"i cant even believe you take care of these kids everyday by yourself!

1. Happy 30th Birthday to my wonderful husband!  Welcome to the club - glad to have you along, finally!  May this year be filled with more wonderful blessings and much love.

2. I confess, I took a few days off of blogging and LIFE.  Hubs and I took our first "vacation" since the boys were born.  I know, you're all like, HUH?, remembering our pics of Hawaii and St. Maartin last winter, but the truth is, we haven't had a vacation- just the two of us, WITHOUT him having to work for at least part of it, for 3 YEARS.  Yeah, I know!  Ludicrous.  So, we left the munchkins with their grandaparents and flew off to an undisclosed location for 3 FABULOUS nights.  What did we do?  Next to nothing!  Seriously, we took maybe a dozen pictures- 10 of the sunsets and two of us eating.  Because we just laid on the beach, ATE, and slept in. 

• Those of you with twins know that you spend the first year of their life sleeping with one ear open.  I know I don't have much to complain about, since they've been sleeping through the night since they were 4 months old, but...I got to sleep in till 8:30!  Isn't that crazy?!  (Well, sort of crazy, since 8:30 EST is like 7:30 CST, which is only 30 minutes later than every day of my life, but you get what I'm saying.)  Because after that I got to take a shower without having to put the kids down for their morning nap first and eat my breakfast without having to cut it up into a million tiny pieces for the boys to share.  Heavenly!
• The best part was when my 19 year-old brother-in-law texted me this: "i cant even believe you take care of these kids everyday by yourself! haha"  I haven't laughed so hard in months!  

3. Did I miss the boys?  Hm.  How do I say this kindly?  Well, I thought I would and I did call no more than twice a day to check on them.  They'd never been left behind before.  We talked about them a lot, but it was kind of like they were 4 or 5 and would have really enjoyed a beach trip.  For example:

• We watched several families with kids playing on the beach, in the water, building sandcastles, collecting shells.  I would think (and say) that the boys would have so much fun doing these things.  Then I would laugh!  They're 12 months old!  They would eat the shells and sand!  Who am I kidding?
• We'd see families with older kids (lots of them had 2 boys!) eating out.  I'd watch and think, isn't that cute?  Aren't they so well behaved?  Wait!  All those kids were texting, or playing handheld video games or watching a DVD.  Will I really sink to this level in a few years? 

4. When we (finally) got back last night, the boys were just fine, having been well-taken-care of by their grandparents, aunt and uncles.  I suspect they were fed marshmallows for dinner once, but no one's fessing up to it.  I know they missed me, though, because I put them down to bed - like normal, none of that grandma-rocking!- and this is what I hear, mournfully, through the monitor: "MaaaaaaMaaaaaa!  MaaaaaaaMaaaaa!  MAAAAAAMAAAAAA!"  Yep, my little mama's boy is crying out for me, (My little daddy's boy is already sound asleep!)  and I had to go give him some snuggles.

All in all, a wonderful trip, but I'm glad to be back "taking care of these kids everyday by myself!"