For Ravenclaw!

Stacy and the kids were down for a week and the party never stopped. (Dear Sam, you cannot stay away forever. One of these days you have to come back to California! I know that you're busy with your "job" and being the "bishop" but we will not be ignored! Love, Rachel) One of the driving reasons for moving into my parents home instead of renting it out to someone was so that family could come and visit us and have a place to sleep. Mission accomplished. There was sleeping all over the place. In fact, at dinner on Sunday night Eliza burst into tears and wailed, "I just want to go to bed now!" We wore that girl out.

Commence highlight reel:

1. A Valentine's Day party. Complete with tacos, treats, fancy pink beverages, and bingo. And the requisite Aunts Dance Party to cap the night off. Ben and Tom missed out on their school V-Day parties so we wanted to go all out. There was pink everywhere. Also, the kids got us red roses and handed them out to us. Maybe the best Valentine's Day I've ever had.

2. The Beach, where we froze. It has been hot here, even for February (I say that like I'm south of the equator but it's true, February is historically warm.) Every day last week was a roaster, even Saturday was a roaster everywhere else but the beach, where it was cold and cloudy.

We rented a duffy and putted around Newport Harbor. The kids were less than impressed - they kept asking when it was going to be over, the little savages - but any time spent on a boat is heaven for me as boats are one of the four truly appropriate methods of transportation for a Lady of Elegant Leisure. The other three being convertibles, trains, and zeppelins. But it was rather gloomy.

If you drove literally one mile inland it was nothing but sunshine and warm breezes.

3. Eliza is always hungry. She is a bottomless pit...for sweets. We would eat lunch and then 30 minutes later she would say, "I'm really hungry." So I would suggest a piece of fruit and then she would counter with a pan of brownies. So we made brownies, after fruit. Look, this is what aunts do! They were all excellent little cooks:

4. Phoebes is getting extra cute:

5. Ben and Tom are reading Harry Potter and it is thrilling. They love it. Do you remember the first time you read it? It kind of kills me that I had to read it as an adult. I think 10 year old me would have died over it. They're in the middle of The Prisoner of Azkaban so as we were talking about death eaters they started listing them off.

"Lucius Malfoy."
"Yep"
"Sirius Black"
"...Um."
"Snape"
"(whimper)"

We sorted them into houses on Pottermore (the new version of which is not nearly as fun) and Ben was not thrilled to be in Hufflepuff

Tom was in Ravenclaw like me and all weekend he kept saying, "For Ravenclaw!" to me.

Come back to us, family!! We have spare rooms and everything!