Taking Care of Business

It's amazing. Since spending 30+ hours in bed this past weekend I have had an over-abundance of energy. It's been great. I really think I ought to consider sleeping from Friday night until Sunday morning every weekend. It seems to increase my productivity considerably! Not that any of my projects have been truly colossal, but it sure feels like I've accomplished a lot. But backing up a bit...

When James left Panda Express the other day (the rest of us were still eating) to head to Hatch--no kidding--all three kids watched him walk through the door, then spun around and began pelting me with questions.

"Mom! Can we have a pizza party tonight???"

"Yeah, and watch a show, maybe?"

"And have popcorn???"

Then Joe felt the need to clarify.

"It's not that we just want to celebrate that Dad is gone or anything... But now's the time to do it!!!"

HA! So after service that night we came home and I put The Sock Drawer on for them (a truly great grouping of Veggie shorts... or briefs. Get it?! Sock drawer?! HA!) and threw some pizzas in the oven. Then I sat at the other computer and "watched" a play-by-play of the last few minutes of the Super Bowl. Would have been really fun to be able to see that 4th quarter! Love those exciting ones.

I don't know what possessed me, but I told the kids they could all camp out on the floor in my room that night since James was gone. It's amazing what kids find to be special treats. Anyway, they had just fallen asleep and I had just planted myself right smack in the middle of the bed to fully enjoy being able to sprawl out instead of hang on to the edge for dear life (James doesn't believe in the invisible line I used to draw for him dictating "My side" and "Your side")... when James called and said he was coming home! HA! Gre-e-e-e-e-eat. He had taken clothes to stay over night and I fully expected that's what he'd do. I told him to be careful not to kill any children trying to make it to the bed--they covered most of the floor. It all worked out perfect, really. We were able to have our little Dad's Gone Party, but he was there when everybody woke up the next morning!

We've been doing double school (not entirely, but almost) the past two days in an effort to make up for what we didn't do last week due to our Texas trip. We actually took the school books with us on the trip and did a day's worth on the way there... but that was the end of that! If we hit it hard again tomorrow we should be able to get all caught up again.

So aside from school taking a little longer than usual, I've managed to change the sheets, get the week's worth of laundry and ironing done, scrub the kids' gross bathroom and get it shining again, vacuum the carpets and shine up the wood floor, cook waffles and two chicken dishes... Ah, yes. I made my first chicken pot pie! It's been sounding good ever since Mom told me about Sister Betsy's. I had made a new chicken casserole with bisquits on top for dinner last night. It sounded good, but it really wasn't as good as it should have been--mostly everybody just ate the bisquits. So tonight I took what was left of it (plenty!) and added some veggies and chicken bouillon and enough herbs and spices to change the flavor significantly from the first not-so-hot casserole, whipped up a pie crust, and called it chicken pot pie. It wasn't award worthy, but I thought it was pretty good! And it always feels good to fix a flop and make it into something that will get eaten instead of thrown out. :-)

We had horse lessons today--first time since early December. The kids are excited about getting into that again. Afterwards we made a nice, long trip to the library. The kids got a whole slew of books. Katie picked out several American Girl books. They look good. I guess we'll see. Sam chose books about octopuses and other slimy sea life. Joe got another book about how to build robots (gonna be one of those drive us bonkers weeks for sure!) and who knows what all. I found one of the 4 children's books in the entire library system (!!!) about Creation. Dinosaurs by Design, I think it is. The boys have been loving it. I have been wanting to watch The Magic of Ordinary Days the past couple of days, so I tried looking it up at the library. They didn't have the movie, but they did have the book. I checked it out, but by the time I got home I had decided that I really don't have the time to read a book right now anyway... so I watched the movie on YouTube tonight, clip by clip (15 total!) while I did the ironing! Whatever works, I guess!

The only other news to report is my pressing correspondance with David Baroni. HA! Mom and I were talking about him the other day and, I'm not sure what inspired me to do it, but I wrote to him and told him that he stole my Dad's belt when I was a kid. :-) Actually, he was staying with us and borrowed it, but forgot to give it back. We've teased all these years that "David Baroni stole my Dad's belt!" I also told him how much I've enjoyed one particular recording over the years--it has nothing but slow, worshipful songs on it and is just so very good. Sam loves it, too, and often chooses it above Veggie Tales at night when it's his turn to pick the music. Anyway, Mr. Baroni (is that what I'm supposed to call him?!) wrote back and laughingly said he owed us a belt. (I'm sure he was thrilled to learn that.) He said he and his wife fondly remember the trip to Pueblo. Hard to imagine, really. There's not a lot in Pueblo to be fond of! Aside from the Church, of course. ;-)

And that's it. A good start to our week. Gotten lots done and hope to get lots more done. I'll try to start taking pictures again. Not sure why I've quit, but it's been a while since I've used that schnazzy camera of mine. I'll set it out in the open, then maybe I'll think to take a picture of something. It won't be a poodle. ~sniff~ Maybe a kid will do something dumb and picture worthy. :-)