Home

I've been home for about 22 hours. Highlights include:

• A marching band-esque productshizzle from the siblings. Including a chorus of "I'm So Glad When Andrea Comes Home."


• Bernadino's with Laura Lee Alida. For old times sake.


• Tommy being so excited that I'm home that he'll randomly run up to me shouting my name then not really know what to do with me so lots of equally random running off.


• Lots of other Tommy running around and saying ridiculous things and being excited to show me everything and tell me all about the plot of The Lion King over and over again which, as far as I can gather consists of "And the monkey climbs on the rocks and holds the kitty," and him running in with his pajamas expecting me to be very impressed with him yelling "jammies!" and the top of his tiny lungs.


• Jenny has zits on her face these days. She's so grown up.


• Showing off the clothes purchases made since I last saw the family to a very impressed Marsha and Melissa who can always look forward to getting those items in a couple years when I grow out/tired of them.


• A really fabulous dress that Melissa has given me that basically means I'm throwing a party in December with the required dress being "festive attire".


• Jenny and Kayla getting all excited to show me that they redid their room, us walking into the room, me exclaiming "uhhh, it looks exactly the same as it did last time I was home," and them realizing that they changed it while I was gone but then changed it back so their recent change was back to what I'd known before.

• Typical Nate things ("I fixed that ancient laptop we had in Indiana, remember it? All I had to do was salter on a couple new wires and you just clip the power source with an alligator clip here and...").

• Waking up at seven this morning to "Four, tres, two, uno..." and the opening bit of that instant classic "Fergalicious". My first thought was, "since when does Allison wake up to this?" Then I was like, "Why the heck is this playing on NPR?" because my alarm is set to NPR. Then I opened up my eyes and realized I was home and the musical wonder I was beholding was thanks to dear Marsha.

• Waking up again this morning at eight to Kevin and Tommy coming in and jumping on me and then asking me to read a chapter of Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix to them.

• The Princess and the Pauper, a Barbie movie that apparently my mother loves. (And yes, Laura, it ends exactly like you thought it would, you needn't be in suspense any longer.)