A Very Quiet Week

With our kids out of town for the week, I thought I'd do plenty of writing.

Wrong.

Plenty of sleeping. A bit of reading. Some house reorganization. A few outings. But very little writing. Some of that comes from not having little people around to do and say funny things. But mostly, I've just got nothin' to say.

Still, a few relatives are curious about what on earth I'm doing with all this peace and quiet, so here's a just-past-midweek-recap:

Brenna left last Wednesday and Daniel left last Friday. I worked on Saturday and slept on Sunday. It doesn't really take a lot to wear me out right now. In fact, I take about two days to recover from one adventure. Pregnancy is different every time and all my expectations for this summer were ground up a long time ago. This is day-by-day! (Thankfully, I am much improved from the situation I referred to in my Batter Up post. Much improved, but not carefree. Day by day! )

We had a movie night Tuesday with our friends Robb and Belinda. Movies are hard to do with friends these days because you either have to convince your kids to go to sleep at some else's house or you have get a sitter, which isn't cost effective. So since our kids are away, we invited ourselves over to their house for a movie night. They put their kids to bed and we watched Diary of a Mad Black Woman - a Tyler Perry movie. So serious and so hysterical. Tons of great lines in that movie. We had some hard laughs and some great conversation. Good friends are such a blessing.

At home, I'm directing the nesting process. Michael's been pulled into so many projects, he scarcely knows what to do. I think he just wakes up and reports for duty now. Our big project this week has been to clean out our master closet. I am still amazed at how quickly it clutters up and how much junk we find in there. It took two days to sort and reorganize, but I think we're almost done. Now the pack-n-play will fit in there so the baby can take naps in a quiet spot.

Yesterday we seriously downsized our book collection. All of our books now fit on the beautiful bookshelf Michael's dad made us. Amazing. We were even able to leave the bottom shelf open for the kids to fill with some of their books. (Their bookshelves are in the baby room.) Our church library has another very large donation coming from the Peapod.

And today we started to organize the baby room. Most importantly, we put the crib back together. Now that is a chore. You'd think by now we'd know exactly how to assemble it. But we don't. And it's bigger than I remembered. So the room is even more crowded than I imagined. Not much can be rearranged, but I have a few space saving ideas.... (I'm sure Michael will be thrilled to know that.)

As for outings, we had big plans for this week. However baby #3 apparently has plans too, and they don't correspond with ours. So, instead of visiting D.C. or taking a road trip to the mountains, we went to Whole Foods. We've never been there without the kids, and had therefore never been able to truly see what they sell. It's a little like shopping in a foreign country, because none of the labels are familiar. We bought all kinds of foods and drinks we'd never tried before. It was fun. The biggest hits so far were the Italian apple soda and the dark barbecue from the food bar.

We also went to lunch together on Wednesday. To Firebirds, of course. That BLT salad is so yummy! Afterwards we checked out the sales in the Children's Place. It's an expensive kids clothing store, but when they clearance, they clearance! I got a couple of $3 shirts for Brenna. (Don't tell!) We also dreamed our way through Pottery Barn Kids. I'm not a huge fan of theirs, but I love the idea of being able to create a completely themed and matching room. And their kids furniture is really nice - expensive, but nice. We stroked the soft $30 dollar baby blanket and laughed that the clearance shelf held four items. On the way home we stopped at Target for a few things. The school supply section is in full party mode so we did our best to remember what's on Brenna's list. Unfortunately I couldn't get past the 20 glue sticks. So we bought those and some crayons. The rest will have to wait till next time.

And that's pretty much been our week. I've read two books and skimmed two others. (Read the novels, skimmed a book on house cleaning and one on writing.) I can only count the ones that I read entirely for our summer reading contest. My numbers still look sad compared to Brenna's, but I'm starting to give chase. And that's a good thing. Although she told me not to read anything until she gets back...I think she's worried. It's probably not necessary.

Michael's out playing golf and I have some clothes to fold. Maybe in another day or two I'll have something more interesting to post.

After I go somewhere. Or do something. :)