We have had a busy, busy time since I last saw all of you.

Our Christmas was lovely. Our first Christmas as Catholics was both different and similar to previous Christmases. We ate Christmas Eve dinner with my husband's extended family. We had thought we might go to one of the vigil masses, having been told by everyone in the world that taking small children to Midnight Mass was insane. Instead, we wound up going to an 8:30 mass on Christmas morning, and although perhaps not as full of candles and beautiful music, it was a great way to dedicate the day.

Afterwards, we opened presents and went down to the town my sister-in-law and her family live in to have Christmas dinner with relatives.

Thursday morning I drove the kids back down to my sister-in-law's. Then I drove back to the purple house, where my father-in-law and two brother-in-laws were helping Justin clean, move things and get the house into better shape. The plumber was also there installing my clawfoot tub and the painter was finishing the kitchen walls. I ran errands for people, got lunch and stuff like that. By the end of the day, my father-in-law had vacuumed and mopped everything. We'd moved a lot of the furniture back into place and it was actually sort of looking like a house.

Then Justin and I got cleaned up and went out for a nice dinner to celebrate our anniversary. We've made it ten years and hope for many more decades to come. That was lovely and it was nice to come home, go to bed and not have to deal with the horde of children.

In the morning, we got up, went to breakfast and then did a few things at the house. We got the fridge moved into place, so the plumber could hook up the water line. The plumber came back in to finish hooking up fixtures in the powder room and do a few other things, which actually took most of the day. Justin did various stuff, I'm not sure what all.

It was shaping up to be another productive day, but I had to travel back down to my sister-in-law's house and pick up the kidlets. And what an adventure that turned out to be...