2010 Week #1: What a week!

I have a hard time justifying a blog post without pictures (if you didn't already gather that), but here it goes. It wasn't a bad week, or a terrifically good week...just different and blog worthy.
By Monday morning Backpack was fully weaned from his pacifier. Thankfully it was a very anticlimactic event. No problems sleeping or napping. In fact he never once fussed for it. I did nothing but simply not give it to him. Not a destructive ceremony or sympathy talking was needed. Go figure! I guess it was more of a habit than need. Dynomite also broke her pledge to her well-worn 'sucky' blanket while we were in Australia.

Monday morning I get a knock at the door. It was our neighbor asking us to watch her 10 year old daughter after school explaining that she is working nights this week and her sitter had just found out she needed to attend training all week at night and just called her 45minutes before she walked out the door for work. Whew! Did you get all that!?! I said yes. The last thing she said was that she gets off work at 10pm before gratefully running off to work. 2:30pm rolls around and the neighbor girl (lets call her Flower, so I don't have to keep referring to her as 'The Neighbor girl') knocks at our door and completely makes herself at home. It was actually fun! She played with the kids, we played games, ate dinner, laid the kids down for bed, and watch Harry Potter - Year 1. When her Mom comes to pick her up, Travis volunteers me to watch her all week. Which isn't too bad, but because between 7:30 and 10:30 is when I do all my cleaning and blogging and googling and facebooking and reading and writing then at 10:30 we wanted to watch "Eli Stone" that meant I did all that after 10:30 and we did our show at midnight that meant that we haven't been going to bed at a decent hour.

So Tuesday rolls around. Flower did tell us on Monday that she does like to go to the Youth Center after school. So we told her that the kids have swim lessons on Tuesday, so if she'd like to go the Youth Center she should just call us when she's done playing and we can pick her up either before 5 or after 6. I guess she liked us SO much she popped on over right after school! She stayed with Travis and Backpack while I took the kids to lessons. That worked for Travis because she watched Backpack while he did homework. In my not-so-infinite-wisdom as a Mom, I thought swim lessons would be ideal in the winter. Get the kids out of the house, release some energy, and get in a nice warm pool. Okay, in Portland when the pool is inside, it really is inside with a real ceiling and is actually warm water. Not so in Dayton. It was freezing. I thought Dynomite was going to shiver her little soul right out of her body. Trouble was surprisingly okay, despite last year's summer experience. Part of the problem is that the pool is open during the summer, otherwise it is covered by a fabric bubble (which will deflate if you open the wrong door). So to remedy the problem, I'm borrowing our friend's wetsuit for toddlers. This night, after the kids went down, we started Harry Potter, Year 2 with Flower.

On Wednesdays I have the Thompson's girls for our morning swap. They're always the best to watch and the kids all play well together. Then I got Trouble from school and waited for Flower to show up. She stayed home for a little bit to do homework. Again we played games and had a great time. That night I watched 3 other kids while their parents fulfilled their church responsibilities. They all played Transformers, dinosaurs, Army men and cars. Thankfully Travis is around, he is a much better sitter than me! After everyone left and the kids laid down we played a fun round of Apples to Apples Jr. We stayed up way too late and watched Eli Stone...anyone else heard of it??

On Thursday one of Travis' morning classes were cancelled so he hung out with us in the morning. It called for afternoon snow. The Dayton Daily News boasted that the Mad River School District hasn't called an early dismissal from school in nearly 20 years! You'd never guess, but there was a 1 hour early dismissal from school that day due to the falling snow. In fact everything was cancelled...our RS meeting, our RS Meetings Committee Meeting, and swim lessons. Honestly for a few inches of snow! Minot would put them to shame! Not complaining though, I'd rather the whole town shut down then me driving around because I felt obligated to. Even the base closed so Flower's mom came home early. Travis did force us to go out in the snow and play (I really really don't care to be cold...at all!) That night we went to the Thompsons to play "The Office" trivia game and have brownies.

On Friday all the schools were closed and Travis had a two hour late opening. It was so great! It was like a 3 day weekend!! We had a huge breakfast. Travis went to shovel snow for his Home Teaching family (the dad is deployed) and he took the older two with him. After he left for school, we did play in the snow (without Travis' urging...SHOCKER...) mostly because I needed to shovel the snow. However that night we had quite the crowd! Usually we swap Friday nights with two other couples in our ward. In a typical 4 week month 1 night we babysit all 10 kids, get 2 nights off for a date, and 1 ward temple night (Ward temple night is new, so we'll see how that goes). But this night we had another family that needed our services, plus the 10, plus Flower. So that made 14 kids (mostly between the ages 1 and 5) and 2 adults. They stayed occupied with some football board game Travis made up, My Little People toys, a Monster Trucks movie, Aladdin, and popcorn. After they left we let our kids stay up to finish Aladdin. It was a long night!

Saturday, Travis shovelled that family's walk again and I did ours. We then ran errands and spent way too much at Goodwill. Travis always finds the best deals on games and books. I found some cute outfits for the missus and me some sweaters. Travis got the red expansion to Killer Bunnies, so we...again...stayed up way way way too late playing that. What is wrong with us!! I, for one, do not do well when tired. I felt so tired from all the kids and lack of sleep that I cancelled having our friends over for dinner on Sunday and went to bed without doing dishes. A huge no-no in my book!

Sunday, finally! Travis hitched a ride early to help shovel the sidewalk at church. We had a pretty relaxing day. I was so glad we canceled, I was not my usually perky self today. The kids do so much better on the 9am schedule. They're much more attentive and act better in class. Dynomite is a Sunbeam now!! Backpack has 7 more weeks until nursery...I've been counting down since he was 6 months old. I should have taken a nap today when the boys went down, but I was organizing pictures while Dynomite did some art work on Travis' homework..oops! I put a roast in the crock pot with just au jus this morning. At about 4pm I shredded the meat and let it cook in the juices. Put that on some hoggie rolls and dip it in the juice and you're in heaven. I have a wart on my hand that drives Travis crazy..hee hee, but he froze it today. So if you see me walking around with a white glove on one had, just know that I'm not a Michael Jackson impersonator :-) We also watched the 450th epidsode of The Simpsons.

Here is to a new week! Let it be back to the same ol', same ol' :-)

PS While I was typing, we got a phone call from Flower's mom. I guess we'll be seeing more of her this week.