See what happens when you give someone an extensive list of books to read? You don’t see that person for eleventy billion years or so due to All The Reading.

I’m blaming it all on you, people. Lack of responsibility and all that jazz.

The problem with taking a long break from this here bloggity world is the part of coming back to it. I didn’t exactly intend for this month of silence to happen, but what can I say? It’s summer. The beach, the long afternoons of reading while the boys nap (five books down so far and a couple more in the works!), vacation, weddings, lots of friends, pool trips, projects big and small… all called my name much too loudly. It would take about ten trillion words to fill you in on everything we’ve been up to the past month, so consider it me doing you a favor when I forgo the actual, you know, WORDS and give you 48,000 words worth of pictures instead. I mean, I know this isn’t a photoblog or anything–though you were probably starting to wonder–but right now my children are beside me laughing their fool heads off at their Photoboothed selves on Hannah Beth’s Macbook (remember her? from here and most especially here?) and any words coming from my brain wouldn’t make sense in this particular moment AND (breath) my husband happens to have taken several thousand pictures over the past few weeks AND they’re all begging to be seen.

The logical thing would be for him to get his own blog in which to showcase the product of his SD cards, but he tried that a couple years ago and thought this whole blogging thing overrated. He also had a Facebook once upon a time and closed the whole ordeal down once he realized it required Maintenance in the form of, oh my goodness and fall down dead, Accepting Friends’ Requests. I know. BUT (newsflash!) two years later the situation has been remedied, just this very morning, in fact, and his name and picture can be found in that great, vast place of reconnection. I suggested Twitter a time or two, but you can imagine the response to that. The fact is that a man who spends 5+ days each week being a computer expert for the Marine Corps and for any friend, brother, uncle or second cousin twice removed, has no time or interest in actually socializing on such a contraption. Besides, it might be true that I had a little bit or a lot bit to do with the setting up of the Facebook account this morning. But, you know.

BUT, in other wonderful and interesting news (because this post is already chock full of it) that crazy wonderful best friend and beloved for life of mine took me on an old fashioned dinner and movie date last night (as opposed to the dinner or coffee and a beach walk dates we usually do–we seem to get a whole lot more distractionless talking time in that way) and we saw–what else?–Julie & Julia. I admit to a bit of moisture in my eyes in specific scenes and several quotes pertaining to my own life that I’d like to tuck away for the next time I question my direction with this whole thing called writing, but the best part of all of it was feeling John shaking with quiet laughter beside me during so many key blogging related scenes. Oh goodness. It was as if he’s had some experience with this husband-of-a-blogger gig over the past five years.

(I also loved the fact that, in 2002, a blog that received 50-some-odd comments on a high day was the third most popular blog. Remember those days, ye ol’ bloggity peoples?)

So, as further evidence of the fact that this is not a photoblog, but, lo, a blog with words–LOTS and LOTS of random words–I’ve filled my screen with an entire post when I intended to write two sentences and then show you a million pictures. I’ll spare your scrolling finger today and put them in their very own post on Monday for you to scroll away at if you dare.

Be warned–there will be mucho cuteness contained therein.