For those that have not received the link yet, I posted the Las Vegas trip journal in a separate blog: http://lasvegas2002.blogspot.com.

This has been a crazy week (I wonder if I'll ever write "this has been a boring week" ;). The kids and I arrived back from Vegas on Monday evening. All went quite well, I quickly unpacked and did a mammoth laundry!

On Tuesday, the kids were still off from school because of election day. We slept in till 9am, I loved it, as I was exhausted for some reason. Then I called the plumber, as we had 2 running toilets and I really didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars on the water bill, not to mention waste water like that. I was in luck as they just happened to be in the area and came back almost immediately, The bad news was though, that the toilets were so cheap, he couldn't fix them. That's when I made the executive decision to replace all 4 toilets in the house, as we've already spent way over $1000 in plumber bills from running and overflowing toilets. The new toilets were installed Thursday morning. The plumber was quite enthousiastic about them, I had to come look at each new toilet installed. I faked some kind of enthusiasm, but have to admit, that toilets don't exactly excite me ;).

After the plumber, I went to vote. I have never hesitated as much in the voting booth as this time. I just couldn't decide whether or not to vote for the tax increase. I ended up voting for it, because I knew that's what Rick would have done (it was for railroad and road improvements). But it got voted down anyway. Besides that the election was kind of boring here in Virginia.

On Thursday, when the plumbers were here, I painted the wall in our bedroom, that has the windows, olive green to match our bedspread. It really looks pretty.

Yesterday I did Artsmart in Kai's class with my friend Denise and we had a great time. We taught about Egyptian Art and the kids engraved hieroglyphics in drywall squares and then colored them.

Then the weather was so beautiful, I took my camera and the dog for a one and a half hour run and got some quite colorful leaf pictures.

Last night, we had a great happy hour party at Christine and Chuck's. We were supposed to bring Greek food and since I had been so busy, I asked Rick to stop by the Greek take out nearby and get some stuff. Well, he got enough to feed 3 parties! But it somehow easily disappeared. It was a wonderful party!

This morning I first went to work out, then came back to fetch Katja and she and I had a pedicure and a manicure done. It's so much fun to do mother and daughter! And she enjoys it tremendously!

Tonight we went to the herring and eel night at the Dutch embassy. Wow, wonderful stuff (I know, most people shiver at the thought). We met some great people and I'm determined to arrange a get together of different "mixed" couples in December.