The above photo was taken yesterday during an outing at Starkey park. After being chained to the computer for over a week, I needed to get out in the Florida sunshine for a bit and I know everyone else around here did as well. Amazingly enough, it ended up being the only decent football game we watched all weekend long.

When I feel bad, I shop. And today, I felt like death. So much in fact, I actually asked Todd to stay home and help me watch the kids — and he just came home with a box of NyQuil the size of a brick. But he forgot to hide the debit card earlier today, meaning later this week I'll be the proud owner of the 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor lens. I justified it to myself (don't we always?) because in a couple of weeks I'll be taking punkin'patch photos of the boys. And shortly thereafter I'm going to have to figure out how to top this photo series for our 2005 Christmas cards. I've seen some really amazing photographs taken with that lens (and even better reviews for it), so hopefully one day soon mine will be among them. I guess it's just an early birthday present to me...

The 2005 'Thon was a smashing success. Our total take was $9240.40 in just eight official days of operations, besting 2004 by almost $550 more! And we had nearly one thousand photographs submitted! You can find more on the official wrap-up here. Thanks to everyone for their support this year!

Now that the home improvements are over, and another 'Thon is in the books, hopefully life will get back to some semblance of normal again in the upcoming days. Yeah, right. I have two boys under two. Who am I kidding? I'm never going to see "normal" again, am I? Oh well, at least Jose and Jimmy are always there to comfort me...