Back to Blogging after a Four-Month Hiatus!

It has been four months plus since my last blog post.  You know how people always say things like, "Oh, I can't believe how much time has passed?"  Um, I am not going to say that!  I can completely believe it.  We've had a crazy busy past four months and I'm actually glad that things have finally calmed down enough that I have the time to blog again. 

Let me catch you up:

Superman is home for good!  Woot!  Yes, indeed!  After almost three years (!) of contracting overseas, Superman came home.  Best of all, we managed to "sneak" him home a month earlier than the kids expected!  We pulled off the last, best suprise of the journey.  The kids thought their dad was coming home on December 1, so imagine the surprise when the two younger kids registered the sound of my car pulling into the garage, registered the sound of the door opening, didn't even look up when someone walked up the stairs, and then caught sight of their dad!  It was amazing.  We kept the surprises going by inviting Charming to meet up with us for dinner and got to see the look on his face when he walked into the restaurant and saw his father!  Seriously, being able to surprise your adult and almost adult children is NOT easy and oh-so fun...

The spider knew my secret!

The next night we had dinner at the house and the boys decided to play around with Nagle family deadlifts.  (Seriously, Crossfit families are just weird!)

Boys will be boys...the hardest part?  Holding on to the bar!

Charming deadlifted Superman...

"I've got you, Dad!"

Then Valiant stepped up to deadlift Superman...

Valiant was up next...

Then Superman deadlifted little Buttercup.  With...

Buttercup had no problem holding on!

...and without the bar!

But she found it a little more difficult to be the bar!

Then life began to settle back into normal-for-us Nagle5 craziness.  Man, it is good to have Superman home!

I hope you'll enjoy the ride as I fast forward you through the holidays and the projects and the other good stuff that makes up a normal life...I'll give you a few hints of what is coming up:  Scrabble, stairs, bed, hearts, and frames!

No Plastic Cups or How to Label Your Drinking Glasses

We have the same core group of friends for dinner with some regularity.   It is so fun to have people who feel like extended family in your life and I love hosting everyone at our house.  After a few years, we've all gotten it down to a science and, while each of us does it a little differently, it always ends up being fun.  One of my quirks?  I don't like using paper plates,  paper napkins, plastic utensils or plastic cups when I can avoid it.  Paper plates and plastic utensils were easy to eliminate...just making sure the dishwasher is empty and the cupboards full before our friends arrive took care of those.  Since we've been using cloth napkins for the past 8+ years, I have plenty of those, too.  

  
We have plenty of glasses, but since they're all the same, I end up with every cup from my cupboard on the kitchen counter and people still looking for a drinking glass.  I had to come up with a way to label my everyday drinking glasses.

A few scrapbooking tags, some string, a Sharpie, and some of Buttercup's ponytail holders and I think I came up with something clever.

They worked so well...the elastic band stayed put and the tags didn't get in the way.  At the end of the evening, we just slipped them off the glass and loaded the dishwasher.

The best part?  I can reuse them!

File Under Life with Teenagers...

Valiant had an idea for dinner.

"Hey, Mom, we should have porn for dinner!"

What?!

"Yeah!  Purge Our Refrigerator Night!  Get it?"

Oh, yes, I get it. 

Now picture said teenager guffawing as he had obviously tickled his own funny bone.

Sigh.