Sam loves this picture of himself, out to lunch recently. Enjoy!

Oh man oh man! What a wild week. Reminds me of the good ole’ days when Dave deployed. On the one hand I’m way more capable and organized – grilled bourbon chicken for dinner last night, for instance. On the other hand, I haven’t posted in a week I think because I really want to be away from the computer watching crime shows (which I’m not normally “allowed” to watch because Dave wants to read and listen to jazz music at night). I also freaked out last night when I thought I felt something crawling across me as I tried to fall asleep – pulled all blankets off, put on glasses and light looking for a mouse or roach. Found a Post-It note!!!! It had slipped under my shirt somehow and then slipped across my stomach as I rolled over. FREAK OUT man! Back to sleep… And today after our hike with Gramma up a random ridge (which was relatively not so fun, the highlight was rolling an orange down a Board of Water Supply access road to see if it could make the banked turns without rolling off the road) – anyway – we get home after lunch and I am changing Ben’s diaper. I found a TRAIN (a coal car from his Thomas set) in his pants!!!! Sam heard me laughing so loud he ran from the garage (where he was playing his drums) to come check it out. Tonight we made some good fun out of rolling 7 green waste bins out for pickup, then “surfing” on top of them, then jumping onto the grass from on top of the tall bins. Everyone is sick – me not too bad, thankfully. God knew I wouldn’t function too well if totally sick this week. My immune system is ROCKIN’ man. The boys are both sick – going on 7 days now (so this is a two-week cold vs the 5-7 days I was hoping for!). Ben managed to bang up his upper lip on a wipe-out so that has been a real treat – wiping his nose with a big scrape exactly where all the snots are dripping. The drip is constant. And now they are coughing, too. But they are real troopers – they sleep through the night, and Sam still hikes and bikes like a champ. They don’t just loll around, when it would be cool if they did for a change! Dave is really sick unfortunately, and he never gets sick. Truly. The last time he was sick (aside from the pertussis scourge mom gave us) was 2 years ago when he had a GI bug which laid him up for two days (I still question the seriousness of a GI bug that puts you to bed?). So he’s sick and working 18 hour days this week for an inspection. I pray for him all day, and especially at night as he drives home. Looking forward to Friday…but on the other hand the kids and I are having fun, spending long times in the bath, running wild around the house, planning a food fight for Friday…