Vacuums and catching up

First some pictures from the last couple of weeks. The week Joanna was sick, we ate lunch out a few times. Here we are at Panda Express. Joanna thought chopsticks were very cool. She actually managed to spear a piece of chicken on one of them, and she thought that was fabulous!Right before this we had gone to Target. The new Target has these giant red cement balls out front. Joanna points to them and says, "bah!" Here's what we found at the restaurant:
More bah!

Last Wednesday Joanna was well so we were able to head up to the church. I got some work done while Joanna played in the nursery. After I picked her up, I guess I had something to finish up in the workroom. One of her favorite things to do is open this cabinet and talk on the old fax phone. She's also using a mouse. What a brilliant secretary!

Her shirt says, "I still live with my parents."
Coming home -- she's carrying her own little bag! What a big girl!
Yesterday Joanna got to have her first chicken leg. Normally I cut the meat off the bone, but Gran brought home a rotissere chicken yesterday and handed Joanna a leg. Of course she was right there monitoring her. Joanna LOVED it. She's not much of a meat eater normally, but she really loved tearing the meat off the bone. I took video too. I'll post it later when I'm not so tired/lazy.

I had my mom take a new little family picture of us yesterday. Matt and I were on our way out to a mall/movie date (yea!). I think we got a couple of cute shots.

Another preggo shot. I'm 18 weeks. I love it when Joanna will stand in the pics with me!
I can really tell I've put on some weight in this picture -- and not all of it's near the belly! Compare to my first preggo shot, at 4 weeks: Whoa!

At our mall date last night, Matt and I hit Sears. Matt was mainly wanting to look at man things like edgers and grill stuff. I let him look for, oh 5 minutes or so :) and then we headed over to vacuums! I may have mentioned that we seriously need a new vacuum cleaner. We're not ready to buy one yet, but we're in the hunting stage. We're pretty sure that we're going to get a Dyson. They're pricey, but they've got a lot of great features. One is that they're good for "sweeping" hard floors, too. That's good for us since most of our house is laminate or tile. I really only vacuum two bedrooms (my mom's on her own) plus a couple of rugs. I'm perfectly happy using a broom on the floor, but if I'm vacuuming the rugs, I like to do the floors at the same time. Matt's mom and dad have a Dyson that they really like, and they let us borrow it today. Our floors needed a seriously good sweep. Here it is after all it's hard work. Before you look at the picture below it, please know that it is very very gross. I took a picture of the canister after I finished.
Eww. Aren't you glad you didn't come over yesterday? You would have been walking on that. Yuck. Poor Joanna. She sure deserves a better housekeeper! I'm sure it's making her immune system stronger, though.

I'm very impressed with how she did with the vacuum today. Unfortunately, she was standing right next to the vacuum when I plugged it in and it turned on. It took her a little while to warm up to it after that.