Not Exactly What I Had Planned...

Well, Tuesday night did not go exactly as planned. We got the house ready for the showing and left to go and pick up the kids from the sitter’s. We then went over to the post office to mail something that had to go out that night, so we had to go to the downtown one. It was about 6:40 and hubby was going to take me straight to the restaurant to meet my friends for dinner, and then I was going to get a ride home with one of them. However, on the way back to our suburb, we saw a car on the side of the road with steam pouring out of the hood and a guy that looked completely lost. We couldn’t stop in time to get him, so we went down to the next exit and turned around, got off at the next exit and turned around again. We pulled in front of him and hubby went out to talk to him. It turns out the guy was on his way back to work, so we gave him a ride to the gas station that he worked. We then offered to do anything else for him that he needed. He didn’t know of any tow trucks (he has been in the U.S. for 6 years and has never had car troubles), so we used my sister’s AAA to have him towed. I got the kids back home to feed them while hubby and my sis went to deal with the towing around 8:00…dinner started at 7:00. So I just fed the kids miscellaneous stuff and gave them baths and got them ready for bed. Then hubby came home and we ran to Wendy’s to get our dinner. The guy asked hubby if he went to church, and of course he said “yes”, so he asked him where, and he told him. Maybe we’ll see him there! I’m not holding my breath, but I’m glad that we were able to help him…I know what it’s like to really need someone to go out of there way to help you.

Last night I was good and picked the kids up and went over to the YMCA to work out. After that, we went and picked up hubby to go and look at the new house. We grabbed Chipotle because we were planning on having a picnic at one of the many playgrounds in our new city, but it got too dark because it was going to rain. Anyway, the house is looking great…I love the brick color! And they put a neat design with glass block and regular window in our basement windows. It’s coming along nicely…now if our current house would just sell! The poor kids were starving by the time we got back home…so I kept feeding them chips in the car, and when we finally got back home they devoured their quesadilla!

Tonight I plan on working out again, and then playing with the kids and having them in bed by 9:00 so that I can watch Grey’s Anatomy!

We Have a Showing Tonight!!!

Last night I spent about 1 ½ hours in the kitchen! And I wasn’t even cooking anything difficult! I was making ribs for the adults in the house (me, hubby and my sis) and veggies and macaroni for the little ones. My veggies turned out fabulous! Broccoli, red pepper, baby corn and zucchini all sautéed together. So I mixed that mixture with the pasta for the kids…they weren’t that impressed, but we all thought it tasted great! Then I burnt the first set of ribs (on the grill), so bring out the next set and hubby cooked those for me perfectly! All in all, we sat down to eat at 7:30 and I had gotten home and started dinner around 6:00. Oh well, at least it all tasted good and hubby cleaned up!

The rest of the night we played…my daughter loves to play “office”, so she had all of her pens and paper out on the kitchen table and we were a pizza shop taking pizza orders. My son walked up and took the play phone away from me and put it up to his ear and kept saying “ello”. We called him “the pizza man”, and we kept yelling for the pizza man to bring us back our phone! We had a good time. Then I literally ran around the house with my daughter on my back, and then it was up to my room to watch Studio 60 while my daughter stayed down with hubby to watch football. They make cheesy bread to eat while they watch it and they have a great little bonding time while watching football.

We have a showing tonight!!! The realtor’s office just called, and it’s from 5:30 – 6:30 tonight…do you know what that means? No lunch hour for me so that hubby and I can leave work at 4:00 to go home and clean up! Luckily we are pretty neat people, so all we really need to do is pick up the toys in the basement, make beds (I never do that in the morning – what’s the point? You’re just going to mess them up again at night), and put the dishes in the dishwasher. No too bad, but I don’t really trust my husband to do all that without me…he’s lucky, he’s a partner at his technology firm, so he gets to leave whenever he wants, no big deal. I do too for the most part, but my boss isn’t here today, it’s just the admin, and she’s a pain in the butt about PTO and stuff like that. And I already wasted 3 hours of PTO earlier this year when we had a showing that could not be re-scheduled and the people looking at it already knew they didn’t want a two-story house (that’s ours!) and ended up buying our neighbor’s house. I’m still very bitter because our realtor knew that story, and if he would have told me that I would not have wasted 3 hours of PTO cleaning the house for people that were not going to buy it.

