Who Hid Mom's Chocolate?

No escape from the Heartland of America this week, but that's not to say I'm no longer considering a permanent visit to San Diego, Portland and/or Cocoa Beach. Instead, celebrating our youngest peep's birthday ensued, complete with eating out at Famous Dave's (saucey amazingness!) and partying it up at home with friends (pizza, cake, ice cream, Wii games, Nerf darts & tackle football). Even I must admit that this year's birthday was most definitely a birthday to remember, at least until we outdo ourselves next year. Or try, anyway. Let's be optimistic here.

Behind the scenes of all this celebration madness, our oldest peep, the cellist, found herself in search of a full size cello to replace the ¾ cello she has outgrown, something that seems so odd when I can vividly remember when the ½ size one was taller than HER. Anyway, to do this, she recruited Mom (yes, me) to make a litany of phone calls in search of said replacement and to schedule actual cello viewings with her private cello teacher at local music stores. Who would've thought we'd be running all over tarnation in search of a simple cello replacement? Yeah well, unfortunately our search came up short, so that particular item remains on the 'To Do' list for yet another week, month, *insert random time frame here*.

Calendar check time - hey, cool! Another school day off for the peeps so that they might take some quality time to properly celebrate Martin Luther King Day by playing video games in their pajamas and building snow creatures outside for me to photograph from the window, mostly because I don't own long underwear or snow pants and would much rather stay inside where it's not FREEZING COLD. Makes total sense to me, but there I go digressing again.

Uh oh... wait, here's the not-so-cool thing on our calendar for the week: CCD Retreats. Will be getting back to you on that one. Lordy.

And now here's a birthday blooper just for fun: