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Yeah yeah, I know, the blogging has been sparse. And it’s probably not going to get a whole lot better soon. I’ve been off on vacation where we experimented with the Brady Bunch Effect under less than ideal conditions.

The setting: the boys and I were at the lake with my girlfriend, her daughters, and my parents as neutral U.N. observers. The weather was unseasonably windy and cool which dramatically limited the boating, swimming and other lake specific activities.

The background: we tried this last summer for a few days. While everyone got along, there were definite boundaries. My kids stayed close to me, hers stayed close to her, and the twain didn’t meet a whole darn lot.

The result: the adults were judged by the kids to be useful and necessary only when it was time to eat. Otherwise, we were pretty much dismissed. The kids had what amounted to a 4-day pajama party – literally at times. They even asked to “go to bed” earlier on day two so they could all sit around upstairs and be goofy together. They played, giggled, yakked (my how they yakked), and rolled their eyes. The girls played ball tag with the boys; the boys wrote stories with the girls; the three oldest even taught the youngest to play Euchre. Who were these kids, and how cool was that? And the best thing was that my youngest learned to actually sleep in. Nine years of rising at the crack of dawn came to a glorious and screetching halt. He even slept in to 9:30 one morning. Weather be damned, it was a great week.