Do not pass go, do not collect $2,000,000.

I think I might be close to being recovered from our garage sale last weekend.  I took my load to the Goodwill today, and Uriah only has one table left to take back to work and my garage is my own again.  I really don't think we would have been as successful if Daniel hadn't been around to entertain the kiddos for a couple of days so my mom, Ady and I could get everything ready, sorted, organized, tagged and displayed outside.  I'm pretty sure he changed his first diaper (ever.  In his whole life.) and also fed the kids and put Finn down for a nap (and then proceeded to take a nap himself). 

Daniel and Abby played Monopoly for 2 solid days.  No joke.  It was the longest Monopoly game ever to be played in this house.  Abby bought it for $1 (or rather, Ady bought it, Abby owes her!) at a garage sale.  I'm so glad we worked hard to rid our house of excess just so Abby could find another game to bring home.  Sigh. Anyway, apparently it is an updated version of Monopoly because you don't play with money, it's electronic and you play with debit cards.  And also... properties are millions of dollars instead of hundreds of dollars.  And the properties are different.  And there aren't any railroads anymore, I think they're airports now.  And the minute their game was done, Abby tried to talk me into playing with her.  I think I'll save that goat rodeo for when there's snow outside.

Ady read books with Finn.  She put him down for a nap.  She fed him dinner.  She gave him a bath.  I think that my kids are a dry-run for people who think they might maybe one day want to have kids of their own, but aren't quite sure if they want to commit.  Come over, take care of them for a day or two, get a better understanding of the loads of work having kids is.  I could market this.  And maybe, as a bonus, I'll throw in an extra challenge: make dinner with two kids up in your business.  To the individuals up for that challenge I say: Good luck.

Finn has been asking about Uncle Dan all week long.  He keeps asking me, "Uncle Dan home?" And I say yes, Uncle Dan is at Grandma's house.  And then he says, "Ady home?" And I say yes, Ady is at her home, too.  And this conversation repeats a million times a day.

We took Dan and Ady on a mini-tour of our town.  We didn't get to see and do everything that I wanted (Duke's Burgers, a Queen Mary tour).  It was a toasty day so Abby and I stuck our toes in the water, but the lakes are still pretty cold.  The tourists are out in full-force (thank goodness, I think that the influx of tourists in our town contributed to the garage-sale success!) and driving from one end of town to the other takes a little bit longer these days.

 Thank you, Uncle Dan and Ady, for taking care of my kiddos last weekend!  We had so much fun with you and can't wait to hang out again soon!

Remembering.

All great things are simple, 

and many can be expressed in a single word:

freedom

justice

honor

mercy

duty

hope.

Sir Winston Chruchill

{The Artsy Girl Connection |   Finagle  a Photo}

Cheers.

Our garage sale was a raging success.
And I am exhausted.

More lovely details of our weekend tomorrow (or Tuesday?  I am really tired!)...but let me just tell you that I feel lighter.  My house feels lighter.  And I only have one (teey, tiny Civic) carload of random leftovers to take to Goodwill this week.

Happiness abounds.

{and  then, she {snapped} | Show  off your shot}

What I've been up to...

The warm weather and sultry humidity levels have disappeared and have left in their place grey skies, rain, and distant thunder.  Or course, only after Abby complained for days that she was so hot in her room (I refuse to turn on the air before June.) and needed a fan at the earliest possible convenience or she might just expire from the heat (I might point out that while she was complaining about being so hot yesterday, she was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.  I suggested she try putting on something a little bit more weather-appropriate like a pair of shorts.  She looked at me like I was crazy and told me that her outfit was fine.  Where is the logic?!).  I no sooner brought home a hot pink fan for her window than the rain started.  Figures.

I went through Finn's baby clothes this week.  I sifted and sorted and smelled them.  They still smell faintly of baby and formula and softness and delight.  Teeny tiny socks and blue and yellow onesies.  Soft jammies and blankets.  Little hooded jackets and pants that look incredibly small next to his long legs.  Am I a little sad to be getting rid of some of this stuff?  Yes - I almost cried when I opened those totes and stuck my hands into their fluffy insides.  But I've saved the most special items (like the Yoda onesie and the his first plaid shorts, his coming home outfit and the corduroy pants that Uriah bought for him.) and I know that someone else's baby will look so cute in his little money suits. But it still makes me sad that my baby isn't much of a baby anymore.  His toys are bigger.  His voice is bigger.  And his hugs are bigger, too, which I would not trade for a million little onesies.

