Go to Children's Museum.

Go to Children's Museum.

Within the time frame of one week each month, I am assigned 10-12 news stories and required to have them written and submitted, with pictures to my editor. The interviewing process usually takes six of those days and on the seventh day, I write. A lot.

During that time, every month, I become increasingly stressed, provide my children with increasingly less attention, and grow increasingly guilty about the whole process.

This past week extended into about 10 days and the entire family is ready to unwind from it all. One of my favorite ways to reconnect with my kids is to visit the Children's Museum.

I have found it is a deceivingly difficult place to get photos, which is fine, because I can just focus on having fun with the kids. Who doesn't enjoy building things and playing make-believe?

Write retaliation blog post.

My husband thinks he is so funny. Let me tell you a little story. It goes a little something like this:

Boys wants gun
Wife says no way
Boys begs for gun
Wife says no way
Boy buys gun anyway
Wife buys safe and locks gun in safe
Boy asks for combination
Wife says no way (who's laughing now?)

Jake insisted my desire to keep lethal weapons away from a home filled with curious children was because I was afraid of guns. To prove I was not, I let him drag me along shooting. When our friends began taking pictures of me shooting I knew I was in trouble and it wouldn't be long before Jake updated his 8-month hiatus blog. I was right. Read his latest masterpeice here.

Take kids sledding.

Take kids sledding.

Last week for family night we took the kids to a sledding bowl in the neighborhood. The kids of course had a blast. Jake was in charge of pushing them down the hill. He was also in charge of pulling them up the hill. That looked like a lot of work. I put myself in charge of the all-important task of taking pictures of it all.

Clean up Christmas.

Clean Up Christmas.

Instead of spending the first three days of the new year cleaning up Christmas, I spent them caving into societal pressure and reading the first three books of the Harry Potter series. And starting the fourth. Oh, and uh, taking care of the kids and stuff. Darn that Harry Potter.

Now, I am left with the task of dismantling our Christmas tree before it becomes too embarassing to let people into the house and reveal our "WT" status. I may even take down the Christmas --er, "party lights" we left up all of 2007 off our deck. But only because it turned out half of them didn't work when we turned them on after Thanksgiving. Otherwise I would leave them up because our friends all totally bought into the whole "party light" theory.

I usually count on Jake documenting Christmas with the video camera but this year it only recorded about 5 minutes before the tape ran out. And the first minute is recorded with the lens cap on. I was upset but not as upset as the time he recorded over the first two weeks of the life of our first child with his friend's water-skiing (love you, hun!). But, since a Christmas post is not complete without Christmas morning pictures, here are a few I took: