Milestones

How is it that you try SO hard to keep your kids sheltered and secluded and with little influence from the outside world, in the hopes that they will stay 2 and 4 and never change and never have to grow up, and as a result I will never have to lose my sweet little ones, and yet, try as you may, they do get older and bigger and venture out into the world, despite all your best efforts? Tonight, we registered Lucy for kindergarten. *sigh* I remember when we were attending prenatal classes while I was pregnant with her, they told us that the kids being born through that prenatal class would start school in 2010 and graduate in 2023. At the time 2010 seemed so far away and 2023 seemed like something out of star trek and they'd be going to school on hover-crafts eating pizza's that you re-hydrated into full-size (most of my ideas of the 'future' come from Back to the Future 2). Now it's 2010 and we're registering Lucy for kindergarten and 2023 seems all too close.
Because of where we live (rural Cochrane), Lucy has a number of choices when it comes to kindergarten. There are 2 different public schools in town, one that also runs a french-immersion program; a catholic school; a public rural school North of town and a private rural program. We looked into each, but have decided to go with the Private Rural program that is run at a school called Westbrook about 10 minutes North of us. Because it is privately run, and we don't actually fall into boundaries, I will be driving Lucy to school, but I can't really imagine sending my 5 year old on a bus anyway.
I wanted to list here, as a means of journaling, the reasons why we chose this school over the others in the hopes that those reasons still hold true in September when she begins, and throughout the year.

• It is a K-8 school. More specifically it's a K-8 rural school. So the little kids will be interacting with the big kids, but the big kids come from rural communities and the school is literally in the middle of nowhere, so outside influences are next to nothing. There is nothing for a grade 8 student to get themselves in trouble with, and therefore nothing that they can be introducing to my innocent 5-year-old, unlike some of the schools in town. This will come more into play as she progresses at this school from grade 1 to 8, but it's nice to get started on the right track.
• It's also the school that Tyler and all his siblings attended, so although administrations and teachers change, we still feel good about sending her there based on each of their experiences.
• The program runs Tuesday/Thursday all day, rather than 4 or 5 half days. This will hopefully help her transition into grade one where she will be doing 5 full days. Everyone has their theories, so this one isn't too major for us. But, the perk to full days is that they get to have really cool field trips like to the zoo and science center and don't have to be restricted to the half-day schedule.
• The teacher seems really awesome. Lucy got to meet her tonight and spend some time with her. She's very sweet and friendly but seems to have a good balance in her focus on play and academics. Lucy hasn't felt very challenged in preschool and often comes home saying, "all we do is play." It seems funny that a 4 year old would complain, but she's ready to be learning, so I think kindergarten is going to be a blast for her. The teacher also comes out to each student's home the week before school and spends an hour of one-on-one time with them, getting to know them and helping the child feel comfortable before the school year actually starts.
• The best part, we think, is that the program is run in a portable beside the Westbrook school, which is where we hope Lucy will do all of her schooling (up to grade 8), but it's still privately run. The funding stays private, and the program is private. They get to use the school's facilities, such as the gym, playground, library and computer lab, but on their own time, so they're not competing with kids of all ages. Plus, their lunch and playground time is private, so the teachers can monitor what's going on a lot better. The public kindergarten program has the kids in with all the others and only one lunch-time supervisor...so I imagine the little ones can feel overwhelmed at times - and Lucy would definitely fit into that category. Towards the end of the year, they start to have joint playground time with the Westbrook students to help them get ready for grade one. Basically, this sold us on the program, and we filled out a registration form and paid our tuition right there.
  

I'm hoping these things that seem so important to us now, will remain the same as her new year starts and as she is progressing through the program. It seems so crazy to be making all of these decisions already, and I know that Lucy will be the trailblazer for her younger brothers who will have the benefit of hers (and our) experience to rely on. I guess she must have known that would be part of her roll, and decided she wanted to be the oldest anyway. She's pretty great at it, and it makes me think her experience is beyond the 4.5 years that we have been witness to.

Projects or should I call this post Distractions?

