Slacker blogger returns – it won’t happen again

Okay, sorry about the delay. It’s been a busy week. Also, I worked an early morning shift at work on Friday – I had to be there at 4. Yes, 4 a.m. As in, I had to get out of bed at 3 in the morning. Before my husband was actually asleep. And of course I spent the day before stressing about:

 1. How was I ever going to get up that early? and

2. How was I going to function, and not only function, but work quickly at a job I had never done before?

It turned out to not be so bad. I did pretty well actually. It was fast-paced and very busy so time flew by too, which was great. And now I’ve had a few days off to recuperate.

On Saturday I went to the mall with my mom, sister and her kids. They have a new toddler play area there that Ella had already been to earlier in the week, but we had fun, so we went again. This time though it was much busier. And there were hardly any toddlers there. They seemed to mostly be 4-7 year olds that climbed on top of everything and practically pushed Ella aside to go up the stairs and down the slide. Note to self: Don’t go there on a Saturday, only on weeknights when it is dead.

Next we went to Olive Garden, with the three young kids. It was pretty much a blur of sippy cups, pasta on the floor and clanging silverware. I’m not sure they want us to come back.

Sunday was a nice day – a lot of playing. Ella and I walked to the park. And at night we had arranged for my mom to come babysit while we went to a movie. We saw the new M. Night Shamalama movie (I don’t know how you spell his name and I’m not going to bother looking it up.) It’s called The Happening. And it is craaaazy. I mostly liked it because he is so good at suspense and I was on the edge of my seat. But there are some things I didn’t care for about it – but I don’t think I should say much about them or I’ll ruin it for you. I will say that it is very gory, and disturbing. You may have nightmares. You may even need therapy.

Afterward we went to some friends’ house for wine and snacks. It was really nice. We looked at their new awesome deck and fountain they built and they made a yummy greek salad and had all kinds of good cheese and wine. And nobody threw anything on the floor or yelled at me to get them a drink.

And now here I am, wondering how I should fill our Monday … not really ready to return to zoo, we’ve sure been to the parks a lot, just went to the mall … hmm. We were expecting company tonight – Steve’s brother, his wife and their two kids. But unfortunately Matt (the brother) just found out he needs both his spleen and gall bladder removed immediately. They’re enlarged from the spherocytosis – the condition that Steve and Ella both have. I feel so bad for their family. It’s not too uncommon of a procedure – but they were just about to leave on a nice 3-week family vacation, and now they’re going to be spending time at the hospital or home recovering. That’s not fun. And we were really looking forward to seeing them. It also makes my stomach do flips thinking that some day Ella may be going through that. I guess it could be worse.

Today I’ll just concentrate on doing something fun … as soon as I think of what that is.

Avoiding the garden

I actually don’t have anything to do with myself right now, so I guess I’ll blog.

Ella was really irritable tonight. Not sure what was wrong, but I had trouble making her happy. She went to bed at 7:30 so I guess she was tired. We had a nice day – went to the park across the pond and played in her splash pool in the backyard, but somewhere around dinnertime things headed south.

I wasn’t sure how to spend the rest of my evening, but Steve opened up this (big) bottle of beer brewed at Granite City and here I am. I’d probably be watching TV otherwise, but because he and I don’t agree on what to watch I decided to play on the Internet for awhile. The other TVs are: in the office (and I like to be comfortable when I watch tv, not in a office chair) and in the bedroom (I feel like a loser drinking beer in bed).

What I should be doing is getting my small garden ready. It was close to being ready and life just got so busy. Now, it’s midsummer and I’m really late planting a lot of stuff, but there are still some possibilities. But, will I do it? It’s not looking good.

A big part of me wants to shop on the Internet -look at new sheets for my bed, look for a cute little entryway table to replace the coatrack that I hid because I worried it would fall on Miss Nosy, or just buy a new bathing suit, or a wagon for Ella … the list goes on and on. But the thing is as soon as I get those things I have a whole new list. I’m trying to buy less things I don’t REALLY need and pay off my car instead. It’s so boring. But I hate when we keep filling our house with stuff we don’t need when the smart thing to do would be to pay off debt …

OK, there’s gotta be a bad reality show I’m missing.

In your face

It was another fun and full weekend due to my sister Emily’s visit for the weekend. You’d think she lives across the world the way we all celebrate when she comes. In reality she lives about 2 hours from us, but still, we love it.

She arrived at Sara’s house Friday night around 7. I couldn’t wait to go visit everyone. My mom and dad would be there too. So we all hung out for a few hours at Sara’s house, just letting the kids play and sitting around. Steve and my dad went to get ice cream, which may have resulted in some blue stains in Sara’s carpet. Ew. Hope that comes out. Sara jokes that she’s going to burn her house down when her kids are older anyway. She said it will be destroyed by that time anyway.

Also, Sara told a funny story about how at London’s daycare she had been having show-and-tell every week for months and Sara didn’t know about it. So London has been showing her Dora blanket every single week. Sara thought she better go big next week and joked that she should bring in her brother Finn in for show-and-tell and say “In your face!” Well my dad thought this was hilarious, and the rest of the weekend he would use the phrase “in your face” often, even when it didn’t fit the situation at all.

After taking Ella home I went back over to have some sister time with Sara and Emily. We had some cocktails and just sat and talked in Sara’s kitchen. Before I knew it, it was 1:30 a.m. Crazy late! I went home and went straight to bed.

