Aaah... the blissful sound of happy and contented children beating each other with colourful styrofoam pool noodles... interspersed with the counting and giggling of an hours-long "hide-and-seek" game... while Mommy gets to work uninterrupted without worry, because she knows that the biggest kid down there often masquerades as a responsible adult! :-)

This is the last day my brother will be visiting us. It's been awesome having him here this week, not a little because of how much my boys have really had a chance to bond with him for the first time. He has lived far, far away from us for their entire life-spans, and most of our visits have been short or in more "adult-y" situations.

This week, they have learned all kinds of cool stuff that only an uncle (and a younger brother of their Mom) could teach them:

• How to play hide-and-seek professionally
• Good ways to annoy their Mom
• Really great quotes from a variety of movies, books, and T.V. shows (I'm not sure how many of these will be remembered later on, though)
• I don't even know everything, because I'm sure he's been tutoring them in private. I'm thinking the rest of it will come out in the next few weeks, though! :-)

It's hard to believe the week is nearly over already--another one that just flew by. Tuesday was my 8th wedding anniversary, and I didn't even comment on it here. Jason SPOILED me this year: lasik surgery for my eyes, which I thought was supposed to be the totality of my gifts for the year. Then, he goes and buys me a really nice Calvin Klein swimsuit, plus an entire outfit (dress, shoes, unmentionables) from Victoria's Secret! Oh, and did I mention my new van? I'm not sure what I did to deserve that man!

Anyway, I really should be working during this child-free time I have, so I will gush more about my husband and other family members in a future post. I leave you with a justification of my almost-daily hot chocolate habit:

Cocoa Officially Lowers Blood Pressure: (NaturalNews) More happy justification for chocolate lovers: blood pressure (BP) responds favorably to cocoa, but not tea, a new meta-analysis suggests. Authors of the study say that while both products are rich in polyphenols, the study findings suggest that phenols in cocoa may be more active than those in tea. The study appears in the April 9 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"Products rich in cocoa may be considered part of a blood pressure lowering diet, provided that the total energy intake does not increase," lead investigator for the study, Dirk Taubert, MD, PhD, from the University Hospital of Cologne in Cologne, Germany, told heartwire. "I believe that cocoa is healthier than other sugar confectionary or high-fat dairy products."

Hmm, you know what makes paperwork more fun? A steaming cup of hot cocoa. Uh, gotta go!