A good, if busy, weekend.

Friday afternoon, I officially moved into my new office at work. Which is to say, I got my phone extension transferred over, got the furniture arranged the way I want it, and then started the slow process of moving my stuff.

There's still a lot of stuff left to go -- all my doodads and pictures and files and such. But the critical stuff, like my computer, is moved.

The evening was quiet, which was good after a couple hours of manual labor at work.

Saturday morning we had a surprise lunch for Braz's birthday. Braz spotted Matt's car in the parking lot, and we thought the game was up, but Matt went out with some bullshit story about having spotted them from the window and he should join us, and when he came around the corner and saw the whole group, he was surprised. Or at least, did a good job of acting it.

And Penny was good, despite the meal edging into her naptime. By the time she'd gotten bored enough to want to get out of her chair and run around, I'd finished eating and was free to take her outside to do so. And before that, she was even moderately successful at eating with chopsticks!

She's going to be as much of a nut for Chinese food as my dad, I swear.

Saturday afternoon was Emma's birthday party. Kris, not wanting to slight friends or family, hosted a party for... I didn't try to count them, but there must have been at least a dozen little kids. All but one of whom were girls. Most of whom were about Emma's age (excepting only Penny and Emma's cousins).

So imagine, if you will, eight or ten 4-year-old girls chasing each other in a big circle and screaming -- no, make that shrieking -- at the tops of their lungs. For three hours.

Which is not to say that it wasn't fun.

Penny, led to the table to decorate a cookie, quickly discovered that the purest form of sugar on the table was the rainbow sprinkles. And she ceased to waste effort on the cookie or even the icing.

Later, when all the bigger kids had abandoned the table to run off their cake-induced sugar highs, Penny clambered into one chair to finish her own slice of cake, and then systematically worked her way down the table, eating the icing off all the abandoned pieces.

When she got to the end of the table, she discovered the mother lode: One little girl had begged for -- even demanded -- a flower, and then not eaten it. Penny gleefully scooped the whole confection into her hand and contentedly fed her sugar buzz.

As the party wound down, she cheerfully helped (or perhaps hindered, but she was trying to help) to clean up.

Sunday afternoon, we took Penny over to my parents' house for a turkey dinner -- Mom had got a yen for turkey after I told her about K.T.'s tradition, I think.

Matt, at least, was not complaining. That was fun, too. John and Sam were there, and Penny was extremely distressed, at the end of the evening, that her "U'Joh'!" was not going to come home with her.

So, back to work. Moving stuff out of the old office and either into the new one, or into the dumpster. And I'm back to the diet today. Strict, because boy have I been blowing it lately.

So the goal is to undo all the damage -- that is, lose about 7 pounds -- before Jessica's birthday party. That's a little less than a month. Surely I can stick to a diet for one month. Right? Right?

Yeah, we'll see.

--Liz