On a brighter note, I also have my moms’ dinner out tonight…Mexican! I can’t wait! I know I just saw most of these women for two days straight this past weekend, but it will still be a lot of fun, assuming I make it there!

Fabulous Weekend!

This weekend was so much fun!!! Friday night the fam and I headed to good-old Wal-mart. I needed to get photo paper to print out pictures for my scrap weekend. So we go and walk around a little and play with the kids (there’s nothing like acting like all of the other Wal-Mart shoppers and letting your kids run wild). We hadn’t eaten dinner yet and we were starved! So we decided to eat at the Subway that’s in Wal-Mart. I was the second person in line and waited 20 minutes to get my food. Thankfully, we were in no hurry and I was learning a great lesson in patience. After eating we went home and played and then put the kids to bed. Then we started printing pictures, I did my nails and some laundry. Then we decided to watch Fun With Dick and Jane and didn’t end up going to bed until around 3:30.

My alarm started going off at 7:00 and I finally rolled out of bed at 7:30…it was time to scrapbook!!! I got the babysitter situated (hubby was going golfing) and headed out the door with all of my stuff! I got there around 10:00 am and scrapped until 11:00 that night. It’s neat because the workroom is in the back of a wonderful store. This store has everything that you could possibly want/need to scrapbook. I bought some really neat things! This place is also cool because it’s attached to Easton Town Center…which is just store after store and restaurant after restaurant all in one compact area, so you can walk everywhere! Here’s the link to the place: http://www.eastontowncenter.com/

Our hotel was right next door to the scrapbooking place so all we had to do was get our luggage out of the car and walk over there. The hotel was very nice, and I enjoyed my 9 hours of wonderful sleep. They said that the alarm went off at 5:15, but I didn’t hear it, I was dead to the world. We got up and went and sat in the hot tub for a while and then got ready for another day of scrappin’.

We went to Panera and ate some breakfast, and then at 11:15 we started up again. You could tell we were all worn out…I definitely was not working as fast as I was the day before. But we still had an awesome time! I had to leave by about 3:00, and luckily everyone else was ready to be done. So we packed up and headed to Cheesecake Factory for lunch.

After lunch I met my family at our new house so that we could walk through it and look around (it was so great to see hubby and the kids again!). Then we went with my mom and dad and sister to Whole Foods and got some great fruits and vegetables for this week. By the time we got home last night (about 8:00) we were exhausted! So I fed the kids, gave them a bath and put them to bed. Then my sister and I watched Desperate Housewives (while eating wonderful cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory) and then we went to bed.

It was a wonderful weekend and we already have our next scrapbooking night planned for the end of October!

Update to Fish Girl

One of her co-workers in Internal Audit had a discussion with her about what she should and shouldn't bring for lunch, and what she's supposed to bring in for breakfasts. I heard the conversation went really well and the girl was very happy that someone told her about the issue.

I think that means....NO MORE FISH SMELL!!!!!

:)

Scrappin' Weekend

So tomorrow is my “scrap weekend”. The original one in Cleveland was cancelled. The lady e-mailed us on Tuesday and told us she didn’t have enough interest and she couldn’t keep the prices that low with the amount of interest that she had. We were all so mad! We were really looking forward to getting away. So we all started looking and thinking of different ideas of how we could still get together and scrapbook away from our kids and hubbies :). We have a really neat store here called Archiver’s…it’s scrapbook heaven! You can see it at http://www.archiversonline.com/ . They also have a workroom in the back with tables so that you can set up and scrap all day. So that’s where we’re going! And then we’re going to stay at the hotel that’s next door. The people that I’m going with are the ladies from my moms’ group, and we always have such a good time together. I think they have such a good time because they can laugh at me and scrapbooking attempts. I’m normally a very organized person…you pretty much have to be if you’re a mom, especially a working mom, but when it comes to scrapbooking…my stuff is a mess! I honestly think it’s quite humorous myself (it’s always good when you can laugh at yourself :)).

