I guess last you heard from me, the kids were enjoying snow days without any snow and we were roughin’ it without a furnace for two days. Damn – that was almost 3 weeks ago. Well, I’m not even going to offer up any kind of excuse (if any of you are still out there) because there are only really two things that keep me away from here: 1) being sick and 2) being too busy to see straight. This time it was #2. In fact, I’ve been so busy, I can’t remember if I’ve been sick in the last three weeks. Seems like I might have been, but it’s a blur now. Oh well – couldn’t have been that bad, huh?

So, let’s see…where’d I leave off? Oh yeah…my brother-in-law, bless him, fixed our furnace and the kids were slated to go back to school that Wednesday…which they did.

Only to get a call from PDD’s school nurse midday saying PDD had poison ivy and needed to be picked up and not returned before the rash was completely gone. So, that meant PDD essentially has had 3 weeks off school. I wonder, come Monday, how hard it will be to get her out of bed and off to school.

Second Son came home on the bus that day, went straight to bed, and woke up puking his guts up all over (and I do mean ‘all over’) the bathroom around 6pm Wednesday evening. He stayed home on Thursday, so my big plans to get anything done that last week before the kids were out of school, well…they went the way of many of my big plans, if you know what I mean.

Second Son went to school on Friday as he had semester finals, and I picked up Sweet Pea for the weekend.

The other major event that week was cutting PDD’s hair. At first, she was resisting, but once cut, she warmed up to the idea of how it made her look so much older than 9. Here she is with her diva-ness in full force:

Then, we went over the river and through the woods to my parents’ place to have Christmas with them on Sunday. Here is Oldest Son opening his present from my parents:

Second Son’s present from his cousin was the hit of the day. FLARP. Google it.

PDD L-O-V-E-S her purple robe from BabySis. She’s been wearing it almost non-stop ever since. I fear she may try to go to school in it.

And last, but not least, Miss Sweet Pea in her play gym from Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa:

I took Oldest Son and Sweet Pea back to the baby-mama’s apartment on Christmas Eve afternoon, and spent the evening waiting on Completely Clueless to tell me what time he’d be picking up PDD Christmas morning. Oy. I convinced PDD to go to bed before 10 so Santa wouldn’t have to wait around on the roof for her to be asleep, and she was out like a light.

I woke up at 5:30 Christmas morning, realized I had crashed the night before without putting the presents under the tree, so I did that while the coffee was brewing. After checking my email and surfing a little, I realized it was rather retarded to be up that early on Christmas morning, so I went back to bed. Second Son woke me up at 8:30 and the kids opened their presents.

Around 11 PDD left with her dad and Second Son and I went to see “Seven Pounds”. After that, we went out to Oldest Son’s dad’s mother’s place (yeah…I know…weird, right? But it works for us…) and the ex taught me how to shoot:

Then the ex and his wife and daughter came back to our house with Second Son and I (I picked up PDD from BabySis who took her when Completely Clueless wanted to drop her off before I was back home) and we spent the evening jawing. Rather non-traditional way to spend Christmas Day, maybe, but it was a good day, nonetheless.

The week since has been busy, busy, busy with new clients. I barely made it to midnight last night to see the New Year in, and apart from cooking a turkey dinner today, haven’t been too productive at all.

Whew! Now you’re all caught up.