… and then some! After returning home from our annual Lodge vacation and cleaning up all that chlorinated laundry we brought back in our suitcases, the Catholic Family and I were absolutely thrilled about celebrating Independence Day WITHOUT our rude and obnoxious neighbors. That’s right - THEY ARE NOW GONE! It’s like the Dad Dude gave his wife and kids the boot, leaving us to enjoy our little family fireworks display in peace. Because really, we’ve had enough of all those teens partying it up on the Fourth by aiming roman candles, bottle rockets and other illegal fireworks at neighborhood homes and/or vehicles in our area. Enough.

So just sit back enjoy this flashback of our Great Wolf escape as I revel in our 4th of July family fun.

Who says God doesn’t answer prayers?
Thanks, Big Guy.

It’s all happening so fast. In a nutshell, I truly believe school administrators have a strategic plan in place for students who are finishing out the end of elementary school and embarking into the big MIDDLE SCHOOL experience, and that plan is to:

Bombard kids and parents with as much activity as humanly possible to keep them from realizing what is about to happen to their lives.

So now that I’m onto these people, I just have one request: Can’t we just skip it and say we did? You know. Skip all of the painful experiences of puberty and tween-hood, and move right on to high school - or better yet college? Because I’m really wanting to breeze right past this whole complete and utter trauma. *sigh*

Lord help this ITCM. :’(

Intermittently throughout the day, I’ve been dealing with blog issues that I won’t go into detail here. However, out of this whole dealing process I must say that leaving my ITCM look/theme has been more difficult than at first I’d imagined. But it must be done… and so I’m on the lookout for a new theme that will do the following for this blog:

• Support widgets. Got to have those here, including one that is Flickr related to display photos.
• Allow me to change the banner. Generic banners are just. not. my. style.
• Simple yet elegant. I don’t do the busy look - less is more.

Anyway, that’s only a small part of what I’ve dealt with in this blog today… that and the question of Do I really want to deal with the crap that goes along with maintaining a blog anyway? Yes, I’m unhappy about recent blog-related events, and yet not ready to throw in the towel after a lost Saturday. Stay tuned.

Ever since Catholic Girlie decided to join the city-wide elementary strings orchestra, my whole ‘day of rest’ thing has taken a backseat to providing taxi and refreshment service. Which is fine. Who can complain about free entertainment on early weekend mornings until the orchestra actually hits the stage, right? Not me. These kids are really good. And so what if bathroom cleaning falls on Sundays for a few weeks. It’s kind of a nice trade-off that I can live with.

Only, hold on just one minute…

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