We're back!

After her three-martini lunch, Barbie found herself half-naked on the roof.

At least, that's kinda what the girls claim happen. In reality, they're claiming ignorance -- but that only goes so far. Because somehow a naked Barbie doll is still sitting on the roof and she didn't climb up there. Or maybe she did. Maybe that's the part from "Toy Story" they didn't show.

Becky saw her sitting up there last week. And was obviously caught off guard. Leigh and Elsa have been playing dolls most of September and October with Ari, our next-door neighbor. Near as we can tell, at some point during their play, Barbie took a flying leap to the Barbie Great Beyond. We all blame Elsa.

What's really funny is that the doll is still up there. No one's put forth the effort to go get her, 'cause, really, what's the point? She seems happy enough.

Becky's birthday was Tuesday, which means I'm blogging again. We were sitting around late last month reading through the girls' books of photos and memorabilia and in them we'd stuck a bunch of the stories I'd written about them on the blog. Most of them were memories we'd all totally forgotten. And that's enough to inspire you to get going on something like this again. Before all memory of the girls' childhood is lost to the broken synapses of my brain.

And even though it was Becky's birthday this week, it was still somehow Leigh's week. She got her ears pierced on Thursday and then had her first basketball game on Saturday at the obnoxious hour of 8:30. Both activities were executed in classic Leigh fashion.

She was so excited to get her ears pierced that that's all she talked about for two weeks. She talked about it so much that her friends and sisters eventually told her to shut up about it. Which is amazing, because in a family of talkers, Leigh's the kid that usually keeps her thoughts to herself. The excitement didn't really turn to nervousness until she sat in the chair and the piercing girl loaded the studs into the nail gun-like device they use for piercing at the mall. The excited smile became a nervous smile, but a smile nonetheless. She tensed up a little right before the shot and that was it. No tears, no screams, no cursing (you never know what'll come out of her mouth considering how her mother speaks).

That same smile was on her face at her basketball game this morning. She was nervous for her game -- nervous, I think, that she'd do something wrong, something unacceptable. She was up at 6:30 getting ready a full two hours before the game.

The girl's got no killer instinct. She's polite, obedient and considerate to everyone around her. You can imagine what kind of basketball player that makes her. She didn't want to get to close to the other players, wasn't keen on touching the ball and just seemed to be happy moving around on the court. But players kept stealing the ball from other players -- that seemed suspect -- so near the end of the game, she asked her coach if it was okay to steal the ball from people. She got a resounding yes. And so by the end of the game Leigh was playing a little more aggressively and even managed to steal the ball once or twice.

It's been fun. And, believe it or not, it feels good to be writing again. Doing that family column at the Searchlight really burned me out. More than thought it had. But, you know, three years later, I think I'm ready again. We'll see how long it lasts.