That's my life...a series of never-ending projects. Or so it seems. Friday morning, we woke to a pleasant day. No pressing engagements for the weekend. Nothing major in the foreseeable future...and then my husband asked me his favorite question: "What do YOU have planned for this weekend?" (which I know really means: "I have something planned, but I want to check and see if it conflicts with anything else, because my plans are usually spontaneous and yours are usually weeks in the works.") I, of course, said, "nothing major" to which he responded with: "I was thinking we should spend some time getting our house back in order." I had to agree with him, as I had been sick earlier in the week and a sick mom equals a messy/disorderly house. Plus, the room we are planning on using for the baby has become the catch all for everything that doesn't have a place and now it's becoming the worst room in the house. The plans became thus: 1) stack the new washer and dryer (which also consisted of going to buy the 'stacking kit' to make that possible, which was down by Ikea, and why drive all that way without stopping at Ikea?) and 2) put together the new cupboard that will stand beside the stacked washer and dryer to keep all the towels and other bathroom items organized. Sounds like a pretty reasonable effort for a weekend, right? (Can you tell this is leading somewhere...?) So we loaded into the van with the kids and a few snacks and headed to south Calgary to get the stacking kit and stop at Ikea for a few organizational items. Shouldn't take too long. Fortunately, while we were down there, we noticed a Kacz' Kidz and decided to check out their loot of baby items. We ended up buying a carseat, even though it was the worst shopping experience ever. I'll save that info for another post.
We made it over to Ikea and picked up a few items (which took WAY longer than anticipated - and the one thing we were actually hoping to get wasn't there...typical). It was home again through rush-hour traffic and dinner at Grandma and Papa's. Although we didn't actually get to stacking the washer and dryer, or building the shelves, we got a lot accomplished and still had a full Saturday to finish the rest.
Kari and Barrett had come up for the weekend for their anniversary as well as a few doctors appointments, so the kids were excited at the prospect at spending time with them, and Tyler was happy to have an extra pair of hands in Barrett to accomplish the things he hoped. Remember our list? Stack the washer and dryer and build the cupboard. Well, the washer always wanders around the bathroom as the floor it is set on is uneven and it ends up causing the whole house to shake on the spin cycle, so Tyler decided to look at the floor underneath and figure out exactly what was there. Of course, once I saw one piece of linoleum tile being pulled, I knew my short list was about to get much, much longer. We spent a bit of time in town picking up some items from Canadian Tire to finish this project (which now also included reworking some plumbing so the washer and dryer could be put in a new spot). Tyler and Barrett ended up ripping out most of the floor in the bathroom, and then had to leave it as the whole family was going out for dinner in NE Calgary for Kari and Barrett's anniversary. We decided to stop at the Home Depot, at Barrett's suggestion, on the way home to look at some new floor tile product he had seen. We ended up buying some to replace the existing linoleum as it was peeling and rotting in a few places and thought a nice new finish would go nicely with our nice new washer and dryer stack and cupboard for the towels. So now Saturday was done, and the projects were not...and laying new floor had just been added to the list.
Sunday is Sunday, so no projects happening then.
Tyler decided he could work from home on Monday in order to get the bathroom done as long as he participated in his 10am conference call. Barrett was around until about 1:30 before they had to leave for one of their doctor's appointments, and both guys figured they could be done the entire bathroom before then, and Tyler might even be able to go and get a few hours in at the office. So 9am rolled around and the saws, hammers and picking of sticky linoleum tiles began. The kids and I went about our day as usual with the except of not having a toilet anymore, as it had to be removed in order to lay the new flooring...but it wasn't that big a deal because we'd been living without a bathroom door for 2 days already. I made special point to use the bathroom at Lucy's school when I dropped her off and picked her up that day. Needless to say, we ended up pulling ALL the flooring out in the bathroom, taking out the toilet, ripping out the paneling behind the washer and dryer to 'see what's back there', ripping a big hole in the floor where the toilet used to be in order to repair the wood sub-floor that was discovered to be rotting, and creating a new sub-floor out of hand-me-down particle board so we didn't have to run to town to buy anything more. All this was completed by about 9pm when it was time to send the kids to bed. From that point, Tyler and I worked until about 12:45am to lay the new flooring. We went to bed completely exhausted and woke up feeling pretty much the same today. We have a toilet again, thank goodness, but guess what? No washer and dryer, no cupboard. Those are the projects for tonight. Now we will be rebuilding the wall behind the washer and dryer, but before that we have to move the plumbing, and electrical to accommodate the washer and dryer in a new spot, then hook up the stacked washer and dryer, and install the cupboard for towels and other bathroom essentials. Today is Tuesday. And I know that reworking plumbing means gluing new pipes, which means not using the water because we need to let the glue set for 12 hours...sigh. Tyler's dad came by at one point and asked me if I felt like I was always in the middle of a bathroom project. Umm...yes!
Now, this all sounds like complaining and cynicism. Actually, it hasn't bothered me too much, it's just so hilarious that this is my life. As always, it makes me truly appreciate my husband who seems to be able to do ANYTHING he sets his mind to...except estimating his time.
I love the new floor and it makes me feel like my bathroom is a little less like a dirty cave and more like a sanitary place where I don't mind my children showering, going to the bathroom or brushing their teeth. My husband is the best. He works so hard at work, and then works so hard at home. I secretly think he just likes having projects (or distractions) and he admits to me and his dad that he comes by it naturally. Home projects to distract from office work and office work to distract from home projects. It works out pretty well for him, and if we're willing to put up with a mess or chaos for a few days, it works out pretty great for us too.

