It has been a very busy couple of days!

I went to Chicago very early Thursday morning for BEA 2016. I had a good time – I got a lot of books that I wanted to get, saw some blogger friends and picked up some new stuff for the kids. My boxes will arrive this week. I did bring a few things home on the plane – a Brown Bear Brown Bear tote bag and three books for N (by Carson Ellis, Rosemary Wells and David Shannon), and a graphic novel for the girls by an author they like.

One treat – I got to see Sarah, who came and met me at the end of the show!

I got home late Friday, and we had a jam-packed weekend.

N went to 2 birthday parties – one for Henry and one for Suzy & Alma. He rode trains at the first one and had his face painted at the second.

M had ballet and came home independently and let herself in the house and turned off the alarm with her new keys/pineapple keychain.

A had a soccer game. It was a tough game against an A team, but she had some good blocks.

On Saturday afternoon, Aliya and Tuvana stopped over. Aliya and A did a "Which 'Once Upon A Time' Character Are You?" quiz.

M&A had to pick out photos to send to Camp Louise for their camper profiles. Here are the ones they picked:

Then Daddy and I went to a party and M&A made a cake from scratch with Nana's help:

It has also been a challenging weekend – Daddy threw his back out somehow, and N spiked a high fever this morning. He has been in the house all day – no soccer – and by the afternoon he seemed to be back to normal. We will see how he feels tomorrow morning and decide then whether he'll go to school.

Tonight we had dinner here with Grandma Sandy and my cousin Bill, who is in town from Canada for a week or so. It was very nice to see him and we had good pizza and salad.

We also had M-D book club, where we discussed The Red Thread. 

It has been a long weekend and I am heading to bed.