Things have been rather hectic around here lately so I haven’t had much time for blogging.  I have one hour of free time before I have to pick Hoob up from her dance class and so decided to write a few quick updates on past posts.

*On Saturday, the day I posted that my family is my priority, I took Mack birthday shopping at the mall for her 16th birthday.  While looking for one particular shop we passed a dress shop that was going out of business.  I sent Mack in to start trying on dresses and quickly called Hub to bring Huh and Juju so that they could try dresses on as well.  The girls had a blast trying on dresses and we walked out of the store with seven formals costing us a total of $245.00.  Seven formals for $245.00!  This was the same dress store that, one year earlier, Huh and I had bought her Homecoming dress costing $189.00 (she paid half).  They were selling the dresses for $20.00 to $30.00 each.  Roughly, had we paid full price for the dresses, we would have spent  $1,300.00.  Ya gotta love a deal like that!  The girls all understand that we are now done shopping for formals while the three of them are in high school.  They will share the dresses and, with the two dresses that Huh already owns, will be able to wear a different dress to each dance.

*For Hub’s 45th birthday, in addition to the gifts already planned, I had the kids each create a coupon for a service they would perform for him.  The coupons included many offers to do certain undesirable chores, a morning that breakfast will be fixed for him, some organizing tasks to be done, and an offer to take him mountain biking (from Squid).  I also, sort of, encouraged the kids to decorate Hub’s truck and, sort of, provided all of the stuff for them to do so.  When Hub discovered his truck in the morning it was covered with crepe paper, balloons, confetti, and “Over the Hill” signs.  Inside the truck were more balloons and many, many, many packing peanuts.  Poor Hub had a lunch date scheduled with an old high school friend and had to clean the truck up himself since the kids were all at school and I was subbing second grade.

*The Blaxican hasn’t kept his word to not speak to Huh, but he has been much nicer to her and even offered to apologize to me.  The apology hasn’t happened yet and I am keeping close tabs on how he treats her.

*Yawlin received much good-natured ribbing from family members when I told them how he seems to have outgrown hugging or kissing me in front of his friends.  Yawlin finds the whole thing rather funny and even laughed when I told him I blogged about it.  His compromise is to give me a hive five as he passes me when his friends are present.  Sometimes he will even walk behind them and slip me a quick hug and kiss when they aren’t looking.

*I made the zucchini jam that my mom told me about but I couldn’t find apricot Jell-O so I used peach Jell-O instead.  I kept everything else in the recipe the same and it turned out great.  I had the kids all try it on a roll before telling them what it really was.  They were all fooled and really like it.  I also tried making the jam with raspberry Jell-O and frozen raspberries (instead of the pineapple).  I blended the frozen raspberries in the blender before adding them to the mix and the jam turned out delicious.  The kids really like it.  I will be trying the same thing with Strawberry Jell-O and frozen strawberries in a few days.

*Our towel problem still exists.  I had decided to give the kids two towels each for the week and if they left the towels on the floor and ended up having to dry off with a wet towel they were out of luck.  There would be no more towels until after I had laundered them on Saturdays.  Unfortunately before we could see if this new plan would work the towel rack got pulled from the wall (the towel ghost seeking revenge perhaps?) and the kids haven’t had any place to hang their towels in the bathroom.  We have been so busy that we haven’t had time to fix the towel rack.  I think I will opt for individual hooks instead of one long bar.  Each person will be assigned a hook and then I just might be able to see who is hanging up their towel and who is not.  Hopefully with the new hooks and the new plan our towel problem will disappear.  Now…to find the time to hang the hooks…

Well, that’s us for now.  Time to go get my daughter.