So that’s where we’ll be this weekend. I’m kind of sad though that I won’t see my kids…I think I may have to give up the Sunday scrapbooking so that I can come home and see them. It’s nice that it’s here in Columbus so that home is only 20 minutes away!

I’ll let you all know how it went on Monday (and those of you reading this that will be there…are you laughing already? I sure am!).

The Silence Is Gone

I sit at the end of a row of cubes. When I started, I had the whole row to myself, so it was quiet and great! Then we started hiring more people, and eventually there was someone next to me. She is from Indonesia and this is her first job. She's annoying to all of us. We bring in breakfast every Friday (we each take turns) and she brought us in fish-head soup. She eats fish everyday for lunch...I hate fish, and I really hate the smell of fish, so every day at lunch I'm so disgusted with the smell that I end up leaving when I wanted to stay in and eat the lunch that I had brought. Anyway, I digress. She went back home to visit her family for two weeks. Then the U.S. wouldn't let her back in for another two or three days, so she's been gone for about 2 1/2 weeks and it has been so quiet and nice. However, that quiet time has ended...she's back.

I'll be alright as long as she doesn't have fish for lunch today.

Disagreement Over Kids at Weddings

I just had an interesting disagreement with some co-workers…kids and weddings. My boss didn’t want or have kids at her wedding, and neither did our admin. I however, loved having kids at our wedding, and to be honest, I don’t even remember them being there (but the pictures show they were!). So two very loud and opinionated people stated that weddings are no place for kids…I told them I disagreed. The one brought up the point that people are drinking at weddings…I stated that I drink in front of my kids, which he followed up with that he meant people are getting plastered…I agreed with him that kids should be taken home long before that happens. He also said it’s so annoying how they’re always out on the dance floor…annoying? I think that’s the cutest thing! Our admin said that every wedding that she has been to with kids the kids are running around, the parents aren’t watching them, and at this last wedding that she attended she had to tell a 7 year-old multiple times to stop playing with the candles. I then pointed out that I have never witnessed any like this at any of the weddings that I have attended. My boss looked at me and said that my friends are the good parents.

Is this true? Am I lucky enough that all of my friends are good parents…(thinking)…yep, that is the case. Except for one, but the children are much older now and the misbehaving is not nearly as bad. Thank you to all of my friends that read this….you are the people that let me enjoy the weddings that I go to with all of the cute little kids all dressed up!

What about all of you? What do you think about kids at weddings? Have you had bad wedding experiences?

Contest

Hey.....

There's a contest to win a free blog design at: http://bluebirdblogs.blogspot.com/2006/09/fall-into-free-blog-design.html

Check it out!

Speaking Terms Again

I forgot to post about how my husband and I reconciled. Unfortunately it was right before I left for Chicago, so I didn't have any time to post about it. A couple nights towards the end of things, he would grab my hand while we were sleeping. This was very strange...when we are fighting, we are fighting...no touching or anything like that. So finally one night he woke up after being asleep for about an hour and put his arm around me and said "don't ever leave me". I was really scared, I couldn't figure out why in the world he would say that. So I asked him why would I leave him? He said for the past couple of nights he kept having the same dream that he could hear me, but he couldn't see me, and that I would all of a sudden start laughing at him. So this opened the door to a huge discussion. It was going great, and then he flew off the handle again. But fortunately I'm stubborn and persistent and I wasn't going to bed until this was resolved. Finally we realized that although we are Christians, we really have not had a Christ-centered marriage. So we vowed to spend more time together doing devotions and reading some awesome marriage books that we have. By the way, even if you're not religious, I strongly recommend reading "Men Are Like Waffles and Women Are Like Spaghetti" by Bill and Pam Farrell...it really makes you understand how men and women are so different, and how easy it is to work together when you understand these differences. Anyway, we haven't had a lot of time to really start this, but have done it a couple of times and it makes such a huge difference! We are so much nicer to each other, and we don't take each other for granted, which used to happen a lot!

