I'm alive!

I did fall off the face of the Earth but I have found my way back. I haven't abandoned my blog for this long in a couple of years. Sorry. Life happens. But let me catch you up on the last month or so. I have been working out a lot. I take pilates on Thursday nights and Princess is my teacher. Love her! But she has a way of trying to hurt you, but in a nice way. Last Thursday, it ended up being just me and Princess in class. I knew I was in trouble when she said, "Since it's just you and me, we'll do all high level stuff tonight." I survived and had someone take our picture after class.

Apparently this post is not going to be in chronological order so just work with me. Before pilates on Thursday, the three younger kids (Austin, Lauren and Mackenzie) had open house at their school. Nick is in intermediate school and had his on Monday. Here are all of the kids with their teachers. (Clockwise: Lauren, Mackenzie, Nick and Austin)

The schools are smart and always have their book fair during the week of open house. Clifford was visiting the book fair and I had to snap a picture of my crew.

The big project for 2nd grade last six weeks was creating a rainforest animal. The whole 2nd grade hallway was transformed into a big rainforest during open house. It was pretty cool. Lauren's animal was an ocelot and Mackenzie had a red-eyed tree frog. I have somehow passed on my procrastination study skills to my children and the night before the animals were due, we headed to the dollar store and bought about $30 worth of junk and created some animals. It was a fun project and the end results were pretty good. Lauren especially loved her ocelot and slept with it before she had to turn it in. Here are Lauren and Mackenzie with their projects. Be sure to notice Lauren's skirt. That was the day she had to present her project to the class so she had to wear an ocelot-print skirt. Such a fashion queen!

Speaking of Lauren ... she loves our little dog Lucky. She wants to sleep with her every night but I usually don't let her. However, I caught her taking a nap with Lucky the other day and had to take their picture.

Austin was sick most of the month of February. He had some respiratory thing going on and we just couldn't get him well. He missed almost two weeks of school but he did manage to go to his two cup stacking events. For those of you who have never heard of it, Speed Stacking or Sport Stacking is a fairly new sport that involves stacking and unstacking cups really fast. Sounds silly but it is fun to watch. Anyway, the fastest 2 kids from each grade level are invited to be on the school's demonstration team and Austin is one of the lucky 2 in the 4th grade. They performed during halftime at the UTA Mavericks basketball game and also during an intermission at the Dallas Stars hockey game. In the picture on the bottom, that's Austin standing on the very left of the table.

Lauren has been really sick for the last week. She missed every day but one this week and the one day she went, I had to go get her early. At least she wasn't sick at the same time as Austin. I hear her coughing right now and she had a fever over 104° earlier tonight so I had to break out the really potent medicine and the fever is down. But a couple of weeks ago, before she was sick, she and Marty went on their annual date to the Daddy/Daughter Dance at the community center. They always have a great time together. Marty lets her pick where she wants to go to dinner but this year, she just wanted to go straight to the dance. (Update: I just took Lauren's temperature and it is down to 98°! I guess there's nothing that Tylenol with Codeine won't take care of.)

Let's see, we went to the zoo a couple of weeks ago. We bought our annual zoo pass last summer and hadn't used it yet so we decided that we needed to go at least once. Here are a couple of pictures of the craziest animals at the zoo that day.

My cousin was in town at the same time as my uncle so I went over to mom's house to see them. Joy is Mom's sister's daughter and they live in Louisiana. Her baby is gorgeous! And my uncle is Mom's brother. He lives in Michigan. He was actually in town with my aunt but I never saw her because she was in bed with the flu the whole time they were here. So sad.

And, finally, here is one last picture. I go out with some girlfriends the last Friday of every month. We call it GOLF (Girls Only Last Friday). Here's a picture from our last GOLF event. It's always fun times.

I think that's all I have for now. I will really try to be better at staying up to date again. I hope you are all doing great. Thanks to those of you who have emailed to check in on me.

Here's some music. I can't stop listening to this song. It's a great work out song. Hope you enjoy it: Family Force 5, Love Addict

Hold up, wait a minute, put a little love in it!

Hey, Can't kick the habit
Yeah, I got to have it
Yeah, I'm what they call a
Love addict, Love addict
Hey, can't live without it
Yeah, G'on shout about it
Hey, I'm a symptomatic
Love addict, Love addict