Sorry for the spare updates of late, gentle readers. When life gets full, the weblog gets empty. Here’s what’s been going on:

• The most significant event of late has been [Mom McMains->] going in for neurosurgery to deal with an aneurism. Her operation was a week ago — on Valentine’s Day, ironically. She’s recovering nicely and is feeling good; the doctors are very pleased with how everything went. Thanks to all the support from those of you who have been in the know about this.
• [Daniel->] and his dear wife Fanny completed their emigration from Canada and have taken up residence with us. As they are two of my favorite people, I couldn’t be more pleased to have them around, though we haven’t gotten to spend as much time with them as I’d like yet.
• We welcomed Seth, [Adam->] and Celeste’s first child, into the world. He’s a beautiful and sanguine baby who his folks are enjoying and doting on a great deal. His room, which features a wraparound tropical undersea mural with special rippling water lighting effects, is the most beautiful nursery I’ve ever laid eyes on. Congratulations, proud parents!
• We’ve been beset by illnesses of various description. The low point in all of that was Wednesday two weeks ago. I had already been home two days with [Maggie->] who was on a vomiting jag. Then [Emily->] started feeling bad, so I had to go get her from school. (Aside: it’s interesting to watch the progression of illness in children. When Maggie first started throwing up, she wasn’t quite sure what was going on and was somewhat frightened by the process: “Daddy, I don’t feel good. Daddy! DADDY! BLEEEAAARGHH!” By the end of the two days, she had become so used to it that she barely interrupted what she was doing: “Daddy, can I watch BLEEEAAARAGHHH! Cinderella, please? And have a cookie?”)

  A few days earlier, [Kathy->] had made arrangements to watch the older of a friend’s two boys. Realizing that they might not want him exposed to the Black Death that was marching steadily through our house, she gave them a call to give them the opportunity to make other arrangements if they wished. “Well, we don’t have any other options at this point, so we’ll have to take that risk. And, by the way, our plans for our younger son fell through — could we send him over as well?” Their two boys arrived right after school, bringing our count of children up to six, a third of whom were incapacitated with illness. What could make it better? Why, Kathy getting sick too, of course! Her illness progressed rapidly from feeling a little funny to leaking every bodily fluid imaginable (and a few that weren’t) in the shower while shouting with all the strength her disease-wracked body could muster “I’m going to die!”

  And as the final bit of icing on the cake, I got one of my vision-imparing migraines. Thus, if you had been so unfortunate as to walk past our house and glance in the window, you would have heard Kathy’s anguished wails from the bathroom accompanied by the sight of me stumbling over and through the furniture as I raced half-blind around the house with assorted buckets and pitchers trying to catch the vomit and worse pouring out of various people while simultaneously trying to persuade a half-dozen wound-up kids that yes, it really is time to sleep.

  Man, that was a good day.