The Torch

I'm speaking of the Olympic one, not my eternal flame...although he's pretty exciting too. Yesterday, the Olympic torch came through Cochrane on it's way to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics. It was pretty exciting to have such a thing happen in our small town, so there was a lot of build-up...at least in our house and at Lucy's school. The kids in her class made Olympic medals to wear as well as a pin with their name, 2010, and a Canada flag on it. They were all instructed to wear red and they got the day off school so they could participate. Tyler reworked some meetings he had scheduled so he could join us for this potentially once in a lifetime experience. The nice thing about it coming through our small town is we didn't really have to deal with any crowds to be able to see it. The kids, Tyler and his Grandma set up across the street from the Nan Boothby library and wait about 30 minutes before it came through, waving their Canada flags. As the runner went by and was on his way out of town, Tyler turned to the kids and said, 'Ok guys, that's it.' Neither one of them believed him. Max was like, 'are you kidding? we sat around waiting all this time for THAT guy?!' Lucy thought there would be more than one torch...so I guess it was a bit of a let down, but I'm glad they had the experience just the same. I explained that we would watch the torch on TV when it got to Vancouver and we could see them light the big torch. They seemed excited about that.
I unfortunately ended up missing the whole thing as I woke up feeling not too hot, and got even worse as the day progressed. I spent most of the day laying on the bathroom floor, in and out of consciousness...wishing that I could just throw-up and get it over with, but alas, no such luck. I was so glad Tyler had been able to reschedule his day as he was now available and took care of the kids, as I was mostly unaware of anything else around me for a number of hours. Things started to settle down around 7pm and we played charades as a family (which consisted of the kids acting out animals while Tyler and I sat like vegetables on the couch). Tyler and his dad gave me a priesthood blessing and assured me that I would be able to sleep that night without any interruptions. (That's a blessing that I need most nights, not just when I'm sick!) I had been a bit worried about that, as I hadn't made it more than an hour without a trip to the bathroom all day, but I had also slept quite a lot during the day, so I was worried I'd be up all night. I ended up sleeping just fine and was only bothered by an aching body...laying around for 36 hours is a little rough on the hips I guess.
Tyler has been so good to take care of things for me and entertain the kids to help me get the rest I needed. At one point, Max came to see me and I told him he should go play. He said he could rub my back to make me feel better. Sweet boy. Unfortunately, they all had to deal with my stinky sulfur burps that I couldn't seem to control. I think Tyler likes it when I get sick like this sometimes because it gives him a chance to rub in my face that I do get stinky sometimes. We have been together for nearly 12 years and I have tried VERY hard to remain pleasantly smelling that entire time. To put it delicately, I don't pass gas around him...ever. I think he was excited for me to be pregnant, in the hopes that that would change, but even still I have remained rose-like (well, let's just say I don't usually have bad odors...not necessarily always good ones though). So a day like yesterday I guess is made for Tyler...because it certainly wasn't for my benefit!

