An incredibly busy time in my life right now... let's see if I can catch up.

We went on our week of vacation, had a fabulous time with my family, came home to dogs who had been well cared for and were happy to have us home. This is a feat in itself. Two years ago, we took our summer vacation and came home to find that Lincoln had an abscess on his leg and the kennel hadn't noticed. Surgery and recovery took several hundred dollars and a few weeks.
This year was much better!

My Sister in law and her husband came to visit us from Brooklyn, NY. They stayed for an extended weekend and left on Monday. We had as good a visit as we can with them. The kids love Aunt Pam and Uncle Frank to death and always are sad to see them go. Andy and I try our best to be cordial and enjoy them, but it is hard. Andy's sister has many "issues" that she has held onto from their childhood and that has made for a rocky relationship. Combine that with the fact that she and I see eye to eye on.. oh... NOTHING, in particular raising children, and it makes it a rough go. We did get to see a minor league baseball game, and go to the Henry Ford Museum while they were here. They played several types of Monopoly with the boys (more on that later) and we had a couple of nice dinners out. We will probably not see them until next year.

My kids are Monopoly NUTs. We have regular Monopoly, Star Wars Monopoly, Lord of the Rings Monopoly, American Monopoly and Monopoly Jr. They are looking at getting Make Your Own Monopoly, Dogopoly and Michigan Monopoly. Josh has always loved Monopoly and has passed his passion for the game down to his brother. I enjoy playing with them and love the experience of being gathered around the table playing board games with my kids, so I encourage their collection's growth. They added "Run Off" to their board game collection this weekend, thanks to Aunt Pam. This is a trivia game based on a presidential election. You answer questions in History, Civics, Legislation and other categories to win yourself electoral votes. I haven't played yet, but my boys say it is lots of fun.

Grandma comes home on Sunday. I have been crossing things off of my "stuff to get done before Grandma comes home" list everyday, but I am not sure I will manage to complete the list. It is somehow not that important to me to have it completed this time. Not sure if I am relaxing my standards as I age, or if I have finally realized that it is okay if my house is not perfect ALL the time. Either way, I will probably finish most of it before she returns.

I have been trying to work on my health lately. I had been the same weight for years, since Josh was born, and then suddenly this winter put on some pounds. Very discouraging for me, so I decided to get it under control and lose the weight. I have been doing a slightly modified version of Atkins for 6 weeks now. I have lost 20 pounds and two pants sizes, which is good. Still working on toning up the muscles that are underneath and would like to lose another 20lbs, but I would be happy at the size I am now, if I could just get rid of the flabby feeling. I am doing Pilates 3x a week, trying to walk nightly (but not doing very well), and doing Tae Bo 2x a week. I don't really like Tae Bo, but I got the tapes cheap at the Salvation Army story, so I figured I might as well do them. I would rather quit on a cheap exercise program than one I spent a fortune on. I think sticking to my current eating plan will be tougher when Grandma gets here, so I am really going to focus this week on doing it well.

Think that is it for my life update. More when I get time.