Gosh, it's been awhile since I posted. Nothing too interesting has been happening. Let's see . . .

We've had lots of guests. Dinner/playdate guests (wrote about that last time), then my family visited for Mother's Day (and we all got crazy in the jumpy), then Dwayne, Raquel, and Lourdes visited, all in three weeks time.

We had our big Syttende Mai celebration in town, but it rained a bunch so we didn't do as many events as we normally do. The weather was great for the Saturday parade though.

Allie is partway through a five-week series of tumbling classes. And she's the only student. Yep, the only one. Normally, there's two brothers, twin sisters, another boy, and Allie in her class, at a minimum. Apparently all the other parents decided to take a break at the same time.

Two weeks ago, Allie had two instructors just for her. Last week, she had one instructor all to herself. She gets worn out in that half hour, needless to say. Normally she has to wait her turn and she gets to rest between somersaults or cartwheel attempts or jumping on the trampoline, but she's coming home from these classes sweaty and thirsty.

The tumbling class people aren't going to cancel her class because there are classes immediately before and following hers and they'd just have to sit around between. We can't get her in the class before because it's a little too early. And the class afterwards has kids that are at least a year older than her.

Alexandra, despite her middle name of Grace, isn't the most graceful or coordinated kid. It's just recently that she walks down a balance beam that sits on the floor without going tentatively and slowly sideways. I think she'd really feel behind if we put her in a class with older kids.

So it seems she'll continue her solo excursions in tumbling for another three weeks.

On Wednesday night, Allie and I spent two hours transforming a box from Howie (if you know us and have been to our house, you know Howie) into a castle. I cut a door, three windows, made turrets, made an angled roof, made curtains, fixed shutter latches and a doorknob, and then we made a bed inside and Allie laid down to watch TV through one of the windows.

The next day, I strung a string of Christmas lights inside so she has power. It's pretty cool, but I'd like to add wallpaper (so you don't see the writing on the brown cardboard) and flower boxes on the windows and color at least the front (maybe paint?). I know, you're thinking, whose project is this? I think that should be obvious.

This weekend, Marcia and Dave visited, I made a quick trip home for my sister Pam's 40th birthday party (Happy Birthday, old lady!), and Greg and Dave tiled the backsplash of our kitchen, on the wall with the stove. Greg can now make tomato sauce with impunity. It looks great. Good job, honey.

What have you been up to?