Well I guess I was taking a brief, unplanned blogging break

Just as much of a surprise to me... Anyhow, we made it home just fine from Hawaii, and are all still kicking, but life has been crazy (even for us). TubaDad left for a nine-day business trip the day after we got home from Hawaii and I actually had to make a To Do list there were so many things to get done this week.

I did take a few pictures that first day we were home, intending to do a zippy "How We Spent Our First Day back in CA" post. And, well, didn't happen. So, even though it's kinda lame to post that old stuff now, here's what we did the first day back.

1) Ate some of the pineapple TubaDad lovingly carried on the plane and reminisced about how you just can’t get good pineapple here at home. We have this evil-looking device that cores and peels with one little ka-chunk:

2) I spent a lot of time NOT doing the mounds of travel laundry that were taunting me. But I did take a picture of them – gosh that’s helpful:

3) The girls “checked email” on their iPad. They’ve figured out how to open a new email and type a few letters so the “To” line gets autofilled from our address book. If anyone has gotten garbled, completely nonsense emails from us recently, please ignore:

4) Ro and Ree played on their beloved playstructure for hours. I think it might be the only thing they missed while in Hawaii:

5) The girls both had low fevers and dry coughs, leftover from the islands. No big deal, but they thought they were so lucky to get yummy medicine a few times a day. They love it so much that if one sister needs it and the other doesn’t, the healthy one is completely and utterly despondent. And sometimes (shhhhhhh) I just give it to both of them anyhow. I know, I know, that’s all kinds of wrong, don’t even bother giving me the stern lecture:

6) They crafted up a storm. Paper, crayons, oodles of tape, stickers, colored paper reinforcers, scissors, Play Doh, cheerios, sand, water, tanbark, whatever they could get their hands on – it was all turned into fabulous things (over and over):

7) Mmm, looks tasty, huh? Notice that everyone is still in pajamas (that lasted all day), and hair hadn’t been combed since, well, I don’t even remember when. I’m guessing it was sometime before we got on the plane to leave Hawaii:

8) I finally watched the finale of American Idol and was just disgusted that Crystal didn’t win. I swear!!! No one will even remember that Lee dude in about a month.

9) At the end of the first day, Ro called out “Mama, mama, dares a beeyooooooooteeful sunset, come look!” And she was right.

It was a bummer to leave Hawaii, but home isn’t a bad place to be. It was a nice, relaxing first day back. And we needed it, because we switched into high gear the next morning and have been running our tails off ever since.