The Weekend

I guess the Monday blues always come on harder when you've made the most out of your weekend. If we sat around doing nothing, then the work week wouldn't seem like such a bad thing to be back to. This weekend, we made sure to fill it, so going back to the grind was particularly hard. Friday morning, Tyler headed in to work for a few hours while the kids and I assembled our new stroller (a joovy caboose that will hold an infant carseat and still have space for Max, which will hopefully make my life a lot easier). We had spent Monday evening shopping around toys r us and the like trying to find what was best for us. It came together with little complications, we packed up snacks and a quick lunch and then we were on our way into the city for a trip to the zoo. It's been a number of months since we've visited our favorite place as the weather has been to cold, or life has just been too busy. We picked up dad from work and spent the afternoon visiting our favorite animals (for me, that's the tigers. Tyler likes the Snow Leopards, Lucy likes the hippos and Max likes the giraffes). We were pleased that the park was so quiet, and the weather was calm enough to be able to enjoy being outside, but also made us grateful for the indoor enclosures. The kids even took a few minutes to play at the park, which we don't usually do, because it's too busy. We were also happy to see the new baby giraffe. While we sat visiting the gorillas, we were trying to decide what to do with the rest of our evening (whether to just go home, or cram more into our family friday). (check out these cute bowling feet)
We called Sarah and found out they (her and Tyson) were planning on going bowling, so we hitched onto that idea and met them at Mountainview Bowling. We played a quick game and realized that we obviously don't play often enough as Lucy and Max's scores were depressingly too close to the adults playing. I like to claim I have an excuse as the belly throws off my balance (which it really does), but it only made a marginal difference I'm sad to say. 10 frames is difficult for the kids, but they lasted. 8 frames would have definitely been ideal. After showing off our skills, we headed over to our favorite Vietnamese restaurant which was only a few blocks away. Then it was home and off to bed. We decided to not let our Friday be the only shining star in this pleasant weekend, so Saturday morning came (with a little sleep-in by everyone) and then a visit up to Grandma and Papa's house. I had a rehearsal at the Stake Center at 2 along with Janie, Sarah and Ali and it was determined that while we practiced, the boys should do a Costco run...with all the kids. They seemed to manage pretty well, although Tyler would claim that he handled the 3 kids and shopping much better than his dad and Jason did. We met up with them and those that were tired or cranky headed back to Cochrane (mainly the kids and Papa) and the rest of us headed to a fabric store to pick our fabric for Janeen's grad dress. We ended the night with pizza at Jason and Ali's and then off to bed to prepare for Ward Conference Sunday.
Sunday was pretty awesome too. Ward Conference - which is spiritually uplifting, but draining on a parent trying to entertain children through a two hour meeting, rather than the typical 70 minutes. We only had one time out and a few outbursts...not bad. The ward had a potluck lunch afterwards which was much enjoyed by everyone, and then we headed into Calgary to visit with my family for the afternoon. We were surprised by a visit from my Aunts and Uncles (Graham, Leah, Larry and Christine) and the roast beast that mom cooked was delicious. Then the ladies headed to a RS fireside presentation of "Women at the Well". I was playing piano for one of the numbers and enjoyed hearing the musical performances of some of my favorite girls.
It was a lot to pack into a weekend, but it was fun. Today it was back to vacuuming, laundry, groceries, recycling, washing vehicles, meal planning, etc...but I can still feel the faint memories of a weekend well spent. I hope it lasts at least part way through the week, until the pull of the next weekend can catch me through the rest.

