I suppose I should write something, anything, to get that broken-blog post off the top of the page. I’m too tired to write a proper chatty post all about how we’ve been spending our days, but I’ll post a few photos to give you the basic idea.

I mentioned that International 7 Days Meet-Up we had at my house on Saturday. That was lots of fun.

I made Lamingtons, which are an Australian treat composed of spongecake, chocolate and coconut. They are as delicious as they sound.

My mom’s sister, brother, and sister-in-law drove down Sunday afternoon for a short visit. We went up to Snail Mountain and admired the view.

After lunch at our favorite local Italian place, we walked around the little downtown a bit. I saw this funny sign in the window of a martial arts studio: FEAR NO MAN. Inquire Within.

Lauren and I visited this fantastic little yarn shop. Lauren tried to control her yarn lust.

My Aunt Kathy and Uncle Bill checked out a secondhand store while Annalie, my Aunt Julie and my mom relaxed at the children’s bookstore down the street.

Back at home, we had a Vegemite tasting. Oh yes we did. Lauren says the problem most Americans have with Vegemite is that they treat it like peanut butter, spreading it on too thick. So we buttered toast and spread the Vegemite thinly on that.

I’m here to tell you, Vegemite is pretty darn tasty. It’s salty and tangy and I’d really like to try it with some cheese. I’m actually quite interested in acquiring more Vegemite and attempting to make a cheesymite scroll.

It’s sort of a tradition for my mom to take us to dinner at Outback Steakhouse when she visits us. I thought Lauren would get a kick out of it, so we took her there and she was amused. The food was delicious as usual, which probably made the archaic Aussie slang on the menu seem slightly less offensive.

Annalie made some crazy faces for my mom while we were waiting for the food to come to the table. She’s a nut.

I’ll have to write more about the zoo and the Air & Space Museum and the International 7 Days Meet-Up 2 (now with more internationality!) later, because now I’m tired and am going to bed. Tomorrow is Lauren’s last full day here and we deliberately planned a day of nothing so we could sleep in and Lauren could organize and pack. If we’re feeling really crazy we might go to Joann’s to buy Lauren some more stitch markers to go with all the yarn she bought so she could knit socks and things.

Now how about I end this post with our Day 157 photo for Troy?

Or at the very least, I dented it and some paint got scraped off. I was trying to delete two things from my sidebar—two itty-bitty nonessential pieces of code, honestly—and somehow I broke my theme. Then my blog disappeared. Aaaaaccckkk!

UPDATED: OMSH fixed it for me because she is a web genius and wonderful friend. Thank you so much, Heather!

I poked around a bit and figured out how to bring my blog back (whew!) but not the pretty theme. Which means my photos are all squished and my awesome Chuck banner that Brenda made for me isn’t up (boohoo!) and several other things are missing as well. I don’t want to poke around any more right now for two reasons: I might make it worse, and it’s after midnight and I have to get up early in the morning so we can go to the zoo. If I start tinkering now I could accidentally stay up till 4am trying to fix my mistake.

For now, I’m going to bed and hoping I’ll figure this all out tomorrow or the next day. In the meanwhile, if you want to see photos of the awesome International 7 Days Meet-Up we had yesterday in Lauren’s honor with Summer, Katie, Elaine, Bonnie & Brenda (Sonja and Jen couldn’t make it but we’re seeing them Tuesday), click the photo for the set.

I’ve been friends with Katrina since high school. Well, I’ve known her since high school, but we didn’t become friends till we were in college in different states. It’s a long story.

Anyway, she’s one of my best friends in Omaha, and her three boys are some of Annalie’s favorite people, so we try to see them whenever we’re in town. This visit, it worked out that we got to go paint pottery together WITHOUT kids.

Katrina asked if I could teach her how to paint dottery, and I was happy to do so. Katrina and I must think the same way, because it’s incredibly easy to teach her things. I can say something like, “The dots don’t matter so much, but you want the circles to be like this,” while gesturing vaguely with my fingers, and Katrina will say, “Oh! Got it,” when I suspect most people would be tearing their hair out in frustration. (Go check out Katrina’s photo of us painting. She’s doing 7 Days this week too!)

As long as I’m posting my 7 Days photos every day this week, I may as well post our photos for Troy, eh? This is Day 142. Yeah, it’s a stretch, but it was the only photo I got today that had both of us in it. You can just baaaaarely see my reflection in the glass.

I uploaded 50 or 60 photos to Flickr tonight. There are at least three or four posts that need to be written about them, but I won’t be doing that tonight. It’s late and I still have some crocheting to do before I go to bed. I will post this one photo, though, so I can ask Bekah, Sarah, or Sonja to translate the German for me. (This is painted on the wall in the new Wheatfields Express in the Old Market. Katrina, Kassie, Joe, I assume we’re planning on going to the original Wheatfields? This one’s so small it might not hold all of us.)

While I’m at it, here are Days 140 and 141 for Troy—in the pretty bathroom at OJ’s and shopping at Big Lots. Here’s hoping I get more time to write posts about all those photos in the next few days.