Greetings. The recent dearth of entries on the blog has been partially due to my own laziness, but also due to the fact that my mom has been in town since last Thursday. She came out to help us with house stuff, and I honestly didn't know what we would have to do, since most of the major unpacking has already taken place. But I had forgotten how great my mom is. In the last few days, Mom has helped me do so many little projects that I probably would have taken a year to get around to if she weren't here. We did some yard work, clearing up my flower beds and pruning my rose bushes. We took down a border in our bathroom that featured a variety of colorful fish, cute, but not really the look I was going for at the moment. We cleaned our garage, which is now incredibly organized, with hooks for mops and brooms and yard tools, and a place for Christmas ornaments and all of Dan's radio controlled car stuff. We went consignment furniture shopping to try to find a bargain armchair to help with the fact that currently if we have more than three people over, several of them have to sit on the floor. When we found the dream armchair, she bought it for us as a housewarming gift. And today, when I went to work and mom stayed at the house, she did all our laundry and various other completely demeaning jobs like washing out our trash cans and wiping off our windsills. Tomorrow, she has proclaimed that she is going to wash our windows before some people come to install the blinds that we ordered, and I am horrified that anyone is going to do such a hot, sweaty, dirty job without being paid for it. But I know there's nothing I can say that will stop her from doing it anyway. She's my mom, and she loves us. You can't reallly argue with that.
Recently, I realized that it's been five years since I graduated from college. About six months after that, I moved out of my parents house and even though it wasn't my plan to stay gone for so long, I never did come back. While I think everyone grows up a lot in college, I count it as five years since I've really been on my own as an adult. They've been great years, and I think my parents did a good job of preparing me to be a functioning adult. I can keep my house and pay bills and do it all without thinking much about it, because that's what adults do. But I've realized this week that every once in a while, even though you can do it yourself, it's so nice to have someone just take care of you. That's why everybody needs their mama, even when they're all grown up.

A bit of housekeeping: Due to an absolutely ENORMOUS round of spam that got through our comment filter and was posted in the comments section of the blog, we've put some new safeguards in place that may cost you a little extra time if you want to leave a comment here.

You'll notice that at the bottom of the form you're used to filling out in order to leave a comment, there is now an extra question you must answer. It should be an easy one if you made it through kindergarten, but it should also make it a little harder for web-trolling programs written to post mass comments to get through. Try it out, let us know what has worked for you if you've had this problem with a blog, and if you have any problems with the new procedure, email us at danandhaley(at)wachdorf.com.

Trust me, it's for a good cause: Most of the spam that got put up here recently contained links to really vile pornography, and we don't want y'all to have to deal with that. Thanks to Cheryl and Jon for alerting us to the spam and some other technical issues.

Thanks for reading, and I promise you some real blogging soon.

I have heard lots of women say that their husbands are really just little boys trapped in the body of men. It's hard not to agree with that statement when people ask you what you did on Saturday night and you say "I went to watch my husband race tiny cars."

For the last year or so, Dan has been building and learning to drive radio controlled cars. First he went through a radio controlled airplane phase, but after that first miscalculation he has found his true love, and it is a pink car. Meet the Losi, which is in line after me to inherit all of Dan's worldly posessions should he pass away.

On Saturday, I went and saw Dan drive the car in his first real race. It was so cute. Our friends Mike and Kate came out to watch, and Kate pointed out that the manly men of the race track probably would not appreciate me referring to their cars as "cute." But it's hard not to when they are so tiny and take such funny-looking jumps off of the dirt hills. I laughed and laughed. But when Dan raced I was very serious and rooted for him. He did very well, so I went for the gold medal in the Embarrasing Wife Olympics and gave him a big kiss in front of everyone and took his picture with Mike. It wasn't until Dan and Mike were standing next to one another that I realized they were wearing matching Old Man Fishing Hats.

I couldn't stay for the whole night but Dan came in a while later, dirt-covered and elated, with a big smile on his face. It was that smile you see on the face of little boys who have spent the afternoon on their favorite dirt pile with the truck collection. I told him he was cute.

Here's a tip: When you give blood at a blood bank in the middle of the day and the nice nurses tell you to drink lots of fluids for the rest of the day and make sure to eat a good meal soon, you might want to listen to them. You might not want to totally ignore them, drink no fluids, eat very little lunch and then run around in the blazing heat to various appointments getting in and out of your progressively more oven-like car. If you do that, you might wind up at home at the end of the day wondering why you're sweating, seeing green spots and generally having the feeling that although you've never actually passed out before, this must be what it feels like right before you do.

I'll be spending the evening on the couch trying to bring my blood sugar back up. What's up in your world? I've missed you all and promise to blog more soon.

In a week, Dan and I will be heading to Mississippi to see family and then take a quick trip down to Florida to spend some time with our friends Sam and Shanelle. We're really looking forward to a break after a few very busy months. Unfortunately, this is a sight we will not get to see while we are there:

My brother Ryan has just left Mississippi to go to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina for a few months before leaving on a seven-month deployment to Africa with the Marines. He'll be in Djibouti and if you want to read a short description of the area, check this site.

I went home in April to spend a couple of days with Ryan since we did the math and figured out that he would be leaving before Dan and I got home for another trip, and the picture above is from when Ryan beat me mercilessly at a game we used to play when we were little. I can't remember what the game is actually called, but it's the one where the goal is to try to capture your opponent's collection of small colored stones. Notice how many stones Ryan has in this picture and how happy he is about it.

Pretty soon I'll get an address for Ryan at LeJeune and put it up so anyone who wants can write to him. In the meantime, please pray for safe travels for Ryan and pray for all of us, because we'll miss him. The good news is that we have a task to occupy our minds: When I talked to Ryan last week, he told me that my job while he's gone is to form a search committee and get him lined up for a bunch of blind dates when he gets home with girls that Kelly and Hannah and Audrey and I have picked out. He told me that he's going to be worth all this effort because he's going to spend his free time in Djibouti lifting weights and generally becoming the kind of muscle-bound He-Man women want. Or something.

I told him that in order to prevent riots from breaking out at the airport upon his return, we'd organize a Bachelorette-style reality show to narrow down the contestants and I was sure there would be women writing to us from all over the world once they saw these pictures online. So ladies, if you want to get in line to date Ryan the Megastud when he gets back in a year, shoot me an email and I'll tell you about the various obstacle courses and physical challenges you'll have to endure to win that right. It's not that we need you to prove anything. It's just that while Ryan's gone, we're going to be really bored.

Tonight I went to fill my car up with gas, an exercise that was less painful than it might have been because of the following conversation at the pump. The scene is me standing at the pump wearing my San Antonio Spurs 2003 NBA Champions t-shirt. Next to me is a guy who could most accurately be described as doing his best to look like a thug, when in fact, he was probably all of 17 years old. He had a pencil-thin line of hair on his face down to his goatee, baggy pants, a fake diamond earring, and an enormous, bright yellow L.A. Lakers jersey on. This is the conversation we had:

Lakers guy: "Oooh, a Spurs fan. I bet you're not very happy this year."

Me: "No, we're not very happy this year. But I tell you what, at least we didn't get beat by y'all. I'm sorry to say it, but we hate the Lakers."

Lakers guy: "It's cool. Really, since we were out, I wish y'all had won and not the Heat."

Me: "I know it. The only thing worse than getting eliminated was getting beat by Dallas, just because they're owned by Mark Cuban."

Lakers guy: "Word."