Last week went by super fast...which is good, I guess. I think we've started to catch up a bit on sleep, too. Friday was our last day of dog sitting Molly...and then we went for another hike in the mountains. Adam's become quite addicted to this activity. It started out as something Sandra and I were gonna do, but we might have to find a different girls only activity :-p.

Saturday, we went to Rosamond's Armed Forces Appreciation Day and SeptemberFest. We sat outside for a couple hours watching Colton's soccer team march in the parade (and, for some reason, every single beauty queen contestant in the entire Southern California area....). We didn't hang out too long there since it was 108 degrees, but we did get some snow cones and watch Colton climb the climbing wall before heading to Foster's Freeze for lunch. After lunch, Adam and I headed to Lancaster/Palmdale on a hunt for a dress for me to wear to Will's wedding. I'm pretty happy with what we ended up with, though it took a lot of different stores to find something that fit correctly. When we got home, we headed back to the park for some baseball (or as much as you can call it baseball with 5 people, two of which are under 5 years old)...followed by s'mores at Heidi's.

Sunday, we made it back to The Well for church. It was good to be back after missing last week. The message was good and it was nice to see people again. I'm so glad we fond this church. After church, we came back to clean up the mess that had accumulated over the week and then headed to the mountains again.

Yesterday was a fairly good day for both of us. Adam headed to work and I made some lego man cakes from the cake mold Heidi brought us back from Legoland. Their's turned out well, but I got excited to make another and forgot to spray the mold, so our's was a little mutilated. It still tasted good, though.

We had a delicious dinner of roast beef from the crock pot and then dropped off the cake at Heidi's before heading back to Palmdale for a little errand running. After returning the mattress pad that melted in the dryer even though it said tumble dry low and picking up some things from Target, we called it a night.

So far, I feel like I've been fairly relaxed, and yet productive, today. I've worked on laundry, written some letters to some of my old students from Next Generation, cleaned up a bit, sat out in the sun for a while this morning, updated this, and gone to the mailbox a few times. That might not sound like much, but it's only noon and I also got a couple hours of sleep in there after Adam left for work :-p. (That probably sounds lazy, but trust me...I'm a lot more pleasant that way :)).

Tonight, I'm sure Adam will suggest more hiking, and then possibly catching up on Project Runway.

It's been a little cooler here the past couple days. Yesterday, it barely was in the nineties, and today it hasn't reached 90 yet. It probably will in the next couple hours, though. This sounds warm, still, but considering we've rarely had a day that was under 100, things are cooling off.

I hope things are going well in the tundra of the midwest (and beyond). Drop us a line, and take care!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRANDPA.

Wow...it's been more than a week. I think that's a new record for me...sorry about that. As you can see from lack of blogging, things have been a bit crazy here. We'll rewind to last Wednesday and go from there.

Adam found out on Wednesday that our German guests, who we initially thought were coming on Friday night, were actually coming Thursday afternoon. (Thankfully, we later found out that, due to time differences amongst the two countries, they were just confused and actually were still coming Friday). This meant that I spent a lot of the day Wednesday frantically trying to get the house ready for guests. In addition to the craziness, Adam and I had plans to go see Sandra's horses that evening, and being that it's getting dark earlier these days, that left us little time to do much once Adam was home for work. So, we ended up going to the see horses and doing an emergency shopping trip for some food and wine for our guests. Sandra has been gone this week, but I'm looking forward to spending more time with her and Magic, too.

Funny story about the emergency shopping trip...We decided to check out the Hispanic grocery story we had heard so much about. They sell pretty inexpensive fresh meat, so we decided to pick up some chicken for dinner for the guests. Being that it is freshly butchered, we were unaware that a chicken breast is actually the ENTIRE breast and not just half as we were used to. Therefore, Adam asked for 5 breasts...and we ended up with close to 10 pounds of chicken. It was a little excessive, but we won't be needing chicken for a while.

Thursday, we got word that the Germans were actually NOT coming until Thursday. Our only means of communication with them was email, so it made for a lot of waiting, and having to only go with the information we had...so it was somewhat of a relief to know we had some extra time to get ready for company. It also gave me time (Adam was at work, so he got to go on the clock) to go see the Shuttle "up close." Heidi and the boys and I met up with Adam and we stood in line for about an hour and a half to take a bus to the viewing area. While it wasn't THAT close, it was still neat to see it at all! Afterwards, I went home and cleaned, made pretzels, and waited for Adam. That evening, we joined Heidi and the boys for dinner at their place.