So thankfully God worked with us and I think we should have an even stronger marriage as we begin to work together. The thing with us is that we know we're "stuck" with each other forever...no divorce options here, so we had better make it the best thing that it can be! Another important thing that we agree on our priorities...God first, spouse second, kids third. This can be very difficult because it is so easy to put the kids before each other, but we constantly remind each other when it's starting to appear that way and it's corrected. We firmly believe that kids living with parents that are in a happy marriage grow up much healthier than kids that see constant fighting and disrespect in their house. Of course single parents or divorced parents don't fit in there because there shouldn't be fighting or disrespect on a daily basis (unless there is a bitter divorce, and in that case, I believe that the kids should not be exposed to that).

I could get into a lot more, but I think that I will stop now :)

Tiring Night!

My dad watched the kids yesterday. My parents watch them one day per week, and my sitter needed to switch, so my dad came up because he didn't have to teach (he and my mom are both college professors). Anyway, when I got home we loaded up the kids and went to Whole Foods. My dad is on this huge organic kick...he really believes it's better for the kids (and he eats it as well). I always used to protest (I'm the farthest thing from a hippy tree-hugger as you can get), but once I went to Whole Foods I was hooked! For those of you that have never been to one...it's awesome! A HUGE section of fresh produce and the largest meat counter that I've ever seen. They also have "normal" (un-organic) foods there so you can get an organic tomato or a conventional one. Their prices are pricey, but for the selection you can't beat it! Then I usually got to a regular grocery store to get everything else...like all the un-healthy food that we eat in our house!

Anyway, so we were there about 1 1/2 hours, and the kids hadn't had dinner yet, but thank goodness for all of the samples! My son ate apple after apple! Just for the record I did purchase quite a bit of apples, so the samples were not just wasted as my son's dinner. When we came out of the store it was pouring rain. So we pushed everything (including the kids!) into the car and headed over to the bookstore so I could run in and grab a book (you must take advantage of the opportunity to run into a store and leave the kids in the car with someone!). After two bookstore runs and no book (my dad said he'd order it for me...I have an awesome dad!) we headed home, very tired!

When we got home we unloaded everything. I separated his food and ours, and then he left on his 2 hour drive home. I packed the kids bag for today, and then drug myself upstairs into bed.

I was happily enjoying Studio 60 when my daughter came upstairs crying. I kept asking her what was wrong (my husband was behind her so I knew she was OK), but she was crying so hard she couldn't tell me. Finally she calmed down and told me that she had put a plastic bag on her head even though she knew she wasn't supposed to. (Side note...this is something she has been doing a lot - telling on herself. We're trying to be careful because I know there will be a day when she won't do it anymore, but at the same time, it's extremely annoying...I still have to punish her when she does something wrong, and most of the time I wish she wouldn't tell me so I wouldn't know). Anyway, she was very distraught over it, and luckily my sister was by her when she had attempted to put this bag on her head and quickly yelled at her. This had happened about 4 hours early, and all of a sudden she felt compelled to tell us about it, and she was obviously deeply bothered by it. However, my husband had already had a very serious talk with her about putting bags on her head just a week before. We were really torn...do we punish her? if so, how much? We loved the fact that she came and told us about it, and when we asked her why she did it she said because she was trying to be one of the fairies in Sleeping Beauty (they have those hat-things). We decided that she still needed a spanking (I don't want to hear anything about how spanking is bad...I was completely against it until I had my own kids, and now it's our punishment method and I have to say I'm very impressed with how well it works...we hardly ever spank her), this offense was too serious. So my husband gave her a spanking and then she came and laid in bed with us. I told her I was very proud that she told us what she had done, and if she hadn't have told us and we would have seen her, she would have gotten two spankings. I think she got it. Then we all fell asleep snuggling together.

Being a parent can be so hard sometimes...and I don't even mean physically!

A Week In Review

I’m so sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted anything…I have been so busy. Last Thursday and Friday I had to go to Chicago for a conference, so I was swamped with work on the days before that trying to get everything done before I left.

