After a week with four extra adults in my 1900 square foot three bedroom house, I'm alive to tell about it and so are they. It was getting a wee bit crowded feeling around here. With someone sleeping in every room except the dining room, finding the time to get on or near the computer was difficult.

While I was away from the computer, I spent last Monday morning running all over town doing errands. I spent the afternoon cleaning house and cooking and then my whole family -- my parents and two brothers arrived that night along with the family dog. Tuesday morning The Middle Girl had her first dentist appointment -- as a strange twist, my children go to a pediatric dentist who has the same name as my son. That gets some strange looks from the office staff. She did great and didn't have any cavities, unlike her brother, who on his first dentist visit three years ago, had three cavities -- maybe The Boy who looks like his dad got my teeth and The Middle Girl who looks like me got her father's. For the first time in six years we have dental insurance, and I love it. I guess I don't love paying for it, but it is nice not to rack up large bills at the dentist's office.

Wednesday I took my mother out to do the things she wanted to do -- shopping at the Habitat Home Stores, T J Maxx, Tuesday Morning and that sort of thing. We also tried the newish popsicle shop on the other side of town. It's pretty similar to the one down the street from us, but they have ice cream. All the popsicles are $.50 more there though, so I guess I'll stay closer to home when I need a Mexican popsicle.

Thursday we did something. Hmmm. Let me think. Right we cooked. And ate. Everything was pretty good, except for the cranberry sauce I made on that very hectic Monday. I forgot to put any sugar in. Oops. My recipe calls for port, but due to allergies and not wanting to go buy port, I used white grape juice, which along with the candied ginger gave the sauce enough sweetness to be edible, but I wouldn't recommend making it without sugar again. After the eating and cleaning up, some people took naps and others watched a little football. That pretty much did it for the day.

Friday we hauled out the Christmas decorations and started in on that. It was some what strange decorating for Christmas with my family around, because growing up I did not celebrate Christmas and my parents still don't. This year in tree decorating, I caved a bit to the childrens' requests for a little color in lighting. I still haven't swathed the tree in blinking multicolored strands, but I did allow some red holly berry lights to go on for the first time. I'm not crazy about them and I fear that the makes it look a bit like Sauran's tree, but since there are still a lot more white lights than colorful ones, I think I can deal with it until the children out grown the need for more color. That will be a while. The Toddler Girl doesn't care about color yet. She's just busy undecorating the bottom quarter of the tree and hiding ornaments all over the house.

Saturday my dad and older brother and the dog left for home. My younger brother and mother stayed one more day. They were tired and took naps in the late morning/early afternoon, while the kids, Justin and I walked around our neighborhood visiting all the new shops and a lot of the old ones, just to browse. We picked up popsicles at our neighborhood popsicle shop and walked to the park. It was lovely weather and good to get out of the house.

Yesterday, Sunday, my mother and younger brother left. We went to church. In the afternoon, I made a couple padded swords. I'm planning to try and sell them at the neighborhood art show I'm participating in next weekend, but they didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. Hmph.

So here we are at today. I need to do all the usual stuff like buying groceries and washing mountains of clothes as well as continuing to get stuff ready for the art show this weekend and thinking about Christmas presents for my inlaws.