On Friday, Adam took the day off work so he'd be home when the guests arrived. It also gave him the time to get his physical so he can have approval to exercise at work. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we had also gotten word that the shuttle was taking off on it's 747 to head back to Florida early Friday morning. Thus, we woke up at 5 and went to base to try and catch the event. However, after waiting until almost 7 and not seeing anything, we called my mom and had her look up phone numbers for us...only to find out that bad weather in the south and high temps here postponed the takeoff until at least Saturday....so I was very tired and pretty grumpy. Thus, I went back to bed until Adam left for the doctor, worked hard cleaning while he was gone, and tried to forget how early I had gotten up :-p. We cleaned until we couldn't take it anymore and then sat down to watch a show...and the guests arrived shortly after starting. That night, we just sat and caught up a bit, looked at pictures, and had dinner with the Kesslers. They turned in somewhat early and we headed to bed soon after.

Saturday, we did some sight seeing. We drove to Long Beach to see the Queen Mary. The tours were very expensive, so we just looked from the outside and watched the movie about the Russian submarine that is parked there, as well. Not to mention the fact that I got a little creeped out by the Pirate convention happening there. I'm not joking...the place was swimming with pirates. I then realized it was National Talk Like A Pirate Day and was a little less frightened. After we exhausted things to look at, there, we headed to the Griffith Observatory that overlooks all of LA. We had a great view of the Hollywood sign, saw a Planetarium show, ate lunch on the veranda, and enjoyed the sights. Once we were finished there, we moved on to Hollywood Boulevard, which none of us really enjoyed all that much. We decided that, since we had done it once, we're pretty set and don't need to again. It was kind of tacky, full of tourist traps and junky stores, people trying to make money by charging for pictures with them dressed in costumes, and disoriented sight seers. I thought it was neat to see the Kodak Theater, but even that is surrounded by a shopping complex, now. We did take some pictures at Gruman's Chinese Theater, but weren't that impressed with the Walk of Fame, either. It will definitely take some convincing to go back there. Saturday evening, we went to see Julianne Hough in concert. It was a good show, and despite my grumblings, I actually enjoyed having the hour and a half or so to myself where I saved a spot for us so the others could go get more clothes, chairs, and food. When we got home, I tried to update the maps on the GPS, and only ended up succeeding in deleting everything from it and having to start over...it was finally resolved by Monday morning.

Sunday, we again woke up long before dawn to head out to see the shuttle depart. It WAS actually happening, this time, so we made a point of getting there. I went on base, and Adam and the guests stood just outside the gate. We got some good videos, and it was very peaceful watching the sun rise over the mountains....especially sans the frustration of the purpose of you being there being invalid. We came home, got some breakfast and headed west, again...this time to Santa Monica. We checked out the pier and spent most of the afternoon at the beach. Adam and I could probably spend all day just sitting there and people watching...and might someday. Adam's favorite part, by far, was playing in the waves. It started out as fun for me, too...but I don't like the out of control of your body sensation you get when you mix huge waves with undertow and can't find the ground for a few seconds. We headed back to Rosamond around 4, showered, and then brought the Kesslers to a Mexican food restaurant in town. It wasn't typical for a Mexican restaurant, but we didn't want to scare them too much with their first experience at one. It took a lot just to explain the menu. When we were all full, some more than others, we headed home and relaxed for the night.

Monday morning, the Kesslers took off pretty early to catch a flight at LAX to Millstadt to visit the other sector of Kuesters. Adam spent the day at work trying not to fall asleep...and I spent the day trying to get my computer to agree with me and cleaning up a bit from the weekend. (By the way, even though it says to tumble dry our mattress pad on low...which I did...it melted...grr.) We also began watching Molly (Heidi's dog) while they're on vacation in San Diego. I walked there in the afternoon (which it was way too hot to do), and after taking Lacy on a hike in the mountains, we spent a couple hours with her that evening.

Tuesday, I drove Adam to work so I could have the car to spend time with Molly, instead of walking in 100+ degree heat. I got lost after stopping at Starbucks and trying to get home on the one day I didn't bring the GPS. I finally made it to Heidi's around 8 and spent a couple hours there. I, again, spent most of the day fighting with my computer and external harddrive, and was thoroughly emotional and frustrated by the time Adam got home. After two days of trying to fix it, we ate, and went to Heidi's, watched Project Runway, and called it a night.

