Week in Review: Jan. 20, 2012

Friday already - woohoo!  Where has the time gone . . .

Cruise ship accident in Italy

Now this is exactly why I hesitate to go on a big cruise.  You think they're safe and then, bam!  Something like this happens.  I know, I know, it was the stupid captain's fault who decided to turn the boat closer to land so that his head waiter could wave to his family (really?  is this completely idiotic or is it just me?).  But there is still something about being trapped on a vessel in the middle of water that freaks me out - much like the thought of being on an airplane over the vast ocean as it goes down.  Water scares me, especially deep, endless water in the dead of night.  For some reason I feel more secure when flying over land, even though an impact with land would be just as bad as an impact with water.

But I digress.  There are still many people missing from this accident, probably drowned and stuck in some crevice of the boat or at the bottom of the sea.  These people were just enjoying a nice relaxing vacation when the guy who is supposed to be commanding the boat goes and does something dumb like this.  Unbelievable.

Too Busy Vacuuming and Forgot Something REALLY Important . . .

These crazy kids would NEVER
have forgotten about Jan 17th! 

Amidst all the chaos of frantically trying to vacuum every flea egg in the house, my husband and I both forgot a very important thing.  Tuesday was the 15th anniversary of our first official date and we BOTH FORGOT!  This is highly unusual.  Sometimes I think we see January 17th as our true anniversary because that was the day when everything clicked into place and we both just knew somehow that we were meant to be together.  Never mind that we'd met four years earlier and had spent time together on countless of other occasions - that was THE night when everything came together.  We never forget it and we always mark it somehow - except this time.  I felt a moment of panic this morning when I looked at the calendar and realized that we had let January 17th pass us by.  I quickly emailed John, lamenting the fact that we'd forgotten and his response was "We must have been too busy vacuuming."  Wow.  These fleas really have taken over our lives.  Now we have to come up with a way to fix this - and fast!  I feel a date night in our near future - perhaps one of the secret date nights that we resolved to have once a month. 

Winter at the Beach

Beer pong table and an abundance of
liquor on the kitchen counter . . .

Can't believe I never wrote about this earlier in the week (the fleas have taken over my brain), but we had a really nice weekend in the Outer Banks.  One of my friends from college has a beach house in Nags Head and she invited us and two other friends from college and their families down for the weekend.  Cheapest weekend ever!  Free place to stay, take-out every night for dinner and no outside activities except kite flying, shell finding, hot-tubbing and several late-night rousing games of beer pong.  Did I say beer pong?  Yes, I did.  When you hang with your college friends, you play beer pong on a piece of plywood held up by bar stools.  I was surprised at how well I still play beer pong.  It's a little scary.

It was nice to hang out with people who knew me before I had kids, before I had a career, before I actually grew up.  The other cool thing is that we have all known each other for so long that our husbands are all friends now too, so there is no awkwardness or that one spouse who just doesn't fit in with the others.  All our kids got along too which was great - Ella was in heaven sharing a room with her two new best friends and Jack held his own as hero-in-training for the preschool set in between games of pool and dips in the hot tub.  Plus, the ocean is beautiful in the winter.  All in all, a perfect weekend - except for the five hour drive home on Monday - could've done without that.

John and Jack flying a kite on the beach
while freezing their butts off

Ella hunts for shells, wearing my big sunglasses
to keep sand from getting in her eyes

Jack leaping in the air!

Hot-tubbing with my babies :)

Family shot - thanks to the auto timer on the camera!

So here we are - another week gone by.  I'm glad I ended this post with the picture above - that's what it's all about, right?  When I asked my kids what their favorite part of the weekend was they both answered "The hot tub - oh, and spending time with you guys."  What more could I ask for?