happy birthday abigail!

As cliche as it sounds to go on and on about how I can not possibly be the mom of kids so old, I will say it anyway. Abigail is 26 years old today. (Emily will be 28 in January, eeks!) How can I possibly be so old? How can she be so old? Since I spend most of my days muddling through being patient with teenagers and keeping the energetic little kids happy, I forget that, for all intents and purposes, a few of my kids have actually passed successfully on to independence. Abigail did well in high school, graduated from a 4-year college with an accounting degree, and has a job in the big city. She is happy with her life, she is a good girl. She has a bad knee, which she dislocated while playing volleyball a few years ago...it was not put back into joint properly and healed wrong. She goes to physical therapy a few times a week, but it is still painful and limits her activities. Anyway, today is her birthday, and since I have my act together, I have tons of fun planned. Not really, but seriously: if you are one of my kids and are reading this, you know by now that the degree that a celebration is planned in advance has no correlation to the degree that you are loved. 'Cause I do love you all.

Sickness update: Jon's fever was 103.7 last night. He seems a bit better this morning. Charlotte Claire has a fever. Camille had one yesterday, this morning she is lying on the couch with a normal temperature. Sonja still had a fever last evening.

I actually crawled back into my warm comfy bed this morning after I got up and saw the older kids out the door and ran around in the cold with Suri. I checked on the girls and decided they couldn't go, and...back to bed I went. Oh, it was nice. I dozed off and everything. I could so easily be a lazy bum. Or rather, more of a lazy bum.

And since no one wants to hear about what I bought at the store yesterday and what I still have to do before Christmas, I won't bore you with the details. But let's just say I have like five kids to still get things for.

Does anyone else have kids who like to write on things other than paper? Camille scribbled in green marker on the side of the counter-top trim. I took a wild guess that she was the culprit, when I told her I knew it was her, she didn't deny it. She asked me how I knew. So I guess my guess was right.

I am starting to get really excited for Benjamin to come home for Christmas. I had better get him a present though...