Because my company is too cheap to pay for an extra night’s hotel room (we’re talking $210 to a company that brings in $1.3 billion in revenue) we had to fly in the morning of the conference (that means I was up at 4:30 after going to bed at 1:00). We had an uneventful, short plane ride, and then took a train into the city and then were supposed to catch a bus after that. We got off the train and were looking around when a VERY nice police officer came up to us and asked us if we needed help! How embarrassing…apparently we really looked like tourists! So he told us how to get to the hotel, and we hiked ourselves and our luggage 4 blocks to the Sheraton. We stored our luggage and went to the first day of the conference.

The conference was awesome!!! It had to do with SEC regulations and filings (which I know would bore 99.9% of you) and it was so neat to learn more about what I do on a daily basis. There were a couple CFOs in the conference (which only had about 30 people total) and it was nice to hear what they thought of certain things. I also learned that there is an Accounting Hall of Fame, and it’s located in my city (again, an easy way for you to find out where I live!). We all assured the instructor that none of our vacation plans had changed…we would not be visiting it any time soon!

At the end of the conference for the first day we got to check into our rooms and then there was a cocktail reception with free drinks for us to get to know each other. Did I mention there were free drinks? You know, at first I was worried about going with someone else from my company…I kind of like to do things by myself, and then the fact that it was a guy…I felt really uncomfortable about the whole thing. Thankfully I have an awesome husband that wouldn’t think twice about me traveling with another guy…I know a lot of husbands that would be irate about that! But the guy was actually someone that I had worked with when I was in public accounting, and that night I was glad I wasn’t by myself. We had drinks (did I mention they were free?) and then we walked around Chicago searching for presents for all of our family members. Then we went and ate dinner at this wonderful restaurant! It was a Brazilian steak-type place. They had this anti-pasta bar-thing that you could eat from whenever you wanted, and then these guys would just walk around with all kinds of different meats that they would cut for you if you wanted it. You could eat as much as you wanted and we were definitely stuffed! The food was so good though! The meal was expensive (good thing we weren’t paying for it!) it was about $170 with tip for the two of us, which included drinks and dessert. After dinner we walked back to the hotel and I climbed into bed with my laptop and enjoyed the rest of my night watching TV and playing on the internet without any interruptions!

The next day was pretty uneventful…and at 4:00 we had to leave to catch our plane. The train was full so we had to stand the whole way from downtown to the airport, and along with the initial luggage that we had, we had acquired presents for our families and bags with binders and books from the conference…my body hurt all over. It felt so good to hand the bags over when we got our boarding passes and just sit for a couple of minutes before boarding the plane.

The rest of the weekend was great…Saturday we went to the zoo and then hung out at home the rest of the day, and then yesterday we taught Sunday school and then did odd jobs around the house and ran some errands.

Time to start another week! But you know what awesome thing I have to look forward at the end of this week? A scrapbooking getaway with my friends!!! We are leaving Saturday morning and not coming back until Sunday afternoon…24 hours of scrapbooking. I of course will not spend that much time on it, but it will be fun to get away with the girls!

Remembering Today

A quick post about the significance of today to me:

9/11 – This day has such an impact on me, and it’s weird because thankfully I didn’t know anyone in the towers or on the planes. However, I think just the thought of what those families and co-workers are going through is enough to send me over the edge.

Luckily for us, my husband and I had not yet started our jobs on 9/11/01. We actually got up early that day…we really never got up before 9:30, but for some reason we were up at 8:30 that morning. We grabbed our bowls of cereal and sat down to watch the Today show. The first thing we see is Katie Couric describing what had been happening…we couldn’t believe it. We were glued to the TV the entire day. We went outside around 5:00 to sit in our driveway as we normally do to chat with the neighbors and it was eerie because there were no planes, and we always had planes flying over our house as we only live about 15 minutes from the airport. But then we heard a plane (of course this made us nervous), but then we saw two fighter jets by this plane, and we realized it was Air Force One. It was flying really low (we still don’t know why…below radar maybe?) and it was really neat to see that and know the President was up there.