My flowers are starting to pop - slowly.  After this rain, give me one good, sunny day and they'll be bursting all over the place.  I can't wait.  It makes me want to plant more and I really was wishing for a garden this summer, but I guess I'll set my sights on a garden for next summer.  In the meantime, I have a basil plant and a rosemary plant and those two will keep my green thumb happy.

I'm very much looking forward to my garage sale this weekend.  Not only because my mom and my brother and his best girl are coming (I love company - it's an excuse to cook big and I have been planning for days - lemon ice cream, slow-roasted jerk pork, strawberry-rhubarb crisp with homemade granola, brioche french toast...) but also because it's time to slough off some of the excess that has been moved multiple times and not looked at.  I need to feel a little bit lighter in the material good aspect of our lives, and this is the best way to do that.  I only want things in my house that have a purpose, things that I use.  And I'm not bringing anything new into this house (read: new sofa, new dinnerware) until we've successfully removed all of the things we have now and don't use.  Someone else can put some of these things to good use, I'm sure.

I'm off to the garage to organize and sticker...see you later, alligators!

{52 Photos Project | Week 4: Pink}

Life.

Uriah has been working like a mad-man for the past few weeks due to some work-related crap issues.  He leaves in the morning and he usually doesn't come home until the kids are in bed.  The past few days have been especially hard on Finn - I can tell that he misses his dad.  In the evening if a car drives by, he looks at me with his hopeful eyes and says, "Dad home?  Dad home?" and I tell him that Dad will be home when he opens his eyes in the morning.  Saturday Finn was acting like a rotten child - he didn't want to do anything except stand right next to me or have me hold him (which is a bit impossible when there's laundry to be done and groceries to put away and dinner to make and the lad weighs a lot!).  He didn't want to play with anything that I suggested (not even with the play-dough dog, which is his most favorite!).  I finally asked him if he missed his daddy and he nodded his little tear-stained face yes and then gave me a tight squeeze.  It broke my mama heart.  So I had Uriah call Finn when he had a free minute to talk to him on speaker.  I can't say that the evening got much better, but at least it didn't get much worse.

Our life feels very chaotic and one-sided right now.  We seem to be ships passing in the night and I find myself day-dreaming about not making dinner and maybe going on a date.  I'll be happy when Uriah's back to his "regular" schedule (although the summer season starts here this weekend, so I might be deluding myself into thinking we'll have a relatively normal schedule at any time before Labor Day!).  In the meantime, Abby's last day of 7th grade is on Friday (stay tuned for the annual Last Day of School photo!) and then we start our summer reading list (which I secretly cannot wait for!).  I've got a garage sale this weekend and I'm gearing up to go through the totes and totes of Finn's baby clothes tomorrow, which is causing me to hyperventilate a little bit.  I have very mixed feelings about it, to say the least...

Happy Monday, friends!  See you around here later this week!

***
Would you like to see more pictures of life?  Head over to I Should be Folding Laundry for life aplenty.  It's Monday, so that means it's also Show off Your Shot over at And then she {snapped}.

Pals

I stood in the kitchen yesterday evening, half way through cleaning up after dinner, and listened to Finn laugh so hard I'm quite sure he peed a little bit as Abby ran up and down the back yard doing cartwheels for him.

Who says a ten year age gap means you can't play together?

{52 Photos Project | Week 4: Movement}

Broken Computers & Rhubarb Dream Bars

This day totally got away from me!  Finn and I were up early this morning and we have been doing laundry and mowing the lawn and watering plants and cleaning ever since.  My intention was to get this posted earlier this afternoon when Finn took his nap (he was so tired from a morning of busyness that he practically put himself down for a nap!) but unfortunately, my laptop is not long for this world, so I spent most of his nap time and beyond getting our desktop computer dusted off and running.  It was a nightmare...the power cord had somehow gone missing during our move last summer and I pretty much opened every single box that hadn't been opened in our basement looking for it.  I called around trying to find someone who'd stock the power cord.  No luck in this small town.  I tried to find it on Amazon.  My initial search turned up nothing.  Finally, I flopped down in a frustrated pout and decided to look one more time in the box that holds all of our miscellaneous electronic stuff - you know, the spot that it was supposed to be to begin with, and what do you know?  It was there the whole time!  Today was a lesson in patience, learning to slow down and take my time and above all else, quit looking for things with my man eyes! 

