Most of this week, Sam has been away in New York at PhotoPlus Expo, one of the largest international conference and expos for photographers. I'm going solo and enjoying my little mini-vacation with the girls until Sam returns tomorrow night!

And although I know he'll be working most of the days there (he'll be at a booth with DQ Studios, demo-ing DQ Quikeys, one of the main tools we use for our post-processing workflow!), I'm sure there will be plenty of partying going on!

So, here's my week catching up on housewife duties to bide my time:

* getting well from my couple days of being sick in bed with the flu/cough.

* changing cat litter, feeding the cats, and then seeing all the hair on the couch where the cats sleep and deciding it was time to wash the slipcover!

* organizing my closets, putting all the kids summer stuff away and putting out all our winter boots, jackets, and mitts.

* organizing my food pantries so now I have all the kids snacks and cereals filled up in containers where they can reach them (especially good for when I want to sleep in!)

* and of course the basic daily house tidying.

Beyond that, in between playing and spending time with the kids, I got caught up on responding to most of my emails (so, if you've sent us an email and haven't had a reply, please send it again!). As you can see, I can be pretty productive when Sam is away!

The thing I did miss (and I missed you a ton, honey!), is having Sam around to help me fix this or that. I had no idea until this week, how much I rely on him for small things that go wrong. Like the lights not turning on in our house.

Sam, being a lover of all things "tech, wired, and tricked out" has the lights in our office (as well as the ones on our main floor) all hooked up to a remote switch, which I love! -- But which obviously decides to fail when he is away! So, I have been working all week in a room with the one lamp on my desk that is plugged into an actual outlet and the light from my monitor. Now, I consider myself above average when it comes to being Miss Independent, but this was bad! I'm that helpless.

Sam, thanks for stocking the fridge with food for when I was sick! Oh, and please come home safely, cause it's awfully hard not to have all the lights on!

Much love,

Mary