This past week or so: we saw "The Phantom of the Opera" with Steve and Laura, went to Michigan, and went to the Super Bowl party at Wilhite's.

The mouse met an untimely, violent, terrifying demise today. One night with glue traps baited with bread and peanut butter and I got it....the box the traps came in actually has instructions for how to humanely release the mouse from the glue. However, there were no instructions for what I did with it, which was put it in a plastic bag and bash it's tiny little mouse head in with a shovel. That is the wages of eating my food and taking a dump on my silverware (see also 3-02-2002).

We have had a rather extended weekend. Last Friday I left work a little early since it was Beth's birthday, and we left the kids with a babysitter and went to Fort Wayne with the Johnsons. The intention was to eat out at Outback and then see a movie, but there really weren't any we were that excited about so we went to Barnes & Noble instead. On the way out of Jefferson Pointe we could smell the Krispy Kremes so we stopped in for fresh donuts while were were at it. I had actually never eaten a warm, just-made KK donut and I must admit it was really good. I didn't even know about the neon light in the window that gets turned on when the hot donuts are ready until then. Anyway, we headed back after the snack which was a good thing, because the winter storm that had been predicted all day started showing up while we on the way home. The roads were getting really bad while taking the babysitters home. Saturday, we went grocery shopping, spending over $300 because we had to replace everything that had been in the freezer that melted or thawed because our dear son figured out how to move the temperature selector switch to off last week. On Sunday afternoon, the cat seemed a little too interested in something under the stove while I was watching football, and upon opening the drawer I found the mouse I had suspected was here for a while. He got away, but his day is coming. Later we had movie night at our house. You should see Alex and Carson play on and around the playset together...it was like two toddlers hopped up on Mountain Dew or something. What a hoot. And today we had the Johnsons over again...we were going to watch the season premiere of "Monk" we recorded the other day, and then this week's "24," but somehow Monk was left out (mostly delays due to kid things).

01-05-2005...We got Dish Network installed today. I finally got tired of the cable rates getting jacked up again and again so we now have satellite AND a digital video recorder for about $10 a month less than cable.

The holiday season is officially over. All the visits are done, parties are over, and nothing left to look forward to except going back to work and having a day off on Good Friday. It has been a very good holiday season though, with the exception of a couple days in there when Beth and I were sick. We took my family to Pickerman's for lunch and to Courthouse Coffee for gellato just before they left (Laura took them) on the 29th, and early morning on the 30th I was feeling sick. By 8:00 am I started throwing up, and did so about every 2 hours until mid-afternoon. The rest of the day, I just felt sick. All I could eat all day was a few pieces of toast. The morning of the 31st I was feeling all right again but Beth seemed to have the same thing. She only threw up once though, and by mid-afternoon she was feeling well enough to go out and do something, and since it hit 61 degrees on the 31st we decided to go geocaching. We had a plan to do four nearby caches, but at the first one we noticed that Alex had wet though his diaper and soaked his pants and car seat, and although we had a change of clothes in the bag for him we did not have any diapers. Missy had also spit up all over herself and we didn't have a change of clothes for her. We were close enough to the second cache to sneak over to get that one too but then called it off so we could get home for baths. In the evening we went to the Johnson's house for New Year's Eve stuff, played some Scene It and chased the kids until about 10:00 when we headed home. Today, my big project was to figure out how to get the car seat pad off and wash it. I can't believe how gross a car seat can get...wait, yes I can. There were pieces of snacks stuck in there that he hasn't had to eat in months...all those times he peed on it or spilled juice on it or whatever...we had forgotten how nice it looked when it was clean.