We've been busy, but we're having a good time!
Monday, after a long string of delays including sleeping in, extra-long baths, and picking up a prescription we were supposed to get the day before, we drove to Grandpa and Grandma's house for a couple of days.
When not otherwise occupied, the kids spent a lot of time yelling and running in the house, behavior in which they don't normally engage and which is typically not tolerated. So we tried to keep them otherwise engaged. After lunch, we went into town to the ice-cream place and the kids had slushes - nothing like a little hummingbird juice for children who are already hyper! -and then went to the park to play.
After the park, we walked down to the end of the lane with gloves and a bucket, and helped Nee-Nee rake, dig, scrape and lift a lot of gravel out of the yard. Sometime during the winter, someone who was "helping" to clear the driveway ended up spraying a lot of gravel instead, so we got a start on clearing the gravel out of the grass.
On Tuesday, Papa stayed home from work! He cooked us a great breakfast - French toast and sausage patties...mmmmmm. After baths, the kids went out to "work" with Papa in the woods. They actually just fooled around but at least they gave the appearance of assisting with the work! After solving two of Mom's three most recent computer problems, she and I went out to help, too - we cleaned up some of a very large pile of grapevines, and a really old woodpile that was partly rotted away. Dad showed me around the woods afterward. To my knowledge he has no map or other visual aid, and yet he seems to have a plan for every tree in the woods - some will be cleared and burned, some will be firewood for the house, and some will be pruned or in other ways rescued as part of the forest.
Aidan and Esme helped Grandma bake chocolate chip cookies and they were REALLY good. The third and final computer problem solved, we watched some episodes of The Muppet Show and had pizza for dinner. Then we had to hop back in the car and come home.
The Fortunas were kind enough to invite the three of us all over for lunch and playtime today! We all had a good time and good food. Mason and Aidan played Legos, computer games, and talked and talked - I hope they will know someday how lucky they are to be such good friends! Esme and Shea played with all sorts of toys and jumped on the trampoline, in between their little spats - they don't get along nearly so well as their brothers! And Brooklyn played happily without fussing the whole time.
So...I've been so busy and so not home for the last few days, I'm really behind on everything! The laundry's not done (washed, dried, 4/5 folded, but not put away), the bathroom of the week hasn't been cleaned (when one's home has 4 bathrooms, one is obliged to clean one every week to avoid spending a whole day cleaning bathrooms), and I haven't worked on my book all week. But HEY!!! IT'S SPRING BREAK!!!