Quiet

My house is tidy-*ish*; I'm prepared for my presidency meeting tonight; I have a list of things that are still remaining to be done for the week, but at this point all is still; Max is asleep; Lucy is at school; Tyler's at work; and I'm checking on my blog buddies...it's quiet. And all I can think about is: "In 5 weeks, my world is going to tip on it's end...what have I done?"
I have had moments in the last week of terrible gripping fear that I've somehow ruined my life. Does that feeling make sense to anyone else? I have two children, who I think are perfect...especially when I'm blogging, and they're sleeping and at school and not right in my face screaming, or worse yet, in each other's faces screaming. Point is, two children - they sleep through the night - EVERY NIGHT! Naps are nearly a thing of the past (Have I ever mentioned I hate dealing with naps?...I love the silence and civility it brings, but getting the kids there and working your whole life around it is annoying). Diapers are almost a thing of the past. Baby food, burping, bottles...all a thing of the past, and yet it is rushing up so quickly into my present that it's making me nervous. Maybe taking 3 years between these ones rather than two was a bad idea. I've gotten comfortable. I never got comfortable between Lucy and Max - there was no time, and I thought, that's crazy, give yourself time. Now I'm thinking...are you crazy?!?! You had time! I had some of these desperate thoughts creep into my mind in the middle of the night and had to quickly say a prayer to ask Heavenly Father to whisk them away so I could get some sleep and not panic...which he did, thankfully. I try not to indulge them, because they lead to no where good...but sometimes...
I just feel like I will miss the quiet. Ironically the quiet of a two and four year old, if you can really call that quiet. I have this big plan to just 'go with the flow' on this one. No panics. No worries...just let it be. Good thinking...I just hope it works.

priceless

As we sat at dinner on Saturday night, Papa asked Lucy, "What day was Jesus born?" she thought for a moment and then said, "I think it was a Saturday."

How much does he love me...?

Let me count the ways:

1) A new fridge...probably one of the biggest and most wonderful gestures of love that I could think of. The fridge that we have been using for 3 years came with our trailer (ie. it is about 20+ years old). The shelves on the door were falling off, so they rattled and banged every time you opened or closed the door, and the airflow was so terrible that I couldn't keep any food on the top shelf ever, or it would freeze. And if the freezer was full, then I couldn't keep any food along the right hand side of the fridge either. This made having a full-size fridge seem more like I had a bar-fridge. And although I've tried not to complain too much, when we were pulling milk out of the fridge each morning for our cereal and discovering a block of ice-milk instead, I was getting to the end. Tyler went on Kijiji (or should I call it Ki-genius!) and found a beautiful fridge at a beautiful price. He had to drive all the way to High River to pick it up and loaded it into our house. It is now set up, and the contents of our old fridge fill up the door and one shelf in the new one...but I don't care. I stare at it in wonder. It's truly the best gift EVER!
2 and 3) While on the beautiful Kijiji, we stumbled across a front-load washer and dryer pair in Tuscany for only $200. The guy who posted the ad was so surprised at how quickly we responded, but this was a deal not to pass up. We drove to his house to take a look and realized that it wasn't too good to be true, so we dipped into the bank account again, and now I have a nearly brand new washer and dryer that are smaller and just wonderful.
4) He has spent the last few days setting up and moving appliances around in order for me to be able to use the previously mentioned items. This included moving an old ugly fridge and loading it into our van, driving it almost all the way to the dump before someone told us they wanted it, and dropping it off at their house; picking up a washer and dryer and bringing them home, worrying about any water that might be in the pump freezing in the -20 degree weather we were favored with; moving out an old washer and dryer (taking the bathroom door off it's hinges to do so), and moving the new ones in. (without much help from his weak pregnant wife). I used the washing machine and dryer for the first time yesterday and was thrilled that the whole house didn't shake or sound like it was falling down around us as we endured the spin cycle.