So on to what I was really going to post about today: rhubarb.  Do you like rhubarb?  Have you ever had it?  I think that it's kind of an acquired taste.  Raw rhubarb is sort of like bitter celery.  It grows in lovely red stalks with big green leaves at the top.  When we were growing up, we would dip raw rhubarb in sugar and eat is as an afternoon snack.  Honestly, I didn't really like eating the rhubarb, I mostly just licked the sugar off and then pitched the rhubarb stalk in trash.

Cooked rhubarb, however, takes on a sweetness all its own, and it has such a soft texture.  My mom would make rhubarb sauce and we'd have it for breakfast.  Personally, I want to make some rhubarb sauce and pour it over vanilla ice cream, equally as good, but less healthy.  Coming from Minnesota, I have multiple recipes in my box for rhubarb sauce, rhubarb pie, rhubarb cake, and rhubarb bars.

Try the rhubarb bars are lovely and my favorite.  Equal parts tangy and sweet; soft and crispy.  I've seen rhubarb available for purchase at our grocery store here in Iowa, but you might have to hit up a farmer's market or a sweet neighbor to get some of your own (I got mine from my mama!) but they are totally worth the effort of tracking some down.  I did eat these bars for breakfast with coffee and also for an afternoon snack with iced tea (and they are sort of WW friendly if you cut them into 36 small squares - then they make the perfect points-friendly snack!  However, you have to stop yourself after eating just one, and therein lies the problem!).


Enjoy your Thursday evening, friends!

2-1/2  cups flour, divided
3/4 cups powder sugar
1 cup butter
4 eggs
2 cups white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups rhubarb, diced

For the crust, mix 2 cups of flour and the powder sugar; cut in the butter until crumbly.  Press into a 10x15" pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

While the crust is baking, make the filling.  Blend the eggs, white sugar, remaining 1/2 cup of flour and salt together until smooth.  Fold in the rhubarb.  When the crust has baked for 15 minutes, remove it from the oven and spread the rhubarb mixture over the hot crust.  Bake for another 40-45 minutes.  Allow to cool.

*One thing to keep in mind: these bars will be the crispest the day you make them.  The remaining liquid in the rhubarb will slowly leach out and soften the bars the longer they sit.  This is not incentive to eat them all the day you make them, however.  They are good just a little bit soft, too

Hello, friends.

Radio silence has been broken.

Not that there really was a radio silence.  There was just some sinus pressure and some green yucky stuff and a cough and chest congestion.  There has been no walking this week, but there was lots of dayquil and nyquil.  And lesson learned: if it's too late in the day for a dayquil, it's also probably too early in the evening for a nyquil.  Learn from me, friends, or you will find yourself dozing on the couch at 7:30 pm while matchbox cars are driving over your arms and legs and head and getting tangled in your hair.

Mother's day was lovely, I wasn't quite sick yet, although, in retrospect, I think I knew it was coming.  Uriah smoked some ribs and I made lemon ice cream with raspberry sauce.  Finn and Abby got me some new shoes and I went to bed early without having to clean up the kitchen or bathe the baby.

Come on back tomorrow, won't you?  I'll be back with a rhubarb recipe (it is spring, after all) and I have missed writing this week.

Let that pony run.

Last summer, when I was focused mostly on getting out and shaking what my mama gave me, I knew I was going to need a new stroller, but I needed to give myself some incentive to get there first.  Over the winter, after I started Weight Watchers, I set a weight goal for myself - not my ultimate goal, but a significant goal nonetheless, promising that when I got there, I would purchase a new jogging stroller.  Of course, I amended my goal to include a loophole.  If Mother's Day came first, then I would get a new stroller for Mother's Day, but the incentive was to get to that weight goal sooner, so I could get the stroller sooner.

My stroller came yesterday.  4 full days before Mother's Day.

I had been following its progress from Chicago to St. Paul to my house with the anticipation of a kid watching Santa-Sightings on Christmas Eve.  When the email came yesterday morning that it had been delivered, I could hardly wait to get home.  I raced through changing after work, getting Finn a snack and hauling that big box out to the garage.  As I was putting it together, Finn kept calling it his race car, which made me laugh.  He tried to help me with the tools...a screwdriver in one hand and a hammer in the other, his "help" was limited to banging on the garage floor.