Yesterday, Adam dropped me off at Heidi's in the morning and I walked home after my Molly time. While it was a little boring, it gives me some good thinking time. I fought with the computer some more, and finally came to a resolve with it...fixing what I could and figuring out how to prevent said problems from happening again. I made the DVD of the Shuttle events, called USAA for more name changing nonsense (which I need to do again after this), ate dinner with Adam when he got home, went up to the mountains, again, and watched Hell's Kitchen at Heidi's.

Today, I went to Heidi's again, walked home with a short detour to the post office, ate some lunch and watched Glee (which I agree, Mom, is not that good...), and here I sit. I imagine we might go up to the mountains again, tonight (Adam's a little addicted). This is our last full day of dog sitting...which is exciting because it means Heidi and the boys will be back tomorrow. And with that, I have a lot that I've been putting off (including this, apparently...check that off the list), so I'm gonna get going and try and get some things done.

Sorry for the delay on updating this, and thanks for reading this far!

I realize it's been a few days, again...and such will probably be the norm from here on out. Things have gotten a bit more busy for us, which isn't really a bad thing, but keeps us away from the blog a bit more. Since I know this weekend will be no different, I'll update now to tide you over.

We've had a lot of excitement, lately (as you know), and this weekend was no different. Sunday, we went to The Well and rushed home to clean and get ready for our first overnight guest. Our good friend Andy Rice came to town on his road trip and good time was had by all. After spending a few hours getting ready, Andy showed up around 4. We took him on a tour of the area including pretty much what Rosamond has to offer. When we got home, we had a yummy dinner of stuffed shells, salad, and fruit that Adam made. It was really good. After dinner, we took Andy to the musical road (a strip of road that has rumble strips that play the William Tell Overture as you drive across them, constructed for a Honda Civic commerical). We proceeded to drive across it 4 times, tried to take pictures in the dark, and headed home to finish the production of our video of the shuttle landing.

Monday morning, Andy departed. It's always sad to see familiar faces go. It's generally kinda strange to see them out of place, anyway. It seems natural to hang out with those people, but odd to do it somewhere other than Champaign. And then, when they leave, it leaves a strange void for a while...It was GREAT to see Andy. It's been somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 years or something like that. He's going to be stationed in Hawaii, next, so it could be awhile before we see him again...but it was great to see him.

Monday evening, Adam got to ride his bike, and Sandra and I went for a hike in the mountains that surround Rosamond. We took our dogs...who miraculously got along amazingly...and went for what proved to be a challenging climb for me. It was really great to be able to let Lacy off her leash and see her explore and be free...AND more importantly PLAY WITH ANOTHER DOG! That doesn't happen too often, so it's awesome that she found a friend she likes. It was really good to get to talk to Sandra and get to know her better, too. (As a refresher, she works with Adam and is the person who's B-Day party we went to when I flew a plane). After our hike/bike, Adam and I ate dinner (It's left over week because we need to empty out the fridge. This means we will be having stuffed shells, lasagna, and spaghetti all week until it's gone). We watched Project Runway and then headed to bet to recoup from the busy weekend.

Speaking of which, I've had a really hard time getting up in the morning...and I generally go back to bed for a bit once Adam leaves for work. The past few days, I haven't been getting up as early as I should, but with another busy weekend ahead of us, I figure I should get rested up.

Anyway, yesterday, I DID wake up at a decent time...I guess...and took to making some cresent rolls thinking they'd need to be refridgerated and that I'd need most of the day to do that in order to make them for dinner. It turns out that the cresent rolls and croissants were right next to each other and the recipe I was already well into would pretty much need my attention for the next couple hours. So, after finishing that, Heidi and the boys and I headed to Palmdale for a little shopping. The highlight of the trip for Colton was Trader Joe's....and for me was purchasing my Drive and Learn German CD's. We'll see if I can be fluent by the time our visitors come...but considering Adam just told me they might be arriving a day earlier...it could be quite a feat :-p. When Adam got home, we had dinner, watched some Three Sheets, vegged out a bit online, and went to bed.

