Well, the kids are all tucked into bed, the laundry is folded (well, mostly) and I have been crossing things off my to-do list like crazy. Christmas cards have been written, presents been assembled and now I am trying to focus on what I need to do to get ready for our trip. Like secretly taking ants out of Christian's ant farm and putting them into his space age ant farm that he is getting for Christmas-- but leaving enough ants in the ant farm that he isn't the wiser. But I can't give him a cool space age ant aquarium for Christmas with no ants in it. And it's not like we can go catch ants in the Pennsylvania winter wild.

Thank goodness we got some ants in the mail this week. I am just continuing a steady order of ants to they'll arrive every six weeks or so to replenish the ones that die, but so far, we have been watering them every other day (you try explaining that concept to an eight year old) and feeding them bits of bread. They seem to be pretty happy, but I don't think there is a queen in there. Any ideas for how to get a queen?

The Lemony Snicket dilemna: is it okay for ages 7-8? Tommy is almost 7, will be on December 29 (so I had to make sure I had birthday presents AND Christmas presents, all to take on the road).

Tonight we had a talk about Halo 2, and I have decided that Tommy will not be allowed to play it. And Sam only sparingly, and we had a chat with Sam about that too. Tommy does not yet know that he will not be allowed to play it, but he had some difficulties at school today and so I just said, "That's it. He does not need to be playing any kind of violent video games."

I got a book of poems in the mail today. Thank you once again. And now I know your address, so watcher mailbox yer own self.

No, things are still not better. But every time I try to make them better, I make them worse. So, I am just plugging along and keeping busy and ignoring the pain in my chest.