Party Time and Giveaway

First, thank you once again to everyone who blitzed me over the last few days!  You guys are awesome!  Thanks to all the new followers, too.  Welcome to my pad!

To celebrate reaching over 400 followers, I'm going to have a give-away - three Amazon gift cards and two copies of each of my books.  Just leave a comment below. (If you really, really, really would like a book, please let me know.  Some of you already have my books, so I don't want to give you something you already have.)  I'll  choose the winners on Thursday.

All right.  Now for the story.  It has been a crazy couple of weeks at my place.  I had been preparing for a super ginormous birthday party for my daughter.  It went very well, but now my dog (pictured above) and I are rather exhausted from the whole experience.

Thirty teenage girls swarmed the house, blasting music, singing, screaming, dancing, and making cheer leading pyramids wherever they found space. (I nearly had a heart attack when I saw a pyramid three-people high in my family room.) This insanity went on until 3:00 in the morning.  At that time, my husband and I had had enough, and we sent all living creatures to bed - including the dog, who was having a great time chasing everybody. (In case you're wondering, that is a glow-stick necklace around Schultz's body.  It was a neon-themed party, and everybody was running around  glowing under the light of several black lights.)

Now, I have to back up a little bit, because this party almost didn't happen.  The night before, I looked up at my kitchen ceiling, and notice a few drips of water coming down.

I called my husband.  "Oh @#$%%^&!" he said.  "You've got to be  @#$%^&* kidding me!"

Yep.  It was raining in our kitchen.  This had happened six months ago.  And here we were again.  The night before the big party.  My husband pulled out the drill and made holes in our ceiling.  Water poured out.  I won't tell you what else he said, but I'm sure you can guess.

We did our best to clean things up, and we called a repair man to fix the pipe that busted.  But we still have a substantial hole in our ceiling (along with lots of tiny drill holes).

And do you know what the funny thing is?  Not one girl noticed!   They were all too busy partying!