Yes, you’re right. I stopped blogging. But it’s nice of you to mention it. Here is a crash summary of the latest.

We took the boys and a neighbor kid bowling. The older two spent more time at the arcade, which is where they decided to invest a total of $25 to win handcuffs and a light-up grill. (Note to my mom: Grill means teeth with flashing lights.)

We also adopted a puppy. We think he is cute. My other dog does not think he is cute. We did have a dog trainer come to our house to help us turn our cute puppy into a polite puppy. The trainer almost couldn’t finish his explanation of how to train a dog by going on “50 First Dates” because he couldn’t get over how much Teddy looks like Benji. (8-year-old: Who is Benji?) As for the “50 First Dates,” I’ll see you 50 strangers soon. Please humor me by asking my dog to sit and giving him a treat. In turn, he will like you and then he will like all strangers. Until they don’t give him a treat….hmmm…. I hope this works out.

The past couple of weeks I have spent way too many hours working. When work was manageable again, I spent an evening listening to Kirstie Alley speak. After the event, my friends and I headed to the front of the ballroom to see if we could get a picture with her. I took a photo of some girl I didn’t know posing with Kirstie, but when it was my turn, the actress decided she was done taking photos. I mean, posing for four photos is a lot of work. Especially when you probably don’t want to be speaking at a Chamber dinner on a Tuesday night. What can one expect? So this is the only shot I got.

For Thanksgiving we traveled to my hometown. My 3-year-old was very helpful by getting everyone packed. Maybe too helpful.

And while we were in the area, we went to visit my cousin who opened a bar. The part that is either terrible – or a really smart use of time – is that we went to his bar on Thanksgiving night!!

Even though visiting with family on Thanksgiving (at a bar) was a nice way to spend the evening, I will probably not make family bar meetups a habit because while I was gone, this happened:

That, and I’m going to have to shed a few pounds to fit back into my going out jeans. I love my mom’s tacos!

Ugh!!! I put myself on a low carb diet and I want to eat the screen right now.