Living in Munchkinland

Woah, I'm behind around here. My grandfather went into the hospital this week (he's home now and doing well), but everything else sort of went onto the side burner and the blog went as well. Last weekend we drove up to Sugar Land and spent the weekend with Michael's parents. We drove up Friday after art class and got in late (we listened to Artemis Fowl in the car and we enjoyed it). Saturday we rose early and dressed the boys in their Robin Hood and Little John costumes and drove to the Renaissance Festival. We had a great time. We saw the joust and the falcon show and a belly dance show. The kids played all the games and rode an elephant. Davis got a new bow and was thrilled. It was good times. We had terrible traffic coming home, turning a 1.5 hour road trip into 3. When we got back to Michael's parents house, we were glad to be out of the car! The boys and Michael and Clark fished off the back deck while Martha and I prepped dinner and then sa...

I've had a week off work. The beginning of the week was nice. I got to spend an afternoon lunching and shopping with Cheris at Whole Foods. It was a wonderful day. I got to spend a morning with Marchelle registering for baby items and then we had a great lunch at Tarka. I got the house clean and caught up on my bill paying. Thursday and Friday were crap days. Just terrible. Interpersonal relations were not my strong suit. I had several unpleasant interactions with people. There was conflict which I'm never good at. I messed up and embarrassed myself. I felt unpleasant, unpopular and a little stepped on. Just not fun. I was looking forward to escaping into the hill country with good friends, and then their daughter got sick and so they understandably couldn't go. Then our kids refused to go and demanded a pumpkin patch instead. I was so emotionally tired, I gave in and instead of our weekend getaway, we decided to sleep at home and do a day trip....

We went camping this weekend at the Guadalupe River State Park with Davis' cub scout troupe. We had a good time last fall at Inks Lake with the scouts, so I figured this would be fun too. We arrived Friday afternoon and I was in a terrible mood. I had been solo parenting (and packing for a campout) all week and Michael had just gotten back in town. The packing of my parents truck took so long that we were late to pick up Davis and I was all out of sorts about that. And Sam asked how much farther it was every twenty seconds the whole way there. It was also hot. Really hot. And then they told us that we had to fit eight families in three tent spots and we had to fit all our tents onto the tent pad because we weren't allowed to put them elsewhere AND our tent took up three quarters of the space. It had said on the handouts, no alcohol and I had followed the rules, but then I found out that all the other parents brought some and they weren't sharing! I begged ...

Sam gashed his head open on a tree branch at school yesterday and Davis came home with 100.3 fever. Why? Why? Why can't I have a healthy, well week? This is week number 4 with a sick member of our household. Sam's head will be fine. It's already scabbing over and I don't think it needed stitches. Davis has 103 degree fever right now and is sound asleep. The doctor said he had a virus and an ear infection. It's not a surprise because when Sam was sick last week and missed three days of school, the doctor said the same thing. Now they are both on antibiotics. I've wiped down every surface and doorknob so many times now. I keep thinking we're all done being sick and someone else falls. Davis began this sick month, four weeks ago with a fever. Maybe we've come full circle and we can end stop now.

I hosted a fall soup swap on Sunday afternoon. It was a very pretty day after a weekend of lots of rain (almost 4 inches!) We started the day at church where I was doing the lay leading and reading a reflection and singing "Imagine". It was really meaningful and I enjoyed it very much to participate. Afterwards we rushed home and got ready for our party. Michael and Rob went over to our friends house with the kids plus Ransom and Ellis for an epic playdate that began there and ended at my parents house with Kade. I think they all had a great time. My soup swap was well attended and we ended up having eleven different kinds of soup. Lots of them were vegan which was great so I had a ton of selection. They all sounded delicious too. We had coconut chickpea soup, roasted red pepper, mushroom bison, chicken tortilla, tomato basil (the winner), curried pumpkin soup with shrimp, sweet potato black bean, curried butternut squash, cauliflower cream soup, mulligatawny...