Oh yawn.... I'm late today and moving slowly. Are you? Of course we watched the whole thing last night. Power outage and all. (My twitter feed was hilarious during that, let me tell you!) And now no more football for six months. I'm sure some of you are thrilled. Some of us (this household) are counting the days until spring training for baseball (eight). Oh, and thumbs down on most of the commercials...I left unimpressed, but you know what? I love Beyonce. You go girl.

Other than that ... we had a really lovely weekend. After two weeks ago, with the high stress of reeling over Vi's diagnosis and then last week with my trip, it was nice just to be home and be normal. Really, really nice. Kicked things off on Friday with some of my favorite gals. Low-key, night it, too many snacks, not many drinks, just catching up in the best way. It's so nice to know that you have a group of women nearby that you can lean on when you need and go months (too long) without seeing each other and still be right there. We all need people like that, don't we?

Neel and I had fun running errands together on Saturday, and our little dogs inspected every move he made, which cracked me up! Look how intent (#11) they are at what he's doing! My mom had pointed out over Christmas that the vanity in the guest bath might need a wee bit more storage space, so we added a shelf over the toilet. That room is done now, except for some art. I'll blog about it so you can see the finished project ASAP.

I finally opened the lens I had waiting for me for the past few days. It's an upgrade of El Cheapo, which has been hunting for focus lately. That Adorama box had been sitting on my kitchen counter since Thursday, but I waited. I'm really good at that, actually. I can't walk past a bag of chips, but I can delay gratification on the big stuff. Go figure. Good news! The lens is great. I played with it a bit this weekend and plan on digging in more this week. I'll admit, it's not quite as thrilling as a totally brand new lens, two of which are on my radar, but hmmmm...this is a pretty darned nice improvement so far!

We unexpectedly had one of Callum's friends for dinner Saturday night, so I unexpectedly made cookies from a mix that my friend Jackie gave me. I need to track down the recipe for the homemade mix earlier because they're delish! With Cal's friend visiting, we had just enough people to play "Spoons" by the fire. We could have used more kids, but we managed. I was blissed out. It really was my perfect evening. Kids willing to hang with us. No TV, just cards and laughter and a fire and music in the background. Who could ask for more?

We rarely go to brunch, which is a shame because I love brunch, but yesterday we tried a new local place called Chow. It was awesome. Neel's crab pot pie won the day. And I'd go back anyday too. My Bloody Mary was awesome. And it's a good thing Neel took a nap on Saturday AND Sunday because the Super Bowl was long, wasn't it? But a fun game, even with that freaky power outage. We spent the evening at a school chum of Callum's. It was great and we had a lovely time. We came home early and were in the car for most of the excitement, but that meant for extra puppy snuggles before bedtime. Our Violet continues to truck along. She was a bit wobbly on Friday and Saturday which had me worried. Obviously, at some point the steroids will stop working, but not yet, please not yet. By Sunday, she was full of pep and even followed us almost all the way upstairs to the second floor before we rescued her. It wore her out, but she's smiling and wagging at us still, which is good.

I have all sorts of stuff planned this week. Reading all the amazing links you've sent me, working on posts and the blog itself. Carving out a massive to-do list and some nice meetings thrown in. I still want to stick my butt in a bubble bath, though. What do you guys have going on?