Still here?

Just in case anybody is reading this now that our lives are ever so much less fraught with danger, here's what we've been up to.

With the holidays done, we have stepped up our efforts to complete our big bedroom swap. Marjie is essentially moved into Chiara's old room, and as of two days ago, Chloe is essentially moved into our old room. Now comes the hard part: cleaning out 13 years of kid stuff from the upstairs bedroom. We've got the main room emptied, but that still leaves two closets, the toy shelves, the little alcoves that were Marjie's and Chloe's private spaces, and the 3/4 bath. It's all my fault for being a packrat and passing on the tendency to my kids!

Frank has moved up our bedframe and boxspring, and he cleaned the carpet up there. He accomplished these things on his own because I managed to slip on the stairs while moving Chloe's mattress down to the basement. My ankle is well sprained and quite colorful, but there's definite improvement already, and I'm being careful not to re-injure it. Frank's fancy Mardi Gras walking stick has come in handy and provides a much more dignified form of transportation than the crawling I was doing initially (much to the girls' amusement).

We held our annual New Year's Eve sleepover with all the cousins (eight girls this year, ranging in age from 2 to 13). It was the usual madhouse festivities, complete with musical chairs, ice cream sundaes, movies, and sparklers and shouting at midnight, even though we had to hold the party on Dec. 30th because some of the girls had a wedding to go to on the real New Year's Eve (our congrats to Tony and Jennifer!). Our neighbors thought we were nuts when we all went outside to count down to Dec. 31st. :-) Two-year-old Ella was the star of the show and probably the one who had the most fun, even if she did burst into tears when her mom came to pick her up the next morning, giving every impression that we'd spent the night torturing her.

Our actual New Year's Eve was a quiet one, 'though we had to struggle to stay awake that long. At midnight, we went out front to count down again and ended up receiving an impromptu invitation from our favorite neighbors to go hang around their backyard firepit. I was really dragging and left after only a short visit, only to get caught up watching Kate & Leopold on late-night TV with Chloe.

After two short nights, it was exceedingly difficult to get up and watch the Seahawks lose in the morning game on Jan. 1st, but we did. I wish Sean Alexander had been in Seattle when he broke the single-season touchdown record. As it was, the announcers barely commented on his performance, choosing instead to speculate endlessly and pointlessly about Brett Favre's likely (and one-season-too-late) retirement. East Coast bias rears its ugly head.

I return to work at Microsoft on the 17th, and Marjie and Chloe (and Frank) are preparing for a stint dogsitting Angelo for Grandma and Papa, who are traveling to Mexico. Frank is also preparing for some Ty Pennington time, since both girls have big plans for platforms and things for their new bedrooms.

I still have more Percolations to write up, quite a few of them, actually. Posting some of them before my return to work is one of my New Year's resolutions. ;-)