The rest of the week was spent glued to the television, and then on Saturday, all of the guys were sitting outside bored (no football that weekend and all of the golf courses were filled up) so they decided to paint a flag on our court (cul-de-sac for those that don’t know what a court is). My husband is a college of Engineering graduate, so he had the whole thing perfectly scaled…50 stars and the 13 stripes. It was huge and awesome! I need to dig up pictures of it. The local news came out and interviewed my husband and took pictures. People didn’t drive on it forever! The poor trash guys the next couple weeks would drive their big trucks around the outside of it out of respect…I loved the way our country bonded together during that time.

Eventually, people started driving on the flag in the court, and TV shows returned, and people started forgetting what a horrific day that was. Every 9/11 I try to absorb as much as the media will give me remembering that time…I don’t want to forget. And I completely support our troops over there…you guys and girls are awesome and thank you for everything that you are doing for us…it’s not going un-noticed; at least by me anyway! I tried to explain to my 3 year-old last night why the buildings were on fire...I told her that some mean people ran planes into them, and she asked "why?"...all I could say is that they were very mean and wanted to hurt us.

The city came by to re-pave our neighborhood last spring, and they had to get the permission of every house on the court to pave over the flag (they said that we could re-paint it when they were done). We had every intention of painting it again, but so far it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe someday…although since we’re moving, we probably won’t see it.

I say a little prayer for all of the families who lost loved ones whenever I think about September 11th; I couldn’t ever even come close to imagining how they feel.

Another Night of Not Speaking

I’m still feeling pretty lousy, but at least I had a great night with the kids last night! I came home and took my little cuties outside where they played on the swing set. Then my daughter wanted to ride her bike, and I played ball with my son. Since my daughter is now 3, and rides her two-wheel bike with training wheels pretty good, I want to start preparing her to take the training wheels off…maybe next summer! So I asked her if she wanted to ride around the block. Of course she said “yes”, so I put my son in the stroller and off we went! She actually rode fast enough for me to walk at a good pace! Then we came home and played on the deck until dinner was finished. Insert big complaint: I noticed that my husband had taken meat out of the freezer and was thawing it under hot water, but by now it was 7:15 and we still hadn’t eaten (and it wasn’t even on the grill yet). I realized that he was in on his computer doing his fantasy football. So I started making dinner (I swear, only for the kids, because if they weren’t so hungry there’s no way I was going to cook), and we finally ate. Of course, my husband and I didn’t say anything to each other. He decided that he wanted to go and look at the house and was going to take both of the kids…but then my daughter and I started looking at the new costume magazine that had come in the mail that day (with a Dee Dee Doodlebop costume in it!), and my husband asked me if I was going, and of course there was no way I wanted to be in the car with him and not talking for 20 minutes, so I said “no”. My daughter decided to stay home with me, which was great because we just kept looking at that magazine over and over again, and then I brushed her teeth and she settled into bed with me. She must have been really tired because she only watched TV (House Hunters on HGTV…addicted to it!) with me for a couple of minutes and then she turned over and went to sleep. I was awakened yet again by my husband coming up and taking a shower…I think he’s just trying to prove me wrong, but even if he isn’t it’s just plain rude to wake me up every night.

We’ll see what tonight brings…he plays basketball and my mom is coming up because she watches the kids tomorrow. I’m sure it will be just like last night….it’s so hard because the weekend is coming up and I hate the no-talking thing. I have great plans for the weekend…our local Dippin’ Dots is having their grand opening party, and Dora will be there along with a lot of other cool things. And our city is having a street fair that I want to go to…we had been planning on these things. I will go no matter what with the kids, but as I said yesterday, I feel very unbalanced when we’re in this state. There is also a HUGE football game on Saturday night…#1 plays #2 (I bet now you know where I live!) and the city is going nuts over the excitement. So even though I really can’t stand the sport of football, I will definitely be watching that game!

What a Weekend!

What a weekend. I’m not really sure if it was good or bad. It started off great! The kids were down at my parents’ house and Friday night we had our meeting with the lighting company to pick out the lights for the new house. And let me tell you, if I hear the word “upgrade” one more time I’m going to scream! Surprisingly we actually did take the “included” fixture a couple of times (maybe for the lights in the closet?), and our bill totaled less than our budgeted amount, so we’re good! Then my husband had made reservations for dinner at this really neat little restaurant that’s on the river and overlooks downtown (and surprised me too, I had no idea where we were going). Then we went home, packed and got the house ready for the cleaning guy and left for my parents’ at 11:00 that night.

