Many Apologies

For the serious lack of postage lately. We were down sick for a week, then our hard drive crashed (and has yet to be fixed!), and then we took an impromptu trip to California for Andrew's grandfather's funeral.

The trip was quite an adventure. Due to poor planning, Andrew and I were on different flight. This meant splitting up the kids -- Christopher and Grace with me and PX with Andrew. My flights were fabulous. Andrew's were . . . not. Poor guy. Poor PeterXavier. We spent five event filled days with Andrew's very enormous Filipino family. We ate lots of yummy Filipino food and sang more karaoke that I care to remember. (What is it with Filipinos and Karaoke??) Andrew's dad is the oldest of 10 kids and this was the first time ever that all ten had been together. It was quite a gathering.

But now we are back and hopefully life will return to normal. And hopefully our computer will get fixed soon. If I am absent again, it is due to my lack of technonlogy!

Field Trip

I took my kidders and Angelica, and we met Stacy Martin and her kids here yesterday. It was really really neat. It is the oldest continuesly running glass factory in the world, which gives them the ability to renovate nearly any stained glass window. The kids loved seeing molten glass scooped up and plopped on big conveyer belts. The crabby lady in the gift shop seemed seriously irritated that we showed up with seven kids under the age of five, but they were super well behaved, so I don't know what she is whinning about.
The rest of the day was kind of a bust. The nature center and the art gallery we wanted to see were both closed, so we just took the kids to lunch and headed back to town.
Stacy, in all her insanity, then called us up and invited us over for dinner! I wasn't even planning on feeding anyone, so an invite was greatly apprecated! It turned out that Sean had been sent home from a meeting with all of the leftover food, so there was a ton and no one had to cook anything. Hooray for leftovers.

She's still a baby

And a darn cute one at that. Christopher was wrong. The baby was not all grown up when she arrived yesterday morning. Anna had a beautiful and healthy little girl named Julia Noel. How fun to have three sweet little Hatke girls! (Thanks to Annie's blog for the pic!)

This morning the kids woke up to find that the three wise men had left them beautiful cookies and tickets to the Nutcracker in their stockings. I was a bit concerned that they would get bored with the ballet, but they were completely enthralled! They really loved it and I must say, it was an impressive show.

Quotable

Christopher: "Wow! Aunt Anna's baby is going to be a kid by the time she goes to the hospital! Or at least a toddler."

To hit home his point that all babies must be born in hospitals, this evening at children's adoration when asked why Mary and Joseph were in a stable he announced:

"Because there were no hospitals!"

Some times when I haven't posted in so long I feel like I should recap on everything that has happened. Pictures would be the best means of doing that, but of course my camera isn't working, so I have nothing to show. Maybe sometime I can get over to my parents and hijack some of my dad's pictures.

So I won't bore you, only say that Christmas was wonderful. Midnight Mass was absolutely fabulous -- all you mom's (annie and anne!) who had a hard time or went to Mass on Christmas day -- just go to midnight. It is totally worth it. I think the trick is not letting them sleep before hand so that they crash when they get there.

This is a totally lame post. I have nothing to say, but I feel obligated to write something becasue it has been so long. Maybe PX will do something funny today or SOMEONE might have a baby and then I'll have something interesting to say. Sorry to bore you.