OK, so we didn’t go to Grandmother’s house, but I did go away — did you miss me?

I missed all of you, and I’m back now, and Wow!  It’s 2009!  How did that happen?

When last I posted, I was lamenting the fact that the boys weren’t going to get to go skiing.  Well, turns out they did go skiing that day and had a marvelous time.  And then Suzanne tried not to have a cow because they drove home in the dark and in the snow, and took about an hour longer than they should have.

Mark’s 25 year old ski boot cracked and he said he thought about calling me and saying “Guess what got broken?”

I told him that if he HAD made that phone call with that kind of question right off the bat, I might have had to kill him.

Our little mini-vacation took us norht (yes, it was colder there, but…we were inside so it was OK).  We went to the Mall of America, shopped on the way up on Monday, spent Tuesday at the amusement park in the mall, then came home on Wednesday.  We actually had a nice time (and I scored some pretty good stuff on SALE).

Joe discovered how much he really loves roller coasters, and Will discovered that one of the roller coasters wasn’t that bad and that it was really fun to make MOM go on it and sit across from her and watch her face (and listen to her scream).  It’s kind of a weird coaster — you sit in a 4 person car that spins as it is hurtling along the track.  No big dips, no loops (I do NOT do upside down…), and so Will thought it was OK.

One of the highlights of my day was meeting up with Mary for lunch.  I had met her in person before, and when I knew we were going to make the trip, I e-mailed and asked her if she was available.  I actually thought I was going to go downtown to meet her, but then our plans ended up changing, and she was willing to take the light rail out to the mall to meet me.  It worked out nicely and we had a great time.  She MADE me buy some stuff at the bead store.  I didn’t even know there WAS a bead store.

It’s too dark in here to get very good pictures, but I think you can see how (a) adorable the penguin beads are (they stand about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch tall) and (b) how pretty the glass beads are.  I might try to take better pictures tomorrow in the light.

Don’t know what I’m going to do with them, probably just look at them for awhile.

I was going to babble about some other stuff tonight, but then I got sidetracked looking for something in my browsing history and…it’s now midnight and I really ought to be in bed so…

I’ll babble more tomorrow!

Suzanne