Yes, I can actually be fun sometimes.

I often feel as though I'm raining on my kids' parade. It's just that everything they want to do involves a huge mess, so I spend my days cleaning up after them (or forcing them to clean up their own messes, which, let's face it, takes 10 times as long) so it's difficult to generate any sort of desire to do anything they deem fun. I've already given up my clean house to the raising of four girls, but can I be blamed for wanting even the slightest sense of order around here?
A couple of weeks ago, I decided I wanted to throw not one, but two Halloween parties - one for the younger ones in the morning while Anna was at school, and another in the afternoon for Anna and her friends. For a non-Halloween lover, this was big.





We dressed up, played games, decorated cookies, ate them, and overall had a fabulous time. And then, while cleaning up, a bird ran into our back window and died. Here is its friend mourning the loss. Talk about raining on a parade.