My husband and daughter drew this on our chalk board today. Can you guess what kind of mood I was in?

The anticipation has been building for all of us -- we are just hours away from entering a theme park, the one we go to every year called Summer Vacation.

I'm looking forward to free time with the kids, road trips and lazy days --the lovely ascension of the roller coaster ride where the scenery is great and it seems the ride is only going to get better. These are days when memories are made. Bike rides and camp outs. Movie nights and swim parties. Softball games in the hot sun and board games in the cool air conditioned kitchen. Popsicles, bar-b-ques, family visitors . . .

But of course, as in all theme parks, there will also be whiny kids, trash to be picked up, sunburns, and vomit that doesn't always make it to the trash can (or toilet, or car window, or the other side of the campground). I know that with seven of us in the home all day, there will be times when the roller coaster ride will feel much too steep and I'll feel like we're all going to fly out of our seats (or off the handle).

Yet still I look forward to it every year. A change of pace, a breather, a time to put our feet up a a little as a family with out the pressures of school. And when the going gets a little rough, I'll try to remember what any good rollercoaster passenger would do: throw my hands up and scream until it's all over.

For Easter this year I hard boiled 38 eggs for the kids to dye. I wondered how we could possibly eat them all. By Easter Sunday, six days later, they were all gone.

Today the twins went looking for some more. This is what I found when I got out of the shower:







After cleaning up the mess, extracting apologies and promises to NEVER do that again I let the kids out of their room and went to finish my hair and makeup. When I was done I came out to the kitchen to find this:





Whoever said the TV isn’t a good babysitter was right.

So my hands have been a little extra full for a while. I came back to my blog and felt like a huge chunk was missing. Well, a huge chunk is missing. The chunk that records the "most wonderful time of the year" from Halloween through the new year. Darn it, now I have to go back to blogging about all the regular crazy stuff I have to deal with.

As I come out of my blogging "long winter's nap" here are a few highlights from the past two months --

Places we went: We took trips to a festival of lights, a live nativity, a walk around the temple to view the Christmas lights, a night of caroling, a night of delivering ornaments to friends, a Christmas breakfast with the faculty from my husband's work, a church party, two separate performances to see two separate children sing along with several trips to the pediatrician's office for sick children and, of course, the shopping.

Things we did: We made ornaments for our friends and teachers, made luminaries to display on our front porch to participate in our neighborhood's "Light up the Night," read a Christmas story almost every night, ending of course with THE Christmas story on Christmas Eve, did the usual decorating and Christmas tree trimming inside the house, and decorating sugar cookies (which was accomplished the day after Christmas), and (I) sewed three cloth dolls with nighties for the girls and five dress up capes.

Things we did not do: We did not send out Christmas cards, or even a Christmas e-mail, we did not get our outdoor Christmas lights up, we did not decorate a Gingerbread house, I did not get the new stockings done that I wanted to make this year, we did not bake a million treats to give out to friends, and we did not go over our holiday budget and are not experiencing buyer's remorse.

Other things we squeezed in: Our oldest son's eleventh birthday, some how he was able to get a family party and a friends party out of us this year. Our Twelfth wedding anniversary. An occasional floor mopping, toilet scrubbing, or trip to the gym.

The best gift I received this year: Permission from my five year old to take a bath on Christmas day, which I did and thoroughly enjoyed.