Darn You, Nora Roberts!!

It's not like I don't know how the book will end, they're all the same.

I certainly didn't need to stay up until after 1am to finish the darn thing. And on a school night!!

I suppose I should be thanking you for wiriting such compelling stories, even if most people pass them off as fluffy romance novels. Sure, the characters have a tendancy to fall in love instantaneously, and are of course complete opposites in almost every way. And your love scenes, while very exciting, have no basis in reality as far as I can tell. And yet...

The characters are fun, I love the mystery wound up with the romance, and I needed to see how the bad guy was dealt with and how the two main characters overcame their personal issues and hooked up. That's some tricky writing!

Darn you, Nora Roberts, for writing these novels! And since I started the next one this morning, I can look forward to another sleepless night tonight. Sigh.

A Really Good Day

Xander has been very challenging lately - lots of attitude, bad behavior at school - which made yesterday all the more sweet. It was like the perfect day. In the morning Xander helped me make pancakes. He mixed the batter, spooned it into the pan, put in the chocolate chips, and even flipped them over! But his helperness didn't stop there. While I washed dishes, he volunteered to clean the bathroom sink (between Xander and Joe, it's usually a wreck). And he did a bang-up job using just a few Lysol wipes to get everything clean and shiny. More chores followed, as I helped him sort and match his socks.

After the chores, we headed outside. It was snowing, but it wasn't very cold. And the snow was perfect packing snow. Xander showed me how to make a snowman, probably the first one I've done since I was a kid myself, and then we had a big snowball fight. Xander's favorite part was getting buried in the snow, and then busting out like the Hulk!

Nothing goes better after some snow play than hot cocoa, so that was next on our list. One of my co-workers had given me a gift set for Christmas, with two mugs, to packs of cocoa, and s'mores fixings. While we waited for the water to boil, Xander constructed uncooked s'mores for us to share with Daddy. He handed out the hot cocoa and we all had a snack and watched some Scooby Doo.

After dinner, Xander got the stool out and helped me make banana smoothies. He'd been begging for them all day. We read an Iron Man story at bed time and he slept through the night - no bad dreams! It was nice having my formerly-nice son back, even if it was only for one day. (He told me this morning that Bad Xander is back from vacation.) What am I going to do with this kid??

Busy 3-Day Weekend!

The Bruno family was hoppin' this weekend, let me tell you! It started on Friday, when we had Eli, Krissy and the kids over for dinner. When Xander wasn't getting in trouble for being too bossy or being mean, you could overhear the following type of conversation: "Come on, Sweetie. (Aislin) You know you have to do your homework." How cute!

Saturday we dropped Xander off for an overnight with Joe's folks. He was more than happy, since Grandma has so many toys. And they took him out to dinner at the Pizza Shack in Cobleskill, where he won $6 off his grandpa in a bet. Aww! Mommy's little gambler!

Joe and I spent Valentine's Day in Albany, where we foolishly decided we'd just eat wherever we got the notion to, very spontaneous. Forgetting, of course, that it was VALENTINE'S DAY. Every place we went was absolutely mobbed! The line at the Cheesecake Factory just for cheesecake takeout was about a half hour wait. Zoinks! We ended up dining at Houlihan's in the Crossgates Mall, which only had a twenty minute wait. The food was nothing too special, but by that point I was ready to gnaw my own limbs off.

On Sunday we had Joe's folks up for dinner, and to get our son back. Xander told me he had so much fun, he forgot he lived with us. Nice. I made my new favorite dish - BBQ beef cups - and it was a big hit. And my husband was feeling so mellow, he actually VOLUNTEERED to babysit Xander and Eli's kids on Monday. All day. While I was out grocery shopping. Krissy dropped the kids off at 9:30 and Eli picked them up at 3pm. They played together pretty well this time, and Aislin didn't want to leave.

That was our busy weekend. And this week is Winter Break at school, so work will be nice and relaxed for me. And Xander is spending his free time at daycare - hopefully not beating up all the little kids! Hope everyone else had a great three-day weekend!

Hip Deep in the 70s

The last few weeks I have been filling my brain - and my flash drive - with all things 70s. It's my intent to create a scrapbook documenting both the decade at large and my family's place in it. At this point I have enough info for probably ten scrapbooks! But I can't stop researching.

And hey...how did we ever do research without the internet?? I've gotten tons of pictures, vintage advertisements, and info just from Wikipedia alone. (Yeah, probably not all of it is accurate, but I'm not sellin' the darn scrapbook!)

If you have any 70s memories to add to my collection, I'd sure like to hear them!