We took off on down the trail and it is amazing what a difference a good stroller makes during a walk.  I set a brisk walking pace to begin with and as we got deeper into the trail, as the sun heated up my back and arms, the need to run seemed to overtake me.  We started off slowly - I'm not much of a runner and I'm smart enough to know that owning a jogging stroller doesn't automatically make me one.  But as we got going, as I set the pace a little bit faster, it got a little bit easier.  We'd slow to a walk when my lungs were burning and then I picked up the pace again.  Our 4 miles consisted of a series of walks and runs and by the time we looped around to the park, my muscles were happily fatigued.

I met my match on the trail, that little voice in my head that sometimes says: "You can't do that."  I looked her dead in the eye and yesterday, I started running.

{52 Photos Project: Where We Meet}

Crafty Crap {Mother's Day Gift Idea}

Two Mother's Days ago - that's sounds like a tongue twister, so let's make it easier: 2 years ago for Mother's Day, I was a billion months pregnant and, although I was adamant that getting crap for the baby's room was more important and I didn't want anything for Mother's Day, my husband was very kind and thoughtful and bought me a rosebush (what I really wanted was a martini.).  It was called a Knock Out rose, but I called it the Knocked Up rosebush.  It had lovely pink roses and we planted it in our back yard in Kansas City.  In the moving chaos that ensued last year, I forgot to dig it up to bring it north with us.  I'm sure someone is enjoying my Knocked Up rosebush as I type this.  Or the ninja squirrels that lived in our back yard ate all the buds, in which case it's probably dead.  Either option is dismal.

Last year for mother's day - my first real Mother's Day, we were moving and our lives were less than stable.  Apparently, Uriah slipped Abby thirty bucks and told her to get me something nice.  I got a card and a small plant.  She pocketed the change (or should I say, she used the change on my gift and pocketed the rest.).  I tried not to be bitter about my husband totally phoning in Mother's Day last year - after all, I did give him a glorious son and I was actively assisting in the raising of his daughter, you'd think the least he could do was honor me for one day in the manner to which I am befit (you know, parade, marching band, ice sculpture made in my likeness. Simple stuff.), instead of passing it off on an eleven-year-old who (allegedly) was jonesing for some Grape Smackers chapstick.

I've learned my lesson, people.  This year will just be another normal Sunday since my husband will, once again, be busy feeding everyone else's mother.  No biggie; I'm used to it by now (but that doesn't stop me from complaining about it, obvs!).  I think I'll get some flowers and we'll do some planting if the weather holds.  If not...it'll probably be a movie/martini hot cocoa fest up in here and everyone will take naps.

If you're crapping your pants, just now realizing you have nothing for the mothers/grandmothers in your life and you want to do something thoughtful, or rather, you want your kids to do something thoughtful, may I suggest you have them paint some pots and then plant some flowers.  It's relatively cheap (terracotta pots at the Wals are less than $2, depending on what size you get.  All the acrylic paints I got were on clearance.) and the little planters can be used again for years to come (green points!).  We used two different sizes, bigger pots for Abby, baby-sized pots for Finn.  This project obviously took Abby a lot longer than Finn, she used a paintbrush and all, he just used his fingers.  After the paint was finished drying (I waited a couple of hours for Finn's, a little bit longer for Abby's.), I slapped some modge podge on those little suckers (the pots, not the kids), let them dry completely, and then put each kid's name and year on the bottom.  Abby got to plant the flowers and Finn got to water them.

It's the gift that keeps on giving.

 

Note: These were actually our Easter presents for the grandmas, but I think the craftiness works for Mother's Day, too.

Oh, simple thing, where have you gone?

We have entered this new stage...Finn seems to be leaving baby-hood behind faster than I can say "Pass the gin."  And yet, he's not really at that big-boy stage, either.  He's balancing somewhere in between in a land of afternoon naps and full-on tempers when he has to do something he doesn't want to:  wash his hands before dinner, come inside to play, eat his veggies before he can have more fruit. 

His hair still smells like Johnson's Baby Shampoo and his feet smell like a full-grown man's by the end of the day. 

I vacillate between wanting to hide in the closet with a huge martini when he's laying on the floor kicking and screaming, to wanting to snuggle him closer and tighter just a little bit longer and sniff his baby-goodness one more time. 


