I'm here! :-)

Since miss AmyK, as well as my parents, have noted my absence, I thought it best to put in an appearance here before a search party was sent out. LOL We are all just fine, if only a little (ok a lot) extra tired due to the double whammy of having had to adjust to the Daylight Saving Time change immediately upon returning to our normal routine at the close of Spring Break, actually having slept in during most of those days. Five-thirty came waaay too early this morning. Especially considering that it was still dark at 7am when we had to go out to the bus, and the streetlight on that corner is out, so we were standing in nearly complete darkness. I reported it, but I noticed tonight that it's still broken. We'll have to take a flashlight out tomorrow.

Yep, my kids had Spring Break (I feel compelled to capitalize this phrase, even though I don't think it's technically a rule) last week. Their school district always seems to have it earlier than pretty much anywhere else. I think there should be a law against having Spring Break while it is still technically winter. We did actually have very nice weather, you might even say gorgeous, for most of the days, but we saw very little of it. Mark wasn’t able to take any time off, so we stayed home. Since it was really "their" holiday, I let the kids decide what we would do as much as possible. I figured they'd have me constantly over at the park or the library or things like that. Nope. Not once. Instead, it was more or less a game marathon. We spent hours upon hours playing games almost every day… chess, memory, Monopoly, Life, Mad Magazine (yes, that's a board game leftover from my childhood), Clue, Battleship, Puppy Racers, 3D tic-tac-toe, Cootie, Don't Break The Ice, Crocodile Dentist, etc., etc, etc. Some more than once. Those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head.

Towards the end of the week, when I was growing weary of games, and they were begging me to pull out more old games (new to them) from the closet, I instead dug out my Finger Poppers. Does anyone remember these? They are small nerf-like cylinders. You squeeze them, and they shoot out of your fingers with a popping noise, not always in the direction you intend. I still have the full dozen from my set and, other than the color having faded quite a bit, they've held up remarkably well, especially considering they're probably around 25-30 years old. We had a blast playing with those. The kids were shrieking and giggling uncontrollably, and there is something deeply satisfying about being able to fire off these things at each other, knowing, of course, that they don't hurt the least little bit and no one is in any danger at all of putting an eye out. LOL

We did take one day during the week to run some errands. Went to the mall and got Matthew some desperately needed new shoes, and then headed over to Wal-Mart and let the kids each pick out a new toy before grabbing a few groceries. This was p.u.r.e. t.o.r.t.u.r.e. We went through this with Kaylee after Christmas when we took them to spend some of their gift money. I don't know why I thought Kaylee would have somehow developed decision-making abilities in the last two months, but she clearly hasn't. It took her an hour and a half to settle on a toy, after a couple of times of claiming she had decided, and then going into a total panic, saying she had changed her mind. I was really trying to be patient. Since it was supposed to be a fun outing, I didn't want to spoil it. I am proud to say that I managed to hold it together and not flip out, but I was really really really darn close! She finally settled on a soft Dora doll that plays a very annoying song about friendship or some such thing and, thankfully, seems to have no buyer's remorse. Matthew picked out some small Naruto figures and a Ben 10 figure called "Upchuck". Lovely. LOL

I also did some designing last week. Had the kids help me out with my RAKScraps mega kit contribution. It came out really cute, but I can't show you yet. I also did a layout and a little write-up that I can't show you yet. And I worked on another new little element pack that I can't show you yet. Ok, technically I guess I could, but I'm hoping to actually finish it tomorrow-ish, so I'd rather just wait until it's done. Besides, I'm too tired to mess with uploading images, so you just get to wade through my miles of rambling text. :-b

If I did feel up to dealing with images, I'd also post a few from the little photo shoot the kids insisted on having one morning last week, in which I was required to take pictures of them sitting on the kitchen table (their favorite picture taking spot), drawing on their Magnadoodles. My demanding little models kept insisting I take more pictures. I ended up with 158 pictures before I cut them off and insisted we have lunch. LOL

We also had a guest magician this weekend. I think this was the one that was supposed to come in January, but had to reschedule due to the ice storm. Super-super nice guy. Was really great with the kids too, which apparently is my measure of a good magician these days. LOL He did do one trick for me. It was very good; I was suitably impressed. He's also a photographer, among other things, and we started to chat about that, but he got dragged off to talk magic, so I didn't get to thoroughly wow him with my Photoshop prowess. :-b Anyway, very enjoyable visit.

What else? I cut the kids' hair on Friday, and went and got mine cut this morning. Nothing drastic. Looks again about like it looked when I posted around this time last year, after having grown out and gotten entirely too shaggy over the past few months.

Alrighty, that was a rambly enough post to have bored you all to sleep, so I'm going to drag my tired, achy self off that way too now! ;-)