We've been home from Florida for about a week and a half, and we have been busy little bees! My parents picked us up from the airport around midnight, and when we got home, even in the dark we could see how tall and jungle-like our grass was. Our house looked totally ghetto fabulous. When we got around to buying gas for the lawn mower on Saturday, we jumped in and went to town. I mowed the front and back yards (stopping nearly every five minutes to empty the grass bag!), Richard used the weed whacker thingy around the edges, and Joshua did various jobs. On Sunday we planted our first flower garden in the middle of the front yard. We planted all sorts of flowers we bought but I can't remember the name of, some freesia, some petunias, some daylilies, all sorts of things. But my favorite part is the tree we planted right in the middle. We picked out a gorgeous Japanese red maple. It's tiny, but I'm excited to watch it grow. I'm quite proud of our efforts. And a few of our neighbors even talked to us about it and complimented the yard! That's a big feat around here, because it seems like our street is very "keep to yourselves."

Saturday was also fun because we went to a Karate tournament that my nephews Dyllan and Logan competed in. They've only been taking Karate for a few months, but I thought they did very well. Dyllan won a gold medal and a bronze medal (yeah!), and Logan got two medals my sister calls "I'm an awesome ninja!" medals. It works, and I'm proud of both of them. It takes a lot of guts to get up there in front of all those people and do your thing.

Tuesday was just nuts. I was taking a bath when all of a sudden, there was a very loud, persistent banging on the door. We don't get many visitors, so I was like, "Oh man, who is it?" But I was in the bath, so oh well. Five minutes later, bang bang bang. And so on and so on. By this point I was also hearing all sorts of crazy noises, and the wind was blowing like crazy, and the lights were flickering a little, and....yeah, my imagination was going crazy. I called Richard so he could talk me down, and when the banging happened again while I was talking to him, he decided to come home and check things out. Turns out it was our elusive across-the-street neighbor (who we don't even know) that had been banging on the door, because a *huge* metal part of our chimney had blown off the roof. Yikes. But Richard and his dad fixed it, so that's good.

Let's see, what else? Oh yeah. We're thinking we might have a poltergeist. I know, sounds funny. Richard named him Howard, and I'm starting to believe. Our things are going missing one by one, and there's only so many places they could be, you know? So far I'm missing a cookie sheet, a jumbo muffin tin, the bottom part of my salt shaker, and we were missing our pizza cutters, but I found them yesterday. In a place that we've already looked. A few times. Go figure. Plus, I think Howard is responsible for some strange noises that we hear sometimes, when it's obvious my furry little troublemakers (my cats Rock and Tony) aren't to blame. So yeah. I hope I can get and stay on Howard's good side. My cats are currently hard enough to keep up with (they've figured out how to unplug our big freezer, and apparently this is their new favorite game). Good thing I love them!