favorite game has been to crawl/cruise/walk to the closet and play with the basket full of waiting rubber duckies. They have an entire spacious living room full of hundreds of toys that flash, sing, roll, play music...you name it. But alas, the basket with the rubber duckies hidden in the closet holds the most allure for them. I had noticed that every time they left the closet, all the duckies were put neatly back in the basket. I was starting to get a little nervous thinking perhaps they weren't playing with the duckies at all, but rather getting into some other source of trouble. So, I decided I needed to spy on them. I found poor Ellabella working very hard to put all the duckies back in the basket whence they came from as Sterling worked to pull them all back out. Sterling creates a mess, and she spends her time trying to clean up. She's a very tidy little girl. Watch Ella cleaning up at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owt5Tnk3jwU