700, Seven Hundred, 7-0-0! Unfortunately that is not what I won in Vegas, let’s say I broke even, K. That is the number of unread posts in my reader. Y’all, I love ya but hell no.

The following post has been written during a period of sheer exhaustion. It is probably not coherent, definitely not punctually correct and possibly might make no sense at all. Please bear with me. At last I gave y’all pictures to look at.

While I was having a fabulously over oxygenated time in Las Vegas, my darling adorable hubby took vacation and stayed home with the kids. Yes he rocks and Yes I’m blessed and I know it. My husband is absolutely amazing. I knew he could do it, but he did an even more stellar job than I expected. He handled the daddy challenge like a pro. Every day I got an e-mail from Princess which she dictated and he typed and sent via Blackberry/Strawberry communications. So cute! I melted a bit with each one. Holly, he rocked, which is the rookie mistake. My house was spotless, the laundry was done, he took the kids on two ‘field trips’ one to The Aquarium and one to Mr. Gatti’s. They were dressed in cute clean clothes, they were well rested and well behaved. Total Rookie Mistake dude. I now know that you can handle the kids all by yourself!! Ha!! It’s on now dude. BlogHer’09, Here I come!

So… Vegas. What can I say about Vegas? It rocked my world.
Zumanity.. holy hell y’all. Sensual, Sexual, titillating, gorgeous, amazing, out of this world.

Our hotel, The Excalibur, Meh. Slowest cocktail waitresses on the planet and we had to school them on what a ‘dressed beer’ is.
Seriously y’all, I know this isn’t just a Texas thing. Do y’all know how to dress a beer?

Vegas ~ Where Fanny Packs and Spandex are haute couture.

Dolly That not so little storm that is currently, rapidly growing into a Category 2, possibly Category 3 Hurricane is heading rapidly towards my home. Scheduled to hit late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning around the Brownsville/ Corpus area. Did ya catch that? Corpus Christi, that place I live. Well shoot.

I’m not actually at home in Corpus right now. Because I am insane I jumped in my car with the kids Sunday and drove to Aggieland just for fun and to visit the family. Today I find out about Dolly. Needless to say, our trip is now being extended until we see what Dolly is going to do.
Please pray.
Because of the nature of Nathan’s job, he cannot leave. He’s one of the last able to evacuate if evacuation occurs. Please pray for everyone who is about to be affected by this storm.
I’ll keep y’all updated when I can.

Oh yes. Thank you to my fabulous Blogsitters! I love y’all. You took such good care of the place, and you even took out the trash. Y’all rock!

I know most of this was incoherent, I am exhausted and still suffering from sleep deprivation. I will bring back Mouthwatering Mondays next week. Sorry y’all.

So the fabulous ladies over at 5 Minutes For Mom host this terrific meme movement every Tuesday called Tackle It Tuesday. I’ve never participated before, and I thought this week was the perfect time to start.
I tackled (with hubby’s help) our backyard this past Friday.
The Weeds, the overgrown grass, the spiderwebs and lots of dead scary branches had taken over our yard and rendered it totally non kid friendly.
We hit the backyard armed with shovels, rakes, clippers, pressure washers, mower, weed eater and a chainsaw. I am woman, hear me and my power tools purr, remember.

Before Number 1

Before Number 2

Three hours later and two extremely large full trashcans later…
I present:

After Number 1

See that? A backyard that is kid friendly, open, clean and free of dead lime trees and other such child endangering shrubbery.
The path was left by our boxer, who passed away in April. I bought some grass seeds today and I plan on seeding the yard tomorrow so hopefully in a few weeks we’ll have a lush lawn in the backyard, just like in the front.

After Number 2

We like to barbecue, a little bit. The large pit was built by a friend of ours in New Braunfels and it has a smoker, a large cooking surface, a radio, a trailer hitch, wheels and even a propane burner for cooking side dishes. I love it.

The grill on the patio is my Propane Baby. I huge puffy heart it and use it at least a couple of times a week.

Then, there’s the 3rd grill. A 100% stainless steel sucker that is sitting in the old dog run area.

What? You don’t have 3 grills?
Shoot. We’re Texans honey! We love us some grillin’

So there you have it, my first Tackle It Tuesday. I’m rather proud and I shall be putting up Tiki Torches tonight to encircle the patio because we don’t have Mosquitos down here in South Texas… we have Skeeters that are big enough to take off with small children and pets and have been known to damn near drain a girl dry. I seriously think that they are some military cross breeding experiment between mosquitos and vampire bats, that went horribly horribly wrong. Between the skeeters and the giant flying roaches, it’s often a game of chance to go outside and play.