She blinded me with science

This, dear readers, is an oxygen atom made out of common household ingredients: 16 green grapes (8 protons, 8 neutrons) form a nucleus, wrapped in saran wrap, and peas and toothpicks comprise the electron cloud of 8. My children were awed at their ability to create an element; captured forever on my RAZR phone, and now recorded here.

A. continues to rack his lungs and his sleeping ability with his seemingly annual bout with bronchitis. The poor man doesn't just plain ol' cough; he hacks, hawks, barks, croups, and expectorates. TMI? SO Sorry. This has been going on since a week ago Monday night. We are all a little short: with sleep, with tempers...with patience... and long on wakefulness and irritability. He went to the doctor yesterday and was given 4 different medications- an antibiotic, an inhaler, a steroid, and a cough syrup with codeine. So life is getting better in the sleep department for him (and by extension, me).

My daughter just came and told me that I'd made the best meal EVER in the whole world. So you can be amazed (sarcasm font!), this is what I did: emptied out/cooked some stray bags of pasta that only had a little bit of noodles left; emptied a sack of peas into a casserole dish and tossed leftover bacon in it and microwaved; prepared an envelope of Newburg sauce (Knorr's makes it, I think?) and emptied a leftover remnant of Costco frozen, cooked shrimp into the Newburg sauce. Put it all into bowls. Whatever it was called, the kids ate seconds. Pasta, peas, bacon, shrimp, and Newburg sauce.

This meal happened because I have not made a menu for this week!!!

Coming up: Valentine's Day. I'd better get cracking, Gromit.