The Power Of A Comment

I now know that bloggers lie! Or, at the very least, stretch the truth. Because our pumpkins were not *that* amazing. Not 32 comments worth of amazing (that's right 32! Woo-hoo)!

Whatever.

I'm not giving any of my precious comments back, but I might print and hand them out to trick-or-treaters tomorrow. As proof that our pumpkins are certifiably fabulous, if, for some confounded reason, people don't swoon right away.

The truth is, your generous compliments may have saved a life, because what I neglected to mention about the weekend was that it rained and rained and rained some more.

It was the coldest and wettest weekend yet, and the fog lay as an impenetrably thick and damp blanket over the entire neighbourhood. It was m.i.s.e.r.a.b.l.e. Which is why, apart from the now fabled garage pumpkin carving session, the kids were inside the house.

The. Whole. Weekend.

And getting more antsy, irritable, whiny and difficult by the hour.

[I seem to recall a wise blogger who once suggested mandatory schooling on rainy weekends. Did I miss sign-up?]

My patience was wearing razor-thin, and I don't dare think what might have happened if I hadn't had the blogosphere to escape into every now and then.

Monday morning, relieved to know that we'd made it through almost unscathed, I even considered bringing out the flag to wave my children to school: "So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye."

With the boys finally out of the house, Mike and I are back to doing what we do best [get your mind out of the gutter, please!] , which is fantasize about exotic locales we might be able to squeeze into our European tour. Some decidedly un-European destinations have been thrown into the mix, including Cape Verde, Morocco and even Thailand. All currently offering gloriously warm temperatures, sandy beaches and lots of sunshine.

It's really wishful thinking, spurred on by the miserably damp weekend and the realization that we may have a long, cold and wet winter ahead of us (global warming be damned! We want snow, not rain!).

So far, we've decided to take a mini-cruise to Kiel in Germany some time in November.

- Yes, it's a two-day event.
- Yes, in a confined space with two boys. And it's sure to be cold and wet outside in November.

Why do you ask?