In the morning, I begged Steve to get up with Ella. And he did. Thank goodness. But by 8 a.m. Ella came barging in looking for me. I begged for more time. At 8:30 I got up to relieve Steve and he went back to bed. Ella and I played and by 9ish I could tell she was ready for a nap. I put her down, and planned to have lunch as soon as she got up, then we would need to hit the grocery store. My brother was having a Father’s Day get together at his house Saturday night and I was to bring veggies and dip, so I needed to get that among other things. Also, I had invited Em, Sara and the kids to come over to my house at 1 p.m. to walk to the pool in our subdivision. So we were on a tight schedule!

Ella was still sleeping at 11:30. I decided I would need to leave for the store by noon to get back by 1, so there wasn’t really time for me to feed her lunch before we left. So, I decided I’d go without her. She was a tired girl. She rarely sleeps more than 1 hour at a time. But of course as I was getting ready I walked by her room and she sprung up from her bed. I took her down and got her started on lunch then left her with daddy.

I was really runnning behind – I got home at ten minutes til 1, so I was happy that my sisters and the kids were running late too. I had to change into a swimsuit, change Ella, pack a bag, clean up from lunch …. By 1:30 or so, we too off for the pool. It’s really nice to have one in our subdivision. Yeah, it would be great to have your own, but I would be too scared having a little kid and a pool out back. So, it’s perfect now.

Ella and Finn seemed content most of the time behind held in the water. London had the time of her life. She repeatedly wanted to jump in, making Aunt Emmy catch her. She loves Aunt Emmy. Sara and I compare her to our Aunt Jeannie. She was the youngest of our aunts and she lived in Georgia, so it was always really neat to see Aunt Jeannie. Emily is London’s Aunt Jeannie. Sara kept joking that she hoped Em didn’t want to relax at all. Em was busy playing with London a lot of the pool time. And also Em mentioned there was an incident where London may have gotten into Em’s lipstick and put it all over her face! Oops.

It was about 3 when we decide to leave the pool. And it was a good thing we didn’t stay a minute longer. We had to leave at 4:30 for the Father’s Day party, and it took us all the whole time to get our crews around. Luckily Ella napped for me the whole time, but I still was busy getting cleaned up and ready.

The party was fun. It coincided with their neighborhood block party so there was a huge bouncy house there and also the small bouncy house that belongs to Nate and Rachel. Ella had a lot of fun. I was tired though. And it was still so hot out.

We left around 8, and that night Emily was staying with me and we stayed up talking and watching tv for awhile but by 11, I was beat and went to bed.

The next day we were all invited over to my mom’s house for lunch at noon. We all kinda slept late so the morning went very fast and we left around 11:30 for my mom’s. We had a nice time there. Of course she had all these awesome new dishes she was trying out and a new playhouse for the kids, so it was pretty dreamy being over there. We kept talking about leaving – Emily would have a two hour drive ahead of her and Ella needed a nap, but it’s so hard to leave Grandma’s house. The endless stream of good food (that you don’t have to cook yourself) and the change of scenery is so nice. Plus it’s in the country so you feel like there’s just so much space and so many places to go.

Once in the kitchen, my mom pulled out another delicious treat and said “I made a peanut butter pie.” My dad excitedly replied “Oh! In your face!”

We left around 4ish, and Em loaded up and left when we got back. The rest of the night we were pretty lazy around my house. It was a busy, but fun weekend. We loved it. And now I’m going to go rest for awhile. A certain little girl used her powerful good looks and capacity for yelling for long periods of time to score a night in bed with mom and dad – so we didn’t sleep too good last night …

Dreaming of vacation

Whew. I’ve been working really hard lately. Not that I don’t work hard normally, but once you get into a routine, it gets easy. Right now, work is not routine. It’s a lot of problem solving, a lot of working out issues with new software. It’s actually a little fun because it’s so challenging, but it’s very demanding and hard to juggle with my daily work. I never could be part of IT – seems like their jobs are nothing but fixing problems. Constant problems. Sounds nightmarish.

In a few weeks, we’re taking off for our annual Michigan trip. And finally, a week off. Actually, 10 days to be exact. I haven’t had a full week off in a year. I shouldn’t complain, I have a lot of 3-day weekends, but still, a whole week off is different. You actually get to that place where you’re not forming to-do lists in your head constantly or planning out your schedule. I can’t wait.

We’ll be camping with my husband’s family. We’ve been doing it for, oh, 7 years maybe. It’s probably like the last thing on earth a lot of my family would want to do. They’d much prefer a Ritz Carlton. But we like it. We use to camp in a tent. And that was fine then. We upgraded to an air mattress a long time ago. No way would I sleep on the hard ground again. And just last year we went in on a pop-up camper with another couple. It has air conditioning and heat, among other things, like a king bed, and a full size bed and water and a fridge …

I used to think it wasn’t really camping if you have those amenities or I just wondered why people don’t just get a hotel room if they want all that. But I get it now. We all hang out all day with the family and all the kids. We walk around on trails, go to the pool, lay around and read. We’re just outside all the time. I love it. And at night we have campfires and just sit around and talk or play games. Eat s’mores. And the camper gives us a little space of our own, and an air-conditioned space at that.

We’ll take trips though. We usually take our nieces to the beach one day and stop at the local ice cream shop afterward. We’ll go to a parade in town. One day we might go downtown for shopping and lunch. I think Ella’s really going to have fun this year. And hopefully one day she’ll have fond memories of camping in Michigan …