Today, I'm working on cleaning upon news that Adam's friends from Germany might be arriving TOMORROW NIGHT. This means a few things...One less day to get things done, we might not be able to eat at Heidi's, and a lot of effort for me to remain calm and stress. However, tonight, I get to go horseback riding, so that should help. Turns out that Sandra has a horse, and while she is wildly allergic to it, she still has him for sake of therapy. And being that I'm NOT allergic to horses, I might get to spend some good quality time with Magic to help her out. It's been a while since I've had any sort of "regular" contact with horses, so I'm looking forward to it.

Like I said, Adam's friends (Fritz, Elke, and Toby Kessler) are coming from Germany this weekend to visit. They will most likely come tomorrow and stay through Monday. We'll probably be venturing into Los Angeles, possibly Santa Barbara, and who know what other fun desitnations along the way. Next week Heidi and the boys AND Sandra are going to be going to San Diego (not together) so Adam and I will have to fill the weeks ourselves :-p (which probably won't be hard and somewhat relaxing.)

So that's the new from the homefront for now. Take care!

It's been a good weekend. As you may have heard, we got to see the space shuttle land last night. It was really cool to have that opportunity and to get to watch it with friends. The sonic boom it made was really loud. We have a couple pictures, but we couldn't get too close. Here's the best one: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31529619&l=be3de54afd&id=48701321

After watching the shuttle, I went with Heidi and the boys back to their house where Camille and Sarah (some new friends from church) eventually joined us and we stayed up until way too late talking, drinking coffee, and eating french silk pie. Adam went home and got to ride his bike, ate some Taco Bell, took a shower, looked for plane tickets, and went to bed.

Today, we woke up and took Lacy to the pool. It was the last day it was open, so they opened it up to dogs. Lacy is NOT a fan of water. We dragged her in a couple times and both ended up pretty scratched up by her panic. She would only go as far as the first step...and only to retrieve a tennis ball. After that, she looked at us like..."what? you're in the water. you get it." We eventually left because Lacy doesn't like other dogs much lately...especially when she thinks they're a threat to her tennis ball possession.

While at the dog thingy at the pool, we ran into some people from church who told us about Oktoberfest in Tehachapi today. We decided to check it out. At first glance, it wasn't too impressive. There really wasn't much to see, and it was pretty much just eating food, drinking beer, and listening to polka music. But because we probably would've just sat around the house all day, today...we decided to sit around Tehachapi and people watch...for five hours. The time actually flew by, and eventually we were joined up by Sandra and her parents...and Rob and his friend Mike. Lots of craziness ensued and we had a great time. Afterwards we went to Heidi's to eat the leftovers of pie and play Mario Brothers...also a great time.

So tomorrow, we have church and then getting ready for ANDY RICE! We're really excited because Andy is coming to spend the night tomorrow. We haven't seen him in over a year...and we haven't had many visitors, yet, so we're very excited to have him stay with us. So for now, we're gonna call it a night. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

well...time flies...

l
I guess it's been a while since the last time I got around to writing in here. This, in my opinion, is a good thing because we've been keeping more busy and my priorities have shifted a bit. It's been nice to have things to do and places to go to keep us busy. I assume that a lot of you are on Facebook, too...and both of us tend to do a better job keeping those more up to date than I have found myself doing this, lately. Here's what we've been up to the last several days:

Sunday morning, we went to The Well (our new church). I'm still really excited about finding it and we have made some good connections. It feels a lot more like home than anywhere else has, and I think it's going to be a good fit for us. I'm actually going to be teaching the younger kids once a month, too...so that should be fun.

After church, we spontaneously decided to drive to Ontario, CA (about 1 1/2 hours away) to go furniture shopping for our much needed and overdue table. Some people from church had gone on Saturday to pick up some things for The Well and highly recommended it since they got great deals. We went to tons of different stores and ended up back at the place we started at. We found a table, chairs and bench for a pretty good deal. The table is pretty big for just two people, but it's nice that we can finally invite people over. (It wasn't too appealing to invite people over for dinner on the floor.) Here's the table, along with our new rug:


For Labor Day, we spent the morning shopping (...which I LOVE to do...end sarcasm) because we needed the above rug so the table wouldn't scratch the floor. We also picked up some things we needed for the guest rooms since we have company coming next weekend. Then we watched Project Runway for a while and headed to Heidi's to grill out and hang out.

