An Open Letter

To my dear Blog,


I know that I have neglected you lately. For some of this neglect I have good excuses. For some of this neglect, I do not.


Let's stick with the parts where I have excuses.


First, I will reiterate that someone crashed into the back of my mvan. At the time of last blogging, I was in that grateful I'm-so-happy-my-kids-and-husband-came-out-in-one-piece stage. A lot of me holds on to that, but as the royal pain in the tooshie of getting a rental car big enough to fit your family began, wrestling with insurance companies reared its ugly head, and dealing with the body shop nonsense became my harsh reality, I started to have hatred towards the accident. And I still can't get over the fact that kids born in 1993 can drive automobiles. Maybe they shouldn't, in which case this thing would have never happened in the first place.


Next....


My eldest turned the ripe old age of five. *I* have a five year old! Yes, that freaks me out.


Kids these days don't just have birthdays, they have birth weeks. Does that make me sound old?

The beginning of the festivities was on Sunday. Only in Florida can you throw a pool/beach party in the middle of October. And it was hot as all get out, too.

Mason and Cole (and maybe even Lila? I can't remember at this point) had been rather sick in the days leading up to the party. What started off as a good effort towards pre-party prep ended in a mad rush to get the thing over with. Perhaps it makes me a bad mama, but I was not feeling like a party animal.

Cousin Alex was our Master of Ceremonies.

The kids had fun sometimes...

And sometimes they did not have so much fun...

Lila, she was definitely livin' large.

But by and large the biggest hit was this game--Drip Drop Slash. A Florida version of Duck Duck Goose. The kids had a wild time.

Not such a tight grasp on the part of the game where you run around the circle though. Instead they ran away from it.

A close second for entertainment value was the hermit crab races.

Disgusting little buggers, if I do say.

I sewed this spiffy banner.

And I made some nifty cupcake toppers. Too bad I neglected to bring them to the party...

Sometime back we started an event of taking the birthday child to a special, one-on-one breakfast with a parent. Cole picks daddy, and I put on a brave face even though I want to die inside when I don't get picked.

But Mason! Oh my Mason! I can trust him to pick me.

And when it was all done, he even asked me if next year I would bring him to breakfast on his birthday again. So despite my doubts and convictions, I guess I'm doing something right here.

I bought him $40 worth of Spiderman cupcakes to take to school. The boys' school does not allow homemade goods to be brought in. How do you people feel about that? I think it's crap. I'm sure someone out there agrees and doesn't want their kid eating someone else's homemade stuff, which makes me think that the world has gone to pot.

Mason's birthday happened to be fire truck day at school, and my original plan had been to go and take pictures of the event and his cupcake eating. But alas, I had to go to the body shop for the mvan, thus eliciting less accident gratefulness and more accident hatred that I was discussing before.

That night, Mason's request was a grilled cheese dinner at Calistoga. A boy after my own heart.

And like that, a three day celebration, two cakes with singing, one happy boy later and we were finally done celebrating.

Okay, Blog, I get it. That's probably not a good explanation as to why I haven't posted in 33 days. So I'll continue.

We took a trip to Tampa. Rey's best friend Nick is getting married, which to say the least is freakin' amazing. He is lucky to have found his beautiful fiancee Angie, even if we can't understand what she sees in him. (Kidding! Love ya Nick!)

They lived in Michigan but were visiting Florida for a friend's wedding, so they had an engagement party for the ol' college crew.

It was a bit of a frat boy reunion. But I am happy to say that not one but TWO of Rey's frat brothers told me I haven't aged a day in the eight years since college. LOVE those boys!

Which brings us to Halloween.

There are no words.

Oh, wait! Yes, I can think of a few.

Candy. Candy. Candy. CANDY. Candy. Candy. Candy. Costumes. CANDY. Candy. Costumes. Candy. CANDY!

Kids with stomach aches eating more candy!

And lastly, mixed into all the everyday mayhem, the sick kids mayhem, the birthday mayhem and the Halloween pandemonium, there is running.

Remember? I decided that running a half marathon was a good idea!

And now, running is no longer something I do for fun, something I do on days where other forms of exercise elude me, it's something that I have scheduled.

For real, I have a calender with mileage and rest days and strength days and cross training days.

I'm still pretty sure I have no clue what I'm doing.

But as much as I bitch about it, and I really do hate to run, I will kick ass and take names.

Cause that's how I roll.

So you see, Dearest Blog? I have neglected you, I know.

But I had my reasons.

XOXO,

Ashley

P.S. Lots of complaints were lodged through the various channels about the lack of your updating, Blog. It's amazing that none of these people who miss my posting ever, AHEM, leave comments. : ) Cause then I would be more aware of my wide and vast and expansive audience and how it misses me so.