*** 
Want to see more simplicity?  Head over to I Should Be Folding Laundry.  You can head over to And then, she {snapped}, if you've got a moment to spare, and check out some great shots.

Next week's challenge: Lines

Shake it like a Polaroid picture.

I took my littles and Uriah on an adventure last week to have our monthly family picture taken.  I decided at the beginning of the year that we were going to have one family picture a month if it killed me.  This month it almost did.  Uriah and I had both worked all day and Abby was told to be ready when we got home.  The humidity levels had been on the rise all day, as evidenced by the amount of curl in Finn's hair and the tightness of my rings on my finger.  Some thunder clouds were rolling in, but I was determined to get this month's family photo in a place that was not our home (the previous 4 months have been taken in our house, sue me for wanting something different.).  As it turns out, every day, Finn and I walk past this little stretch of state land while we take our walk and every day I think about who perfect it would be for some family pictures.  I had a vision, I just needed my family to cooperate.

We parked the car and got onto the walking trail for the 5 or so minutes it took us to walk down to my "perfect" location.  You'd think I asked them to jog for all of the "How much farther?" I got.  I didn't, by the way, ask them to jog.  Running in flip-flops is scary, even I know that.  Finn apparently didn't take much of a nap at school because he was clingy and didn't want to stand still at all and I think maybe the grass tickled his legs a bit because he'd lift them really high like he was marching.  He'd say "smile" but then he wouldn't actually, you know, smile and we ended up having to cut our picture taking short because he decided to crap his pants (Potty training is next on my list of things to accomplish.).  Abby is at that awkward stage where she's all arms and legs and doesn't know what to do with herself.  Sometimes she smiles this great, lovely smile that reaches all the way to her eyes, then other times she clams up.  Sometimes she looks totally natural and then the next second, she looks like she's trying out for a TeenVogue photo shoot.  And Uriah was distracted with work stuff.

Next time: diaper bag comes with us.  Phones stay at home.  Abby practices smiling in the mirror prior to the photos.  And I bring a (big) flask of gin.

This, too, shall pass.

I am checking my way through the above list today, in addition to my usual list of chores and laundry and grocery, in the hopes that this day will improve.

It's the smiling and the laughing I'm having trouble with today.  It was getting out of bed that challenged me this morning.  It's the accomplishing my list part that I can't seem to accomplish.

Sit down.  Breathe deeply.  Look inside.
The answers are there.

{ 52 Photos: Let the Sunshine in }

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day...

...Or so my mother used to tell me every morning of my growing up years.  Being a person who would rather not face the morning, I would usually mumble something under my breath about the stupid sun and need more sleepy, slide into my seat at the table and eat whatever it was she put before me.  Cereal, oatmeal, toast with peanut butter, English muffins.  If I didn't have to make it or give it a second thought, I was good to go.

These days, I make Abby a breakfast menu each week because honestly, I don't like to get up (I put my coffee on delay brew before I go to bed so that it's ready for me before I even get up in the morning!).  And also, she's in 7th grade.  She can make an egg without burning our house down.  I make sure to double or triple the recipe for pancakes and waffles so that I can have them in the freezer for easy toasting in the morning.  I make extra french toast and yummy little breakfast biscuits that are full of cheese and sausage.  She can make hot cereal or oatmeal and we leave the cold cereal as a special weekend treat (because more often that not, it's a somewhat sugary cereal and I'd rather she eat something before school that will stick with her.).

As for me, breakfast is a little bit more of a struggle.  Being on a pretty tight food budget, I really do have to plan out my breakfast in the same way that I plan out my lunches and dinners.  In my previous life, breakfast consisted of a mocha from Starbucks and a blueberry muffin.  Then I got wise to the carb-induced free-fall my morning would take after that gigantic muffin and started making my own, significantly smaller muffins, at home; I thought I was being thrifty.  But as easy as yanking a muffin out of the freezer is and warming it up in the microwave to have with my coffee is quick, I know that it's probably not going to last me until lunchtime. I've started supplementing my breakfast with fruit and yogurt.  I sacrifice a little bit more of my budget (both food-wise and monetarily) with Noosa yogurt, it is the best yogurt I have ever had: raspberry, mango, strawberry-rhubarb...flavors that almost make it worth getting up in the morning.  I said almost.