Tuesday, Adam went back to work and I bummed around while I waited for the table delivery guys. I was pretty wiped out from the craziness of the weekend, so it felt good to just relax a bit. Later on, after the table was there, I did some laundry, watched some TV, made some soft pretzels from scratch, and then waited for Adam to come home while frustrating myself by trying to find decent AFFORDABLE patio furniture. We ate some chicken salad and just hung out.

Wednesday was the all exciting 09/09/09. I had fun pretending that it was a big deal :-p. I even got a call from my mom at 9:09 (though that was entirely on accident.). I did more laundry, brushed the dog, vacuumed up all the hair...and I'm so tired I don't remember. Oh, I did whack my head really hard on the bed...that was fun.

This morning, I woke up feeling horrible. I was feeling really sick to my stomach and had a terrible headache. I was hoping it would go away before I left to go to the base with Heidi and the boys...but alas, it did not. I ate a couple of Colton's hashbrowns and felt a little better, and gradually felt better throughout the day. After getting my civilian dependent ID and doing some shopping with Heidi at the Commissary, I came home and laid around a bit. I finally brought myself to eat a leftover pretzel and a couple pieces of salami, made some dinner rolls, and cleaned up a bit to have the Lucas' over for dinner. The boys were a little crazy tonight, but they watched some of Muppets Take Manhattan, got to play some Wii with Adam, and ultimately left tired and happy.

I'm excited because I get to hang out with some new friends from church tomorrow with Heidi. We're going to eat French Silk Pie, talk, and watch girly movies. I'm also going to start walking/hiking with Sandra...a new friend Adam met from work. Things are getting better...and I'm starting to feel more comfortable here. (Don't worry...we still miss all of you, too :)).

So for now take care and...peace out.

It's late, so I'll elaborate tomorrow, but here's the highlights of the past couple days:

Friday Night-
-turned AWFUL wine into "sangria" by mixing it with pineapple/orange juice....it kinda worked.
-watched Shaq vs. Albert Pujols on Hulu.com...it was ridiculous.

Saturday-
-woke up early to be at church by 7 to help with some construction. I helped smooth drywall mudding and clean up after the texture guy. Adam helped tape down tarps, transport and move/life/etc a granite countertop and other various things.
-after coming home briefly, we went to our friend Sandra's birthday party where we exchanged many a humorous anecdotes, swam, sat in a hot tub, ate AWESOME food and cake, oh...and flew in an airplane over Rosamond (which, by the way, I also got to fly.)

Now it's time for bed and church in the morning. I'll post pictures of our flight tomorrow.

G'nite!

Alright...let's take a time machine back to Saturday for a moment, shall we? On Saturday, we spent most of the day marveling at how creepy the sky was. I assume that most of you hve seen the pictures I posted on Facebook, so I'll spare you from monotony. Regardless, it was weird and there were ashes falling from the sky. I kinda hope that doesn't happen again. (By the way, the fire is now 38% contained. We can still see some smoke in the sky, but haven't seen flames in a couple days and the sky has been pretty clear for the most part.) After checking the air quality reports, several news stations, the websites set up to update on the fire, etc...we decided to brave the outdoors and head to the Antelope Valley Fair and Alfalfa Festival.

Entering the Fairgrounds at about 2 p.m. Beautiful day, huh? At least the cloud cover kept the temperatures down.

This is what the sky looked like from the parking lot. It was somewhat amusing to me how, every once in a while, you'd see someone marveling at the sky...but other than that people just kind of walked around like nothing was out of the ordinary.

After we looked at a lot of art exhibits (which seemed mostly like crafts people did in classes and entered. There were even a few catagories where there were several different entries of the same project) we went to the Rural Olympics. The picture above is what the sky looked like from the grandstands. You might find the idea of Rural Olympics odd...but this is apparently (according to them) one of the most popular events at the fair. It was fairly entertaining to watch (better than the 2 hour Truck and Tractor Pull). Here's a taste of some of the events.

Yeah, that's right..the Antique Car Potato Race. This was kinda crazy. People hang out the passenger window of their car with a harpoon while someone drives and they try to stab potatoes. The video won't load for this either...perhaps another day.

The next video is...I don't remember what they called it...but the trucks had to back up straight through these barriers they put up for them. Whoever got done first won.

