Remember Me?

Well.

Hi, there.

Got a new look. See?

Feel free to look around. We haven't seen each other in a long time, and pretending an intense interest in my new wall art is a perfectly legitimate way to gloss over the temporary awkwardness.

What's up with me?

Well, it's been a busy summer around here. Somehow it just flew by and before I knew it school had started and the maples in the neighbor's backyard were flashing brilliant shades of red and orange.

Wow. You should see those maples. So beautiful that it's almost enough to make up for the tons of leaves we're going to have to rake up over the next few weeks.

The kids had a good summer. Arielle has lost her first two baby teeth. She had her first birthday party and finished up with a frightening number of presents. Gabrielle also had a birthday and is now officially a "big girl, Mommy!" Michael not only survived in summer school, but throve, getting straight B's, the highest GPA he's had in years, if ever.

We had an actual vacation with the husband and did a little local sightseeing. The husband and I started the South Beach Diet and have both dropped a gratifying amount. I've lost about four inches around my waist (don't know how many pounds and don't want to) and the husband has lost about 30 pounds. (Way too many pounds and inches still to go, but hey, I'm not complaining. )

I realized my hair had gotten pretty long without my noticing it, and decided to let it grow until I could donate it to Locks of Love. I had my first large quantities of gray hair show up at my temples.

I spent hours on the phone with my sister and mother. I kept the house reasonably clean. I made plans to sign the girls up for summer activities like swimming lessons and never followed through on them. We went to the park for playgroup dates. We had friends over and went to friends' houses. There was much wearing of swimming suits and not enough wearing of sunscreen, which led to a couple of sunburns. Gabrielle fell down the basement stairs one awful day, and I spent the next two days checking her pupils obsessively, convinced that one was larger than the other.

I read gardening magazines, home decorating magazines and catalogs. I canned peaches. I ate three times as many peaches as I canned. Every week, I spent way too much money at the Farmer's Market. I learned how to grill zucchini and sweet potatoes, and found out that my husband will eat large quantities of green salad if I get the right kind of cucumbers. I found a free piano at a yard sale and nearly killed myself and two strapping teenage boys, getting it home.

Summer was a warm river, and we floated down it in our tennis shoes and tubing outfits.

I won't be posting every day, but I'll be keeping up here. I've missed you all.