5) Lastly (for this list anyway), my friends hosted a 'ladies night' last night for a bunch of girls in the ward to hang out and giggle, eat junk and just relax. Tyler gladly sent me on my way for a night off and took care of the kids (which included an hour-long episode of screaming from Max-o, trying to get him to bed) and waited up for me to make sure I drove home safe while I partied it up until 1:30 in the morning.

Hmm...pretty lucky I think.

Add one more

This morning, we all had a sleep in day, because no one had anywhere to be right away. It's been a while since we had one of those, and I basked in the luxury of it until 9am when I heard tiny little footsteps in the hallway and cute little Max-face appeared at our door. He instantly ran to my side of the bed and climbed up. We cuddled in the warmth of our blankets for a few minutes, until he couldn't sit still any longer (about 2 minutes). He started moving a bit and Dad had to warn him not to kick mom in the tummy. That brought up the subject of Logan and how we need to be gentle with a baby. Max talked about holding him and we told him he could help me push him in the stroller. He asked, "What stroller?" and we told him we might get a new one. He said we should buy a blue one because, (wait for it...this will have me laughing for a long time)...quote, "Logan is blue". What?! It took us a while to get it out of him in words we could understand, but apparently when we went to the Doctor's and saw the ultrasound, baby Logan was 'blue' on the screen, so for months, Max has thought his little brother was blue...and never mentioned it. And he was obviously just ok with that. We explained that he was going to be skin colored, just like Max and made lots of jokes about "he's my little brother, I'll paint him whatever color I want!" So I guess we'll have to get a skin-colored stroller if we still want to match.

For Posterity

As I sat visiting with my girlies today at mom's house, I was recounting all the cute things that had happened over the last few weeks to my fam and realized that I needed to record these things, because they're just too cute to forget. Did I mention already that I have the cutest kids?

1) While in Edmonton, we didn't have any stories to read the kids at bedtime, so Tyler decided to tell stories instead. One night, he told the kids about the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's and the Strippling Warriors. They enjoyed the story and settled off to bed. A few days ago, as the kids were running around the house shooting each other with Max's guns, Lucy said, "Hey Max! How about we play a new game? Let's pretend to bury our weapons and promise not to fight anymore!" Seriously - so worth everything.

2) One of Lucy and Max's favorite games right now is playing Pregnant Mommy/Doctor. Lucy puts one of her dolls up her shirt and pretends she's pregnant, and Max is the doctor and helps her get it out. She usually lays on her bed and Max pulls the baby out from her shirt. (If only that was how easy it was). Well, the other day, Tyler and I were in our room and we could hear the kids playing this usual game in Lucy's room, only with a twist this time. It went something like this:
Max: "Push! Push!!"
Lucy: "Ugggghhhh!"
Seriously?! Where do they learn this stuff?!

3) Today at Grandma's as they played with the dollhouse, we heard:
Lucy (with the mommy doll): "Honey! Dinner is ready"
Max (with the daddy doll): "Just a second sweetie! I have to finish this."
Lucy: "Ok honey, but dinner is on the table!" (a little agitation in her voice)
Max: "I'll be right there!" (equally agitated voice)

Oh boy!

We also had a baby doctor appointment yesterday. The doctor was really sweet to the kids, and pretended the Doppler she uses to hear the baby's heartbeat was more like a walkie-talkie for her to talk to the baby, and for him to tell her things to pass on to Lucy and Max. She told them that Logan said: "I won't be able to play much until the summer comes, I will mostly just do a lot of sleeping, but I'm really excited to see you guys, and I love you lots." I'm not sure if my kids fell for it, but it was still sweet. Oh yeah, and as we were leaving the doctor's office, Max said, "Mommy, when I turn into a girl and have a baby in my tummy, I will be able to hear it's heartbeat too." A little more education needed there I guess.

The last time...?

