I have the most racking case of hiccups tonight. It's miserable!

Last night, the boys did some extra pre-emptive math work, so they had kind of a free day today (Walter is excited because his work is easy and fun right now because he just started a new book, so he's moving ahead even further because he's enjoying it). Ollie and I worked our way through www.games.johnnymoney.com and made our own virtual business and ran it for 24 months. In the end, he had a lot of money and a very successful "gifts and gadgets" shop named B is For Bob. It was a lot of fun, and I was actually surprised at how conservative Ollie was in his decisions and how seriously he thought about the situations that would arise (President wants to give a speech inside the store; movie studio is shooting a film outside your store; water main breaks and floods the store, customer slips on water on the floor and falls, etc.). I would have thought he would either be recklessly risky to test the limits or would choose the funniest answer instead of the one that might yield the best results for the business, but he was very focused on making this thing profitable. Walter, of course, was off taking a bath with Rutledge after the first 30 minutes of our adventure.

My greatest achievement today was nearly completing my Christmas shopping. Though I never set foot in Toys R Us if I can help it, they had Legos buy one get one 50% off, so I got Walter's Indiana Jones set and an airplane. With the extra 15 minutes I had left over before needing to pick up Frances from dance class, I popped in Target and there was the Nerf gun I had been looking for without success over the weekend. Big score! I found a SWAT team action figure set, an Othello game, and some sock monkey PJs for Rutledge, so I think I'm more or less done. All that's left is Frances' "big gift," which will either be an American Girl doll or an aquarium (but not both! I don't think she can wrap her mind around this!). It feels good not to have any pressure now to be in stores any more than I need to.

Ollie did a one-and-a-half tonight at dive. I can't wait to see it. He has a real talent, and I wish there was a way that he could practice and learn more frequently. He truly loves it, but there simply must be some middle ground between once every week or every other week and four times a week for two or three hours at a time an hour from home.