During my quiet time today I thought about my friend and teacher Boley who unfortunately passed away last week (his funeral was today). Boley was such a gentle, sweet individual with a great deal of patience. Often when someone I know or had any continuous contact with dies, I think about how they impacted my life and how I hopefully impacted their life. Boley worked in the sign language lab at UALR and taught me a lot of my basic skills. He was always there to help me and never made me feel stupid because I didn't know a sign. Boley taught me to be patient with people who are trying to learn something new. I later used what I learned from him to teach sign language to elementary school children (that takes a ton of patience). I know that Boley knew that I loved him unconditionally and thought he was a fantastic teacher. I hope that I also had an influence on his life eternally (I will know if I did, someday).

While Mili and I took a walk early this morning, we enjoyed all of God's creation. What a wonderful breeze while the birds sang their tunes. Mili learned how to sign "tree" and tried "bird" but signed it down by her leg (like dog) instead of up by her face. A guy walked out of his apartment with a dog and Mili was signing dog over and over as she watched him, laughing the whole time. The dog was like the one on the Taco Bell commercial for so long (cute....huh). He stopped and let Mili look at the dog. She enjoyed that. She also likes to watch the squirrels.

We hope that the weather will be more like summer soon. We bought Mili a floatie with a canopy for the pool. The tricky part is finding mommy a bathing suit that will stay on when I come up out of the water (it is like trying to make a rubber band fit tightly on a toothpick....it doesn't matter how many times you wrap it around and around it never seems to get tight enough). I have decided they need to make suits that you can put on then blow-up as much as you need to (like those arm floaties) in order to have it close enough to the skin to stay up. Anyway.....enough about my suit.....I will not be ashamed to jump in with my shorts and t-shirt on if I have to so Mili can get in and splash. It will definitely take a week or so of warm weather before I will be able to get in anyway (don't like the water to be so cold that my lips turn blue...my niece, Abby and her friend, Chris don't mind blue, shivering lips....but I do).

Mili has found the volume button on the TV (it has been fun with the roller coaster volume control today.....she turns it up then doesn't know how to get it back down.....I turn it down and then Mili turns it down more and doesn't know how to get it back up.....and so on). I have had my exercise today (up and down...up and down).

Well, I need to go and feed my garbage disposal (she gets restless if I wait too long to feed her). If you can't tell by the pictures in the past entries, she is 32 inches and weighs 23 pounds. She could definitely miss a few meals and still be a-okay (before all of you go calling SCAN on me....you need to come pick her up). I tell everyone to watch out for my "strong" arm. My left arm is the one I always hold Mili with because I am right handed. So literally my left arm is quite a bit different in size compared to my right.

Got to go for now.