Celebrity deaths may seem to run in threes, but in the Dennis family, BIRTHS come in threes.

It is official: all my Dennis sisters-in-law are pregnant! It is a cousin explosion for Brooklyn and August.

Melissa and Chad just announced they are expecting a little one in early February!! Praise the Lord!

As it stands now, Lauren is due first of October, Anna near Thanksgiving and Melissa in February!

I'll keep you posted on the progress!

This past Friday, at a 15 year celebration for Soho Modern, a fantastic modern furniture store in town, Kyle and I got the most adorable chairs for August and Brooklyn: two white kid-sized Verner Panton S chairs. Granted, these aren't the originals - no way would we have paid anywhere NEAR the "original" price for one of these chairs. I just looked online and they sell for around $500 per chair. That's insane. We paid next to nothing!

And the kids are wild about them. August plays on them like they're his own little jungle gym toys while Brooklyn monitors closely to see that he doesn't tip over and hurt himself. Plus, they are just gorgeous!

This morning, Kyle caught some great footage of August looking cute in his summer shirt and Brooklyn looking adorably eclectic.

As tends to do, one home improvement leads to another. Our couch arrived last week and it is, in my opinion, a thing of beauty. Sleek, angular, smooth, modern. Sigh. And at the moment, untouchable. I am terrified of dirt marring its beautiful surface. Booties must be brushed off, no shoes, no food, you know the drill. Right now, it's just time to admire. And occasionally, sit and enjoy its beauty.

So here is the before - a very comfy couch that we just felt no longer meshed with our design style. We have been looking for its replacement for almost a year.




And now, as the new couch settles in, the next phase of home improvement begins. The walls are gonna get painted a cool grey. Overall, the downstairs of our house is fine, but too warm. We're more "cool".





We're hoping to get a new rug and lighting. Maybe a Sputnik chandelier...


So, the rest of the room patiently awaits its update...as our pocketbooks await the money for the updates. :) Stay tuned.

I realize the contents of this blog are all over the place, but then so are my thoughts, ideas and actions. These are what make the events of our days "tales".

I have this wall that I have been intending to turn into a magnetized wall and use as a base for kid-art. Or whatever other kinds of things might need to be displayed. However, it has taken us FOREVER to get around to making this a reality. See previous blog entry regarding priorities.


I have a very wonderful husband who took action when I happened to tap the wall in passing and remark that I still wanted to paint it hot pink. He said, we're doing it this weekend.


So we painted it with several coats of magnetic paint (which is literally metal shavings and the tiny can weighs a TON). Then sanded it down to soften the edges without removing all the magnetic qualities. Then painted it hot pink. And call me crazy, but I love it.


I love how it looks against my brown walls and white cabinets. I love that I can look past it through my pantry foyer and see the turquoise in my breakfast room. The colors make me happy.

I can almost not even craft this post. It still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Last week, I was sitting in my living room with my friend Julia as our kids played around us. She suddenly let out a yelp and pointed to one of the french doors leading out to our deck. I turned around to see what caught her attention and was thoroughly horrified to see TONS of honeybees buzzing around the window. One second they weren't there, the next - they were.

I was puzzled, but not overly alarmed. After all, they were outside.

Several hours later, after I put the kids down for their naps and do some reading on my bed with August asleep on me, Kyle comes home. He heads straight upstairs to see us and we stay up on our second floor for a little bit as he changes clothes.

I head downstairs to our living room to find something and notice a bee buzzing against one of my french doors on the front of our house. The bee was on the inside of the house.

This was also not terribly alarming. Periodically, wasps or other flying objects will end up in our house and beat themselves against our windows. They're pretty easy to get rid of.

I grab a magazine and prepare to take care of this lone bee. I enter the room, barefooted, I might add. I suddenly notice a sound that I hadn't tuned into before. The sound of lots and lots and lots of bees.

In. My. House.

In. My. LIVING. ROOM!

And I have no shoes on.

I turn slowly to my right and see swarming around the two sets of French doors leading out to our deck - HUNDREDS OF HONEYBEES! I immediately scan the other windows - more bees everywhere I look!!!!! I hear a scream piercing the air before I realize it's my mouth making the scream. I amp it up a few notches, screeching for Kyle's IMMEDIATE assistance!

