I am writing this from a hotel room in East Peoria, IL. We don't have cable at home (I see TV as a digital drug to kids- they get hooked on it and it destroys their brain cells, just like a real drug) so as soon as we hit a hotel room, the kids go wild and the TV comes on. Never have you seen 2 kids happier to watch TV. Animal Planet! Cartoon Network! And so we get sucked in to watching some maudlin Animal Planet show about half-starved kittens or people with 10 dogs and no common sense.

Since we are here for a funeral, I had a feeling we'd be doing a lot of hanging around, so I got a comfortable hotel room. Everyone went to the pool for awhile. I'm strategically timing my pool entrance to correspond with their exit so I can sit peacefully in the hot tub. Meanwhile, I'm Facebooking and blogging for a few. It's sad because usually we come visit Uncle Bob over New Year's anyways, but this New Year we're here for his funeral. I realized in the car that I had pictures on my cell phone from last New Year when we visited. Uncle Bob took us on a tour around town to see the Christmas lights. I will miss coming to visit him, he was a good person, uncle, and friend.

Well, I should probably don my swimsuit and hang with the family, will probably be blogging more as we'll have a lot of time on our hands.