blogging hiatus

Well, my almost-daily posting streak came to a screeching halt last week as Thanksgiving descended.  My sister and brother-in-law and their 4 kids came down from St. Louis for Thanksgiving and suddenly other things became more important than my computer time.  :-)  Words can't express how much I love being with my sister, and it was made even better seeing my kids and hers playing together so well.
Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is also about 1,000 times more fun with a sister there to cook with you.  We made a pretty good team I think!  We cooked and baked and talked from about 8:30 AM until we ate at 4:00 PM.
The cousins had a great time together.  They made thorough use of our playroom in building block castles and K'nex roller coasters.  They had scooter-jumping contests off the deck in the backyard.  They even went SWIMMING on Friday.  Crazy kids.  We went on a hike Friday morning.  Ben carried me on his back so I got to eavesdrop on the kids talking and singing and showing off and catching lizards and exploring the rusted ruin of a car off of one part of the path.  We went up to Mt. Bonnel (Ben didn't carry me up there, although he offered to-- I decided I valued his functioning back more than the sunset view over the 360 bridge), drove through downtown to see the capitol building all lit up against the night sky.  On Saturday we went down to San Antonio to the Natural Bridge Caverns (Rosalynde and I stayed up top since it is not wheelchair accessible and talked the whole time which I think was better than seeing the caves anyway), and then down to the Alamo and the River Walk where it gradually got FREEZING!  I remember the first real cold front of the year came through right at Thanksgiving last year also.  Mosey left his jacket in the car and was a Mosey-sicle by the time we got on the boat for the River Walk tour.  I zipped him up inside my jacket and he kept us both warm.  Very soon all my boys will be too big for things like that.  :-(
We ate up most of the Thanksgiving food over those three days, which was pretty amazing given the quantity that we made.  I also took a vacation from my crazy diet and the food never tasted so good.  :-)  However, the eating fest seriously needs to STOP.  I do NOT want to participate in the average 8-lb weight gain for most Americans over the holidays.  :-)
The worst part was when Rosalynde and her family had to leave early yesterday morning.  Getting back to reality after a few days like that is a bit of a downer.
Underneath all the happiness of this last week, however, my heart has been hurting for my dear friend over this first anniversary of her husband's death.  I have so much to be thankful for and she reminds me never to take the most important things for granted.