Isn't February supposed to be dull?

Truly, it's been chaos around here for pretty much the entire month of February thus far with little chance of a change in the near future. We just got back from Okinawa and my sister-in-law arrived with her son (5 months older than Peanut). They stayed for one week and then departed a day and a half ago. This afternoon the 12 year-old daughter of a friend of ours (they live in the US) will be arriving for a one-week stay. I'm not interested in baby-sitting her, but hopefully she won't require much attention as she's a fairly mature girl for her age. She'll be gone for just about one week before sister-in-law returns with her family for the one-year anniversary celebration/memorial for grandmother. We've got our work cut out for us for sure.

I did manage to sneak off to see Mamma Mia! earlier this week with several other foreign wives here in Osaka and let me just say, it rocked my world. I enjoyed getting out with other ladies, going to the movies, reminiscing about ABBA and generally having a bouncy and happy good time. I loved Meryl Streep's character and how full of life she and her girlfriends were even in middle age. That's how cool I want to be when I get older. Sometimes it's easy for me to get caught up in being responsible because I'm someone's mother. But that can be incredibly weighty. What I really want is to balance that with being able to celebrate life all the time - dancing and singing and feeling young!