Same old

Yesterday was D's sixth birthday and, per our family's tradition, she got to pick the dinner menu and the dessert of her choice. We all enjoyed the macaroni and cheese, although I just couldn't pull it together to make homemade as she initially requested. For dessert, she picked out a chocolate cake w/ chocolate fudge frosting. And Birthday Cake ice cream. I was a little leery at first but I'm happy to report that both were surprisingly delicious and not too noxiously sweet at all! I also discovered that the appliance bay in the kitchen makes a very excellent place to stash a small piece of cake to nibble on surreptitiously. What's that? Why am I hiding food? If you have to ask, you probably don't have kids. Don't judge.

Other than that, after being home for one day, we're slowly getting back in our groove. The kids alternate between crying because they love each other so very much that they can't stand to be apart for one second, or screaming and slapping each other because someone just stepped into someone's space. I've been mediating the usual arguments about who gets to play with the balloon, penguins, beads, or ________ (fill-in the toy of your choice) next. A has learned to say "sorry" very well, although maybe not so sincerely.

We've also started discovering all the little ways the house fell apart in our absence. There's the roof leak (which we knew about), the odd musty odor, the mysterious gaps in the floorboard, the clanking a/c which runs constantly but never cools anything, and worst, the gajillion spiders which took up residence and built webs between every solid surface. It's very strange. The staircase looks like an Indiana Jones set. I can't imagine how it stayed web-free in the year it sat empty before some sucker we bought it. I have this mental image of the realtor -- a very dignified older gentleman -- frantically running around with a Swiffer before every showing. D takes a little whisk broom everywhere, and every hour there's at least one urgent call of "Mommy!! I found a bug!" Such is life in Florida in the summer in our beautiful old house.