Yes, I'm still here.

All the cool bloggers took Christmas hiatuses, but most of them wound up checking in during their "break" anyway, so I just did it the other way around - didn't plan the break but took it anyway.
The last month has been nice. Michael has been home for one month and one day now. The first 2 weeks, he was working half days. Then his leave started. We spent the first week of his leave hanging around the house. We didn't really do much like go out, just hung out. We went to see Handel's Messiah at our church and took the kids in with us (there was nursery available for Mikayla, but we kept her with us.) They did suprisingly well. Aaric actually seemed to enjoy it. He sat there swaying to the music. Mikayla thought it was pretty music, but was pretty fidgety. We fed them right before we left, but I wasn't hungry. Until we got to the church. Oops. It wasn't the FULL Messiah, which is around 3 hours, but a 1:45 version of it. We left around 15 minutes early. I was starving and the headache was starting. Later in the car, Mikayla was VERY impressed that I could sing the Hallelujah Chorus. Not all the parts of course, but I have my own arrangement* of it where I alternate between the Soprano and Alto parts.
The plan was to spend Christmas day at home and then load up the van in the evening and leave early on the 26th for GA to see the family. What really happened is this: We got up, ate cinnamon rolls, opened presents, and played with them a bit. Then we kind of sat around staring at each other. There was a bit of cleaning to be done, but really, who wants to clean the house on Christmas day? So I started packing the bags. After just a little while, Michael and I both agreed that we should go ahead and leave ASAP. We rushed around to finish packing and loading the van and left. Well, the battery on the van was dead because it does NOT appreciate repeated opening and shutting of the doors, and Legal Notice Lady's husband jumped us off. He seemed pretty normal, and did mention that things got weird when he got home from Iraq and that he had moved out and that she was moving out soon. (sure enough, the house is empty now. The mystery of the notices on the door will never be solved.)
The week in GA was nice, but pretty busy. We had 2 families to divide the time between and thats always tricky. But we managed, and we survived to tell about it. Not that there's a ton to tell. There was this one incident though...
The day before we were to leave, we went out to eat at a Chinese buffet with my parents and grandmother. All of the kids (mine, and my brother's) were trying to eat with chopsticks. Michael brilliantly grabbed a few to stash in my purse. Apparently Aaric got a set to take with him as well. We got into the car, and were debating where to go as we drove across the parking lot, when Mikayla got out of her seat and we realized we hadn't buckled her.** So I stopped and Michael turned around and leaned back to buckle her up. And Aaric decided now would be a nice time to take up fencing. And jabbed Michael right in the eye with his chopstick. Michael screamed and I pulled into a parking space so I'd be out of the way. We decided we'd better go get it checked out by his mom, who is a nurse practitioner and was at work, and the clinic was right across the street. It was a fairly badly scratched cornea. This means it hurt really really bad. And was light sensitive. Which means he kept it shut as much as possible, which means I did ALL of the packing up myself. So we got back to his parents house later than we'd planned and I stayed up late to pack. Then we got up in the morning and I finished packing and loaded the van alone, and we were off to get his eye checked again. We'd planned to be on the road, on the way to NC by 9. We ended up on our way out of town around 4 PM.
So we're home now. Things are good. We're past the whole "reintegration" process that a homecoming entails. Everything seems to have returned to normal. Which is nice. I think we pulled through it exceptionally well. Especially when I know there are others out there, like LNL and her husband, who don't fare so well. While I never worried that it would be that bad for us, I did worry that it would be rough to adjust. But it all has gone pretty smooth.
So I'm back, and thats my long update. The end
*By "my own arrangement," I really just mean that I can't remember specifically how its supposed to go, so I make up some stuff, but I do know that my random "hallelujah"'s are pretty close to the way some parts of it are written.
**Disclaimer: I ALWAYS buckle them. I'm a carseat nazi. In the hustle and bustle sometimes, I accidentally skip one of them, but they are always very quick to either remind me or climb out of the seat, making it obvious that I've forgotten to do something.