A Quick Check In

My computer is off being fixed right now.  The thing I really miss about it is being able to access my photos!  I'm on Dan's desktop which is a PC and I'm having trouble getting my Flikr images to show, so I'm just going to do a quick real time check in.

We've been child free since Friday, and it has been a lovely break.  The things that stand out to me the most when the children are gone are:

1.  How quiet the house is.  It's so quiet!  And so strange.

2.  How much of my time it takes just to maintain life when the kids are home (meals, laundry, prepping for the next thing, cleaning up from the last thing,...)  That is if I'm lucky I maintain, more often I fall behind.  Despite my constant efforts.

3.  How nice it is to have a stretch of undistracted, uninterrupted thought.  That's amazing.  And to be able to read.

That being said, I miss them terribly and am grateful that my days are spent with them.

Kaitlin has been so cute on the phone with her words.

"What did you do today, Kitti?"

"I did-ed...."  I will miss when she learns proper past tense.  Her trademark is adding -ed to everything.

We've talked to the kids each night and I could tell that Kaitlin and Andrew were starting to get a little homesick tonight. Matthew is still going strong.  But Grammie and Grandpa have shown them a grand time and have done lots of fun things.  I know this will be special memories for all of them.

In the meantime, Dan and I have loved our free time.  It has been busier than what I would have liked but also lots of fun.  We sacrificed quite a bit of our time getting things done that needed to be done so that we'd be able to enjoy more family time the last week before school.  We accomplished a lot in terms of getting the van serviced, brakes fixed, and lots of errands done.  Our little theme has been
"A movie a day while the kids are away."  :)  We love movies and it's such a luxury.  We rented Argo the first night, saw "Man of Steel" at The Liberty the second.  Yesterday we saw Wolverine (Can you guess who has been picking the movies?) and tonight we went on a double date with our pastor and his wife for dinner and a movie to see "The Butler."  Which was really good.  We also went to the pool and read in the sunshine for a while, which was great, and enjoyed some meals out.  It has been wonderful and we're really (REALLY) grateful for this time together.  We don't often eat out, and so it's been fun to go to restaurants we've wanted to try.

I'm heading to Richland tomorrow to get the children and then Mom and I are taking them to Silverwood for a couple days.  We'll return home on the weekend.  And then we have our last full week of summer and we leave for Disneyland less than 3 weeks from now!  I don't know where the time goes.  It has been such a wonderful summer. One of my very favorites.

My goal is to have the blog caught up by the time that school starts. Might be a bit ambitious.  We'll see!