I used to think that eggs took so much time in the morning and oh, the cholesterol!  Be still my ever burgeoning arteries!  The fact is, eggs are brain food and they will stick with me all morning long.  I've taken to having an egg (fried in little bit of olive oil, not butter.) on dry whole wheat toast, a little bit of fat free cottage cheese and a piece of fruit.  It takes less than 5 minutes to put together in the morning and it keeps me full all the way until lunch...and even a little bit beyond!

My super favorite these days, though, is oatmeal.  I love oatmeal with fresh strawberries.  I love oatmeal with apples and cinnamon.  I love oatmeal with craisins.  I love oatmeal.  And Finn loves oatmeal, too, so we usually share one serving.  I sweeten it with a little bit of honey and I always make my oatmeal with milk instead of water - it makes for a little bit thicker oatmeal plus I get to count it as a serving of milk.  Since I don't drink milk by the glass (a hold-over from my low-carb days.), I need to sneak my calcium in however I can.

I'm sure you're wondering why I don't just follow Abby's breakfast plan.  Truthfully, I probably could, but right now I don't want to sacrifice that many points on breakfast; I'd rather save them for dinner or for a mid-afternoon snack.  Having pancakes or waffles in the morning isn't the best use of my current food budget.  Someday, when I'm at a comfortable weight, I will be able to slip in a morning of rainbow pancakes with my kids or Uriah's biscuits and sausage gravy.  In the meantime, I'm content with something that I know is going to hold me over until lunch.

What about you?  What are your go-to breakfasts?  How do you keep your tummy from grumbling before noon?

I don't have a title, witty or otherwise.

{Finn & Dan | 04.23.12}

I want is a big piece of chocolate cake washed down with a gin martini, but, as that would be detrimental to my diet lifestyle choice, I'll settle for snuggling into bed early with a good book, which is what I've done pretty much every night this week.

Except tonight.  Tonight I managed to wrestle the computer away from Uriah, prop my eyelids open for a few extra minutes, ignore the fact that I have approximatley 12 pages left in my book, and write.

This week is kicking my ass.

I've been to Minnesota the past two weekends, which is lovely, don't misunderstand, but I've noticed that it makes me sort of lazy during the week.  Or maybe that's just my personality these days.  Laundry is piled high again (how do we manage this?  You'd think we were heathens who lived in the mud constantly.), plants need to be watered, and a little (lot) of dusting needs to be done.  And on an even cheerier note, the phone that I've had for approximatley 60 seconds stopped working this morning.  Just. Completley. Stopped.  It'll be 3-5 business days for my replacement to come in.  In the meantime, I'm stuck with a flip-phone that doesn't have any of my numbers, a back that doesn't stay on, and old-school texting (using the keypad.).  I sent one text all day and it took me forever to tap-tap-tap it out.

Plus side to this week: I got our May family picture taken this evening.  A day late, yes, but who cares.  Abby had a band concert last night and (allegedly) that was more important.  I've been taking a family picture on the first of the month since January.  Tonight we killed two birds with one stone: family picture and a sweet Mother's Day present that I have in mind for the grandmas.

**Slight pause while I flip my phone and speak with Bees.
**Okay, I'm back.  Thanks for the chat, Bees!  Can't wait for Air Supply!

Where was I? Oh yes, the plus sides to this week.  Well, now that I've been able to talk to Bees, whom I've been playing phone tag with for too many days, I'm happy again.  I love talking to Bees.  Also, my brother and sister-in-law are coming to visit me on Saturday.  Hooray!  So is Dane.  Triple hooray!  Uriah and I both have the day off on Friday.  I'm hoping for a lunch date.  Hopefully my phone arrives by Friday (that would make me so happy!) and I'm ordering my own Mother's Day present tomorrow (don't be sad; I know what I want, it's not a surprise.  My kids can make me a card.).  My walking has gotten better and I've upped my challenge number to 200 miles in 3 months (since I managed to walk 50+ miles in the first month of the challenge, I thought I should make it more of, well, a challenge.).

I hope I can feel more productive as this week wanes.  And I hope that my productivity extends to more blogging.  I've been absent this week - although I've written a lot of posts in my head as Finn and I walk.  Going to bed at 8:30 pm does take away from my quiet writing time in the evening.  And now it's time for this girl to snuggle into said bed to devour the last 12 pages of aforementioned book.

See you later, alligators.