Saturday, July 29, 2017

Summer Plans

I had big plans for this summer.

Plans that included organizing various rooms of our house, tossing out toys (we have WAY too many), and working on organizing things for my classroom.  I brought home three boxes from school.

I haven't even opened them.

I haven't organized one room.

We still have WAY too many toys.

I will admit, I may have been a little ambitious with all the things I wanted to accomplish. Considering we just added baby #3 last November.  I had reason to think I would have a chance to get things done.  You see...for the first 6 months of his life, little Billy was the DREAM baby.  He slept 8-10 hours straight, would go to anyone and not fuss, and love to lay on the floor and watch TV with his sisters.  He was a low-maintenance baby, and I figured I could get some work done.

HA! Little Bill had different plans. Plans that started with his first set of teeth...to be quickly followed by FIVE MORE. Long story short, those pesky bits of enamel cost me my dream baby. He now is waking up 4 times a night, cranky, and not happy when he's away from mama (AKA...KidZone at the YMCA).

This means that I have 3 precious hours of the day to get anything accomplished at home when baby naps. This means, many times I am cleaning up the kitchen or folding a load of laundry. It hasn't left much time to get the "BIG" things done that I wanted to this summer.

And now here we are, in less than two weeks I'll be starting back to work again and I have to sprint to finish at least part of my list.

With a baby who is still getting up 3-5 times a night.

I will need some prayers.  And coffee.

Sunday, July 2, 2017

Special Weekend with Daddy!

I just recently returned from our 9th annual Mystery Weekend girls' trip, that my awesome mother plans for us each summer. I have written about my AMAZING mother's AWESOME idea before...here. Basically, she's a rock star and plans a secret trip for us girls each summer. We get to slip away to a mystery destination and relax.

This year was another fantastic trip, combined with my sister's bachelorette party, and officially adding our sister-in-law to the Mystery Weekend festivities. We spent the weekend at my brother's lake house on the Ozarks, shopped until we dropped, got too much sun, and had a margarita or two (or three...). It was perfect.

However, this post is not about my weekend. This post is about the weekend that the rest of my family had. Because, let's face it. Mystery Weekend wouldn't be the weekend that it is without Super-Dad taking on the role of "single parent" for four days and nights.

And Super-Dad he is.

Ethan has rocked out each Mystery Weekend as single-Dad for the last 5 years, but this year was different. There are now three kids, ages 5, 3, and 7 months. While some may run in fear, call up grandma and grandpa, or grumble and moan about having to do everything solo, my husband planned something special to do with the kids each day.  Special time with Daddy he calls it. This is their time.  Here's just a few things that happened.

A trip to the zoo. All three. The girls walked the entire way, and were SOOOOO tired when they got home. But they had a snack with the tigers, watched fish jump out of the water, and found all of the lizards and snakes.

Special Ice Cream with Daddy...this is a Mystery Weekend tradition. Sonic shakes after 8:00 PM. Last year the girls thought it was so fun to share a shake and stay up late. This year, thanks to little brother needing to go to bed, they got the shakes to go. This is the first thing they told me about when I got home. They even got TWO cherries on their shake (thanks to some quick moves by dad and giving up his cherry when they weren't looking.)  Next year they may have to have their own shakes!

A new movie and another special treat...the girls enjoyed their first Root Beer Floats and watched Toy Story 2 on Saturday! Let me just clarify...so you can see the true awesomeness here....Ethan took all three kids to three different stores (Academy Sports for goggles which were needed for swim lessons, Best Buy for the sale of the movie, and Dillon's for the ingredients for the Root Beer Floats). Just the thought of that exhausts me.

The reason my weekend away was perfect wasn't just because of the peaceful lake and more than one alcoholic drink a night...it was because of how things went at home. I just love that Ethan has plans for making this weekend special for him and the kids. They look forward to the weekend that "mommy goes on vacation" and get to spend some quality fun-time with just daddy!