I see bees all over the floor and all I can think about is that I feel like this is straight out of a horror movie. Kyle comes racing down the stairs, and I can't imagine what he expected to find. Usually, the only thing that makes me scream is a roach skittering across my path. But this was worse!!!

We sealed off the room and I immediately called Terminix. Long story short, apparently a swarm of honeybees was making our house their new hive. With our vacuum cleaner, Kyle was able to suck up the ones that had made it inside and died. The others I think he sucked up too. We spent the night at my mom's.


The next day, Terminix came out and sprayed. We waited to see if this would work. Otherwise, it was up to some guy in a bee suit to come lure out the queen and relocate the hive. The thought of that seriously made my heart race and my blood boil. In fact, for about 2 days, I was pumped with adrenaline - just terrified that at any second, the bees would return en masse!

Alas, they did not. They either decided we weren't friendly people and moved on, or we got them all. I have no idea. What I do know is that I hope to never repeat that horrifying experience.

I know honeybees are endangered and I feel for them. I really do. But let me just put the word out - Bees - do not come around here. You will be even more endangered than you already are. And I like honey, so go away and make it somewhere other than the walls of my house!

Anytime I'm in the library working on the computer, he makes his way to the bookshelf directly to my left which is loaded down with Doubleday Children books. He loves them.


He grins at me with mischief in his eyes, then slowly begins to grab the spine of the books with his chubby little fingers, easing them out of their slots.


Next thing I know, the books are being flung to the floor as he squeals with delight. Fortunately, these books appear to be sturdy enough to survive this continual onslaught.


At least, so far. And it certainly does make him happy - which is always a good thing if I'm on the computer!

But a few weeks ago my friend Sarah came into town with her two kids and we met at the zoo. As silly as this sounds, I have yet to take my child to our local zoo. She has been to the Louisville Zoo, but not our local zoo. Not that, historically-speaking, she has been missing that much. My personal experience with our zoo is lots of empty cages - traipsing across the pavement in the dead heat of summer begging some animal to emerge from their cave and entertain us. Usually, just the otters would oblige us.

I have news. Not about me. About my brother, Michael. The brother of mine about whom we have all wondered what zany thing God will select him to do - given his vast array of talents. And they are many and varied. He speaks Spanish fluently and dabbles in Russian, Portuguese, Italian, whatever other languages he happens to hear and that sound fun to him. He mimics voices from every imaginable genre - he is our very own Robin Williams at times.

Apart from being just insanely (genius level) smart, he is also a very godly young man with a keen mind and a passion to serve God. He loves people, loves to talk to people, loves to make people laugh, loves to encourage them and inspire them. Loves to talk about how he wonders what God will do with his life.


He is a phenomenal uncle to Brooklyn and August. He makes Brooklyn and August squeal like crazy in delight. He's also a wonderful friend and darn good brother. He has a good sense of humor about himself. And about everything in life, really. He's seriously considered a career in acting and has done several commercials and had parts in plays. He is a very talented actor. Almost moved to LA, but decided God didn't want him to. And lately, he's happened to work for a company selling translation services.

Until, kind of on a whim, he decided to apply to the FBI. Yeah, just like that. He really wants to use his language skills in some way and I guess he thought there might be a possibility for that within the FBI. So he begins the process. This is mentioned by him one day as casually as I would say, "I just worked out."


Next thing I know, I'm hearing bits about upcoming tests...follow up tests...interviews...phone interviews...conversational Spanish interviews...stretched out over a period of several months. And this crazy brother of mine who does this the whole time saying, Yeah, but probably nothing will come of it. I just don't know yet what God wants me to do. I could do this....or that....who knows. I'm just gonna see where God leads me. (Which is incredibly wise on Michael's part).

Pretty soon, I hear he's getting ready for a physical test - running, push-ups, etc. Oddly enough, as incredibly fit as he is, he doesn't do the required number of push-ups in time. So he works on those, goes back and passes with flying colors. And, then, in passing one day - by someone other than my family - I hear that he's been accepted by the FBI, offered a job, accepted said job and is leaving in a few weeks for 5 months of training at Quantico!



WHAT IN THE WORLD?!! I know of no other person on this earth who could just waltz into the FBI as it seems he's been able to do. Don't get me wrong - Michael will be an enormous asset to any company he works for - it's just crazy to think my brother will be working for the FBI. But I could not be prouder of him. Seriously.