I'm not going to bore you with tales of my recent illness; the details are not pretty or pleasant. We all have had bad stomach bugs, we all have been so sick that death was actually briefly considered as a reasonable alternative, and we all have spent days in bed trying to recover, so let’s just move on! Shall we?

We had a nice relaxing day at home yesterday. I was feeling well enough to move to the couch in the living room and set up camp there for most of the day. The girls ate too much candy and ran circles through the house until we kicked them outside to play in the sunshine for a while. Thankfully it was another beautiful day and we finally saw the grass in our yard for the first time this year.

For most of the afternoon, Princess poured over her collection of rock she just finished polishing and began cataloging them into groups, bagging and labeling them, and creating a detailed list of how many of each type she had. She was thrilled to take her collection into school today to share with her class, (her idea) and was disappointed when not very many of her classmates were as thrilled with her geological explorations as she was.

Cookie spent most of her afternoon rough-housing with her uncle and reading books with Grandma. I dragged myself into the kitchen for long enough to make a couple of loves of yummy lemon bread and was very thankful when Z-Man shooed my back to the couch while he took over lunch and dinner preparations.

Yesterday was also my sister’s birthday and I did talk to her briefly on the phone, but didn’t get to see her. She didn’t want to risk anyone in her family catching my illness and also just wanted to spend a quiet holiday at home with her kids. I’m hopeful that I can talk her hubby into watching her kiddos for an evening sometime this week so we can have a girl’s night out. It may have to wait a while though because Z-Man is off to Vegas tomorrow for a conference and will be gone for 8 days. My brother-in-law is just fine with their four kids for short periods of time but I think his head would explode if I asked him to watch mine too!

(My sister and her kids - 2005)
I hope everyone had a lovely holiday weekend.