Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

So I just took an unplanned 4 week break from the blog. There was no specific reason aside from not really feeling like blogging. Lately every post feels like more of the same. Here's an overview of the past 4 weeks. Hopefully getting caught up will make me feel more like blogging, because hey, there won't be so much to catch up on.

1. Christmas was super fun. As is my family tradition, on Christmas Eve we went over to my Mom's house. We opened presents, ate food, and hung out. It was wonderful fun and made me grateful again that they are here.

2. Christmas morning we opened our stockings from Santa, ate, and played with toys. This car track from one of Ry's aunts was hands-down the Christmas favorite.

3. The day after Christmas, we loaded up the truck and made for Oz. Along the way, we spent the most miserable night hotel night EVAR when our hotel didn't have a crib. "No problem," we thought. "We'll just each sleep with a kid." While the boys slept pretty well, Ry and I got a combined 3 hours since we had an elbow, head, foot, or knee in our faces or sides approximately every 5 minutes. Then, Cheeky Monkey decided he was up for the day at 5 am. Hotel room fail.

The upside is that we got on the road really early and made it to Oz by 2 pm. We stopped on our way into town to visit a longtime friend and then went to my Dad's.

Where Lala used the Monkey to mop the floor.

 We did Christmas x2. This one contained far fewer toys. The boys handled it (mostly) with grace.

We had a great time visiting with both Dads, grandparents and friends. Our drive home was uneventful and a strategic call ahead yielded a hotel stay that was much less suck.

4. We got home, caught our breath, and cleaned out the boys' closets. They are almost the size where I can take clothes directly from Gummy Bear's closet and put it Monkey's.  Almost. Then,  Ry had to go back to work.

School doesn't start again for me for two more weeks. I have 6 days of boys-in-daycare between now and then. And so this week, I did this:

And this:

The curtains were $9, ya'll!

Poor Monkey had lived for 2 years in a nursery decorated for his brother. The pictures on the wall were of Gummy Bear. There was even a lovely piece of tatting on the wall with his name on it. I updated his room on the cheap. I found the curtains at Ross for $9, and put some scrapbooking paper in the picture frames. It's subtle, but for the first two nights when I put Cheeky Monkey to bed, he would point at something new and say "I like it!" and "It's fun!"


Also, this:

And this:

I couldn't very well leave Bear's room untouched, could I?

5. This weekend we've had some quality time with friends we haven't seen since before the holidays. Tomorrow Ry has the day off (woot!) and he leaves Wednesday for a whirlwind trip to Portugal. I'm hoping to tackle the rest of the house this week. Unfortunately, there is no amount of organizing that will make our master bedroom anything but ugly.  Still, I can hope to get everything put away and piles made for "donate", "trash" and "give away." We already have two giant contractor bags full from wardrobe and toy purges this week. Since our house isn't getting any bigger, we need to have less stuff.

And there you have it. Four weeks in one post.