We got the letter from the school today...Alex has been accepted into the gifted and talented program for next year!

Aaaaaaah....clean carpets. If ever a houseful of carpets needed to be cleaned, it was ours.

Saturday was a busy day...we had been promising the kids we would take them to Bremen Bounce again for a while now, so we did, but as a reward for being good while we shopped for furniture. Our couch is literally falling apart and we've known it needed to be replaced for quite some time now. We looked around JB's for a bit, then Warsaw Furniture, where we've bought some things before, and found (re-found, in a catalog, the same couch we'd seen a year before and really liked) a really nice couch/loveseat set for a good price ($1142.76) and, since we should have a good tax return soon, I decided to just go ahead an buy it, much to the surprise and delight of Beth. So after this, we headed to Bremen armed with a coupon that Beth had found online somewhere that turned out to be not as great a deal as we thought because it required buying candy and pizza and all. Plus, when we got there we found that it was closing in about 20 minutes. So we let the kids bounce for 20 minutes, but at least they were kind enough to let us in at a discounted rate since we wouldn't be there for long. We got home in time to get Erika for our date night, but nothing was playing that we wanted to see so we did some shopping and got dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings and played trivia all evening. Today, we just took the kids bowling. And I moved the entertainment center into the kitchen, which was a lot of work, but we're getting the carpets cleaned this week and I want to get the area under and behind it.

Tabitha's birthday this week. Why do our friends always want to go out to dinner at Hacienda? WHY? Well, they don't, but even once in a while is enough. We went out with the McCoys and some other friends tonight to Hacienda for dinner. During dinner they asked us to move because they had put us in the back room, and they needed it back for some reason, so they compensated us for the hassle by offering us free desserts. Which we accepted. At least that was good stuff.

Missy went to the ENT today. And her tonsils are coming out in June. The choices were either on the 26th or the 15th...so we chose not to give her a really crappy birthday present.

It is late, I am tired, and I am glad to be off the road. We are back from spring break vacation. We spent the past week in Alabama visiting Judy and Neill and had a very good trip altogether. I wasn't sure we were going to make the trip at all for a while because Missy was so sick. She missed almost the entire week of school (she made it on Monday, then went downhill) to the point that on Thursday the 31st she was at MedStat getting a scrip for suppositories to stop the vomiting because she can't keep anything down, and we left town on Friday the 1st. I truly had no intention of leaving on schedule, but Beth seemed to think there was no reason not to go on time, so we did. Alex hadn't been sick at all, bless his heart, nor had I, but I was like "you're not seriously thinking we should go, are you?" but she was. Anyway, Missy seemed fine almost right away when she could finally stop throwing up. Friday I took a half day off and we picked up Alex after school and headed out. We had Katie staying at the house and taking care of the kitties. The plan was to get to the other side of Louisville the first night and find a hotel, but being the first day of spring break everyone in the world was on the same road we were. Traffic on I-65 southbound was reeeeeally heavy. By the time we we ready to stop for the night, there were no vacancies, anywhere. We pulled into 3 or 4 hotels before someone at one told us that there were no rooms anywhere and we should try Elizabethtown. There, they told us to try Cave City. There, they told us Bowling Green. There, we drove a few miles off the highway to see if we could find a place, and we finally did. At 12:30 am, over 100 miles after we first started looking for a place. Beth had taken over driving by then and I was trying to get some rest because I had resigned myself to driving all night already. But we found a good place a few miles off the interstate, for a lot cheaper than most places on the interstate had been getting. So anyway, we made it to Birmingham at a reasonable time the next day without being too tired to do anything. We had a very nice time seeing the Vulcan, the Birmingham Zoo (Lorakeets...really cool!), the McWane Science Center, the Peanut Depot (twice), playing mini golf, and hanging out at Judy and Neill's beach. The last couple of days, it got hot enough that we agreed to let the kids swim (to us, the water was barely above freezing, but kids don't care). We also played tennis with the kids, did some shopping, and visited the cafe that inspired the movie 'Fried Green Tomatoes' which turned out to be anticlimactic, then Missy got most of her lunch spilled in her lap (not her fault) so we had to do some more shopping. Alex got sick and threw up one afternoon but felt fine right after, and I felt kind of worn-out-sick for a day and a half or so, but otherwise our overall health was good all week. Saturday there was a little festival of sorts going on at Mt Laurel, with booths and sidewalk sales and all right there, and it got to about 90 degrees. We stayed until early afternoon before hitting the road, then drove as far as Bowling Green to stay at the same hotel we were in on the way down (this time, however, we got a room on Hotwire.com for cheaper than before and the knowledge of where we were going to stay that night). And since we were in the area, we took the kids to visit Mammoth Cave on the way north. We spent a few hours taking a cave tour, during which time Alex met a boy he really hit it off with and they talked about Pokemon most of the tour. The kids really seemed to like the cave, and have already asked if we can go back there someday. We told them sure, but I'm not ready to do any more driving yet.

My final four didn't even come close. 0-for-4. Overall I was 35-28 in picks which is pathetic. My champion Duke lost in the sweet 16 and VCU was supposed to lose in the opening round. And Michigan State did lose in the opening round. Better luck next year...