We’re headed out to The Most Wonderful Place on Earth tomorrow. I’m not sure we’ll do a lot of Disney stuff, actually—it’s a crazy busy time of year there, and we’re really there to visit family, including my new nephew who’s not so new anymore.

We’ve decided to make the radical decision to drive at night, in order to minimize traffic, reduce the number of stops along the way, and hopefully, not have to deal with M’s “bumpsickness.” There will be adults there to play with the kids when we arrive, so we can nap. It might be a major calamity, but it’s worth a try. Whatever happens, I don’t think we’ll do that on the way back—too hard on the grownups who will have to go to work the next day.

Today has been a lazy day—we haven’t changed out of PJs all day, except for M, who is wearing the leotard and pink skirt she got for dance class for her birthday. We spent a lot of time in the art room today—I’d bought M a kit for Christmas that included clay, mosaic tiles and “jewels,” so we made pinch pots, coil pots and other shapes. J watercolored.

The art room is a work in progress—R and I talked the other night about going all the way and moving the dining room stuff out and a desk/large table in. Right now our desks are in the basement, but that is becoming more of an exclusively TV-watching space, plus treadmill. (And did I mention the homebrewing? Yikes.

Since I officially work from home two days a week, the art room would become my work space as well as the art space (maybe each on its own side of the room). I am excited about this change. There is a window in there and I think it will be nice once it’s done, in the fullness of time (translation: months and months and months, maybe even years, from now. Because that’s just the way our life works.).

We will also need to get a new light fixture. The one in there is fugly, even as a dining room fixture. Plus, it’s one of those things on a chain, and after R whacked his head on it for the 25th time, it came crashing down so it’s dangling about 4 feet off the floor. Turns out the previous residents had taken up the slack in the chain using twist-ties. Yes, like you get from a loaf of bread. ~boggle~

In other house news, we are going to tile our family room next month. I like the coziness of carpet, and I’m a little worried about the noise and the coldness of tile, but our geriatric cat with the kidney problems picked out a corner of that room a while back, and as some of you know, there is virtually no way to fix that. We have baby gates up to keep him out of that area, and plastic on that corner of the floor if he does get in. It looks like he’s going to outlast my patience for baby gates and plastic, however, so a’tiling we will go. ~Sigh~ I do love the big guy, but dang, cats get expensive and high-maintenance late in life. I think our pet-owning days will end through attrition—once they go to the Happy Hunting Grounds, we’re done. Three kids provide enough chaos and unpredictability for me.

That’s all for now. I may or may not blog next week—we’ll see. Happy New Year!