On to catching up. Life got crazy busy since Stasa started kindergarten. Tom and I have been trying to volunteer when we can, which only helps fill up our already full calendars. I also somehow found myself not only signing Stasa up for Girl Scouts, but myself as a leader. WHY? Because I'm crazy. But really it's been okay so far - I have two other moms helping and we only meet once a month. It's manageable for now. We'll see how I feel by the end of the school year.
Now that we're thisclose to Thanksgiving and then rolling into Christmas, I thought it made sense to actually share everything else that's happened between the first day of school and now.
Right after school started we took off for a Labor Day camping trip with family at The Cove. I think I may have spent the majority of my time walking back and forth to the bathrooms with both girls. I so love these camp grounds, especially the fact that there's a small lake beach.
Funny thing about that bathing suit I'm wearing. We packed what felt like our entire house to go on this camping trip with the kids. Every time we try to whittle down the pile, but with five of us there seems to be so many things we need. It wasn't until we drove all the way there, set up camp, and started getting the kids ready for the beach that I realized I forgot our bathing suits. Good grief. Since Tom wanted to chop firewood for later, I packed the kids up and drove 45 minutes into town to the closest Wal-Mart in the hopes of finding something for me and Tom. We hit the jackpot. The girls picked out Tom's new trunks, which featured the Dude from the Big Lebowsky. It was that or trunks with an eagle and flames. The girls couldn't stop laughing at the dude. So the dude it was. My options, however, were pretty slim. I finally found a top and bottom that sort of went together. We grabbed our stuff, paid, and hightailed it back to camp, where we changed into our suits only to find that the top I bought was waaaaaay too busty for me. Good thing I brought a bunch of sports bras. We had a great time with the kids and family and can't wait to go back next year!
On to...regular days hanging around the house.
Then between huge work events we had Halloween. I barely got the kids costumes together before the trunk-or-treat at Stasa's school. This was our first trunk-or-treat and Tom was going all out with decorations, which I thought was a bit much for a school thing, but I couldn't have been more wrong. People went waaaaaaaay all out. When the deuce and a half rolled up next to us with a big screen and fog machine I turned to Tom and said "not enough." Next year we'll have to amp it up even more.
And then again between even more work events we wound up in the hospital with Tommy. It started with what looked to be a bug bite which then got infected and drained, but then got worse. We had started taking him to the doctor on a daily basis for meds and monitoring and then ended up taking him to the ER one night after his fever spiked. And thank goodness we did because the infection was serious. They admitted us and put him on a few different IV antibiotics for four days. We were finally discharged, he finished all of his meds and is just now getting back to a normal routine (and diaper changing schedule). We didn't tell a lot of people that we were in the hospital since news was changing every day and we really couldn't have visitors. Tommy was in pretty good spirits for the majority of our hospital stay as long as no one was touching him or his IV.
That brings us to this past weekend, where Stasa was the lucky duck of the week and got to bring home the class mascot, Brown Bear. We had already gotten an earful on what everyone else had done with Brown Bear, which included bounce houses, play places, exciting (and expensive) outings. Well, we showed Brown Bear a GOOD TIME. First stop: the spa (aka our washing machine). Then he met a bunch of our bear friends, learned the fine art of mancala (and got his butt kicked), played dress up, went to dance class, the mall, Cracker Barrel and dinner with Grandma. Basically went and did whatever we already had on our schedule. And Brown Bear LOVED all of it. At the end of the weekend Stasa put together a poster about all of the fun she and Brown Bear had together. And since she got Brown Bear she also got to share her poster with the class, be the line leader for the week AND bring up the gifts at school mass.
And that about catches us up...for the most part...there are still a lot of things missing, but that's life, right?
