Jen really got nailed by the cold currently circulating through the family. She's got a really bad sore throat and an ear infection. This particular illness also comes with eye goopiness. The left one. The girls are slightly goopy too. We would all dearly love to curl up in bed and do little or nothing, but this is never ever possible, so we get up and drag ourselves around the house scrubbing and picking up things the kids have carelessly flung here and there.
I've got the milder version myself. Just a mild sore throat and one of those headaches that only becomes noticable when I bend over. Oh, and phlegm. Despite this, I still did a couple of birthday parties today. I broke a beaker at the first one, and arrived at the other one without the gift bags I was supposed to bring. Maybe I should have stayed at home. Then again, between the two parties, I got tipped sixty bucks and got to eat homemade samosas (very enjoyable), vegetable pastries, cupcakes, and cookies.

I was just trying to get The Dickens to calm down so she would go to sleep, and she shouted, I DON'T WANNA HEAR YOUR STOWY PAPA! Willow keeps popping out of bed too. The boys, not to be left out, are furtively playing with flashlights in their room. I have these little fantasies where everybody happily gets into bed at the end of a long day, like sailors battening down the hatches... (hold on, there's some sort of loud thumping coming from the other room... okay, I'm back. Of course they denied everything) As I was saying, I wish bedtime wasn't like pulling teeth from some large, unwilling carnivore.

The cool weather spell has broken. The hot weather has taken over.

Here's a picture of the Pueblan Milk Snake. In the last couple of weeks, both The Dickens and Lexy have had their pictures taken with it for some sort of school reason. It usually hides under its water dish. The girls like looking for it. Willow shouts, "snake! hide!"