As I mentioned before, today was a day of plumbing...or, another day down the toilet, as I like to call it. What was going to be a simple 40 minute job of redirecting some pipes from one side of the tub to the other so they wouldn't freeze anymore, has turned into a 36 hour job of fixing the well, cleaning the entire system (for both houses), repairing our leaks and the longest part...letting things sit for 12 hours. The bacteria and iron has been building up in our system, and for a long time we've been needing to do a chlorine flush of the entire thing, so today ended up being the day. The only trouble is, to do that, you need a lot of clean water to feed through the well, which requires filling the tank in the big red truck, which requires getting the truck working, and if you're going to flush all that water out, you might as well put it to good use rather than wasting it, so why not build a skating rink...so something that was supposed to start out as a cracked pipe fix turned into a car repair and ice-rink construction. And you have to let the chlorine sit in the system for 12 hours to effectively clean it, and then flush the system after that, so needless to say, we still don't have water. But in theory, when we do, it should be pretty amazing water. Everything was fixed and in 'wait mode' by about 5:30pm, so we decided to have a quick dinner and then head to the pool in Cochrane to have a swim and a shower. Tyler's family used to live in a converted bus when they were building their house, and every Saturday night they'd head to the pool for a swim and a shower. Tonight, he was feeling a little deja vu. Everyone is home, clean and ready for bed now. We've got a couple 2 gallon jugs full of clean water from Jason and Ali's house to clean ourselves up a bit in the morning in order to be presentable for church, and we're off to bed. As Tyler and I were fixing plumbing earlier, I said to him, "You know, you are the only person in the world that I would ever want to go through this experience with." He asked me why, and I said, 'For one, because you're worth it. And 2 - because you can actually do something about it. I would have been pretty frustrated over these past couple of years to have dealt with frozen pipes as often as we have and not had a husband who had the know-how to fix it." I also told him he has a pretty awesome wife, because I sit beside him and help. He agreed.

The First Day

On the first day of Christmas, someone's true love brought them a partridge in a pear tree...I'm not sure how useful a partridge is (unless it's Shirley Partridge...that mom could do anything!) but a pear tree would be nice. On the first day of this New Year, my true love brought me a fun-filled day of nothingness that we all desperately needed. So although we have nothing to show for it, except mental images, it was a great way to start the New Year. Originally the plan was to get up and fix the plumbing, because life without water kinda sucks. But being as though we didn't discover the leak and break until too late on New Years Eve, finding a store that was open on New Years Day was pretty much impossible, so we consigned ourselves to not fixing the water and just enjoying the day. Fortunately Grandma and Papa's house is only a few yards away, and they had water, so we packed up some of the kids toys and headed up for fun. Most of the day was spent playing Settlers of Catan and it was awesome. We ate whatever, whenever and just enjoyed having no plan. That's a lot to say for this girl who is obsessed with plans and lists, so yesterday was a bit of a break. The kids enjoyed playing Lucy's new game, "Pretty, Pretty Princess" (Sleeping Beauty edition) with Grandma. Max won the first round, collecting all of the pink jewelry and the crown without getting the Maleficent figure, and Lucy won the second, with her yellow jewelry. They continued playing very nicely together in the living room, while our Catan marathon waged on. The living room looked like it took heavy hits, but it was obvious the kids had had fun. We capped off the day of nothingness with dinner and a show. Soup and Night at the Museum 2 downstairs at Grandma and Papa's. The kids got to bed a little later than usual, but with no plans for Saturday except a whole lot of plumbing, I wasn't too concerned. (seriously, who is this New Years girl?)
My biggest concern? Having a baby. Around 6pm I started having contractions (not unusual) that just kept progressing and progressing and getting stronger and stronger (unusual). I sneaked away from our movie for a few minutes to find some more comfortable pants and to take a few breather moments. Having a baby 7 weeks early isn't my idea of a good start to the New Year. These contractions were different than my usual daily bout. They were a lot stronger and more painful, rather than just the uncomfortable ones I usually get. Things settled down later into the evening and throughout the night, as Tyler insisted I lay down and take it easy. No baby news, so I'm glad for that. This morning, Tyler and his Dad are busy figuring out plumbing, so the kids and I are going to do some playing and taking down of Christmas decorations. I'll be really happy to have a shower and use the toilet again...hopefully sometime soon!