Not surprising to us, my daughter was still awake when we came in at 1:45 am. We visited a little and then went up to bed. The next morning my hubby let me sleep in while he got up with the kids. I heard him put my son back down for a nap, and I heard the croupy sound while he was crying….yep, sick again. We figured he must have gotten it from one of the sitter’s kids since they all went back to school. Then my daughter slowly started developing a runny nose and cough too. Anyway, that day we set up our tailgate for the first football game, and it rained, the whole time. So I decided there was no way I was going to stay for the game or let the kids come (they were still at home napping and were supposed to come to the game when they woke up). So I spent a wonderful night at the house with my kids and my dad. That night, I got the kids to sleep and hubby, my sister, other sister, her boyfriend and myself went out. It was just like our college days! We even went to a new bar that was opened this year by someone we graduated high school with. We had a lot of fun! Sunday was spent hanging out…I took my daughter “up town” to a cute little store that has stationary and scrapbooking stuff. She LOVES pens and paper, so I told her I would get her some really neat pens…she got some glittery-ink pens, gel pens and little pens! She loved it!

On Monday we loaded up and set off. It was hard because my dad is really attached to my son (I only have sisters, so my dad never had a boy around), and I swear I can almost see tears each time he has to leave him. My son calls him “papaw”, and he’s the only person in the world that my son will jump out of my hands to go to. Even when he woke up from his naps all weekend, I would go in and get him and all he would do was point to the door and say “papaw”. Luckily my parents are building a house right next door to us, so the saying “goodbye” thing won’t have to be an issue much longer!

Then last night I was up a good part of the night with my two sick kids. The Vicks waterless vaporizer is the best thing in the world, but the problem is that I only have one of those, but I have two kids. So I had it in my daughter’s room with the door closed for a while, and then I took it over to my son’s room. Whichever kid had it in their room slept fine, so at lunch today I ran out and bought another one. Hopefully tonight they will both sleep soundly and I can actually get some sleep! I’ll let you know tomorrow!

TGIF!!!!!

So it appears that the sickness has spread…a little. My husband had it yesterday (and it’s weird because it really only lasts 12 hours), and my stomach hasn’t felt well for the past day, but I don’t feel like I’m going to be sick or anything, so maybe it’s not the same thing.

Last night my husband had to go and open the church up for his weekly basketball (he didn’t feel well enough to play, but he’s the only one who has keys that plays), so the kids and I went with him because I needed to decorate our Sunday school room. Another dad brought his little girl who was 5, and I asked him if she wanted to come into the kids’ room with me where there would be a lot of toys (otherwise she would have just had to sit and color in the gym by herself). He really appreciated that and I took the three kids into our room (the 3 year-old Sunday school room) and I quickly realized that this little girl was a brat! She would just ignore my daughter when she talked to her, and then she would get in her way when she was trying to jump over these bean bags we had in there. She also kept telling me she was hungry and thirsty, so I went to the snack cupboard and told her there were raisins and animal crackers…she told me she didn’t like either of those. And then I told her that we didn’t have any drinks in the room, and she got all pouty on me. How in the world did her parents treat her? I was in shock at how this 5 year-old was acting! Oh well, it was only for 1 ½ hours because her dad left the game early, and he really appreciated me watching her, but I was so relieved to have the next ½ hour of just MY kids!

My mom and sister came and picked up the kids last night and took them to their house 1 ½ hours away. We will go down either tonight or tomorrow morning. It was so nice with both my husband and I not feeling well last night to not have to worry about baths and getting kids to bed…we could just lounge on the couch and then go up to bed when we wanted.

I’m really looking forward to this weekend….whenever we go to my parents’ house it’s so relaxing! They have a huge house in the woods…and the city they live in really only has the university, so there’s not much to do, which was horrible when I lived there, but now that I want to go and do nothing, it’s great! I think we’ll probably come back Monday afternoon, which will give us a nice 3 days down there.

What about you? Any Labor Day plans?