Another event was this race where you had to drive a tractor between these insanely close together stakes. The video is of a guy doing it, and the stakes are kind of hard to see, but it was impressive. The lady's did it, two, but without the arm on the tractor. One lady almost fell off and got crushed 'cause she turned to hard and too fast, but the girl that one was really impressive..and almost set the world record. Who knew there was a world record in this sort of thing? (but the video won't load)
There were plenty more events in the Rural Olympics, but that's where my camera died :).

Of course, being the Antelope Valley Fair and Alfalfa Festival, we HAD to get a picture of the award winning Alfalfa.

The following was an event that we happened upon accidentally. Adam didn't want to stay to watch but I convinced him to, and then he didn't want to leave until it was over. What was this tantalizing event, you ask? It was a sheep riding rodeo. Kids were put on top of sheep, they let the sheep go, and the kids (for the most part) promptly fell off. It was crazy...most of the kids fell...a few made it all the way across the "arena." Here's a bit of the excitment:


So that was Saturday. On to Sunday. On Sunday, we woke up early, bought some food for a potluck BBQ at Albertson's, went to Sunday School at Wayside (possibly for the last time there) and then headed to our second visit to The Well (thewellav.org). We had a good time, had a good lunch, and decided that we like the church and are going to continue going and get more involved with things. It's exciting to have a church we actually feel compelled to support and go to. It makes it feel a little more hopeful that things will start to feel like home sooner rather than later. After church, we headed home, went to the grocery store, and then went back to the fair for the demolition derby. Four hours later...we crashed (no pun intended) for the night ourselves after taking pictures of the fires burning.

Monday, Adam went back to work, and I more or less bummed around the house. I didn't end up waking up until 9:30 or something ridiculous like that. I honestly don't remember what all I did besides making banana bread...possibly doing some laundry, though I don't remember...and making dinner (a revisit to the stuffed sweet potatoes). Then Adam and I caught up on all the Hell's Kitchens we had missed thanks to not having our modem from AT&T (by the way...they DID send it, it turns out...just to Adam's old apartment...durrr.)

Tuesday, I did laundry, baked some bread (I have yeast that has to get used up before October's through), cleaned the kitchen, and started to make dinner. (I'm sure I did more than just these things. At least it seems like it...but I'm a little behind on this, so it's hard to remember.) Heidi called just as Adam was getting home and dinner was well under way to see if we wanted to come over for fajitas. Since I had made far more fettucini alfredo than we needed for two of us, we compromised and I brought the bread I baked and the pasta over to her house and we all ate there. After dinner, watching the Criss Angel "Mindfreak" episode that Jedd starred in (VERY fake and VERY frustrating to watch), and playing outside with the neighbor girl, we headed home.

Yesterday, I DEFINITELY did some laundry...again woke up kind of late, made some pretzels to use up yeast, put away all the laundry that was clean but not hung, watched some TV shows online, and then got ready to go back to Heidi's for fajitas. Adam bought us some plane tickets for Illinois before we left. He'd want me to tell you this story, so I will. On Tuesday, we were going to buy the tickets, but we ended up going to Heidi's instead. When we got home, they were 125 dollars more expensive than they had been. Then, Adam called his brother because we found out we might need to be in Peoria earlier than we thought, but to do that, we'd be spending a lot more money...so we held off buying them until Will could talk to his fiance and see what the plans were. So...Adam got home from work last night and checked on the tickets again to find out that they had gone back down to the original price....thus eliminating any need for rearranging schedules and plans...and we jumped to buy them. He JUST texted me to tell me the prices have yet AGAIN gone back up...so it's good that we went to Heidi's to prevent us from spending too much...and that we bought them when we did.

Today, I have spent a lot of time A. writing this, B. trying to get wedding pictures organized to get them printed for an album, C. finishing up laundry (there was a lot), D. talking to some people online, E. switching my Sallie Mae to the joint account, and F. just thinking. We're going to watch Hell's Kitchen...have some lemon pepper fish...and go to bed early, tonight.

And now that I'm done with the novella I promise you, I'm going to get back to being productive. Hope you feel caught up and enjoyed our weekend/week as much as we have. Peace out.

ooops...I guess I haven't been so good about updating this this week...sorry. we've been really a lot busier this week than i thought we would be...i PROMISE i'll do better tomorrow. the good news is that the fire is 22% contained and we can't see flames anymore :). YAWN...more tomorrow. g'nite.