After the Long Winter

It seems pretty weird, and a little bit exhausting, to be so busy after such a long winter of being in the house with about one social interaction a week (thanks to Laura!) But lately we haven't had enough hours in the day to see all the people we want to see and play outside with all our friends. Not a bad thing at all, especially considering it's only April and we have all our days until October to enjoy the warm sunshine and outside play!

This past week was a busy one. We spent one day with the Di Fabio girls and their children out at their parents' house, visiting the goats and playing in the huge grassy yard where the kids could run free and be happy and not get run over by cars. Anja and Charles

Anja, Charles and Goat

Greta and Anja

MaryGrace and Greta

Little Bo Peep

All of them! Charles, MaryGrace, Monica, Anne (and baby Neulieb #3), and Laura (and baby Smith #2)! I really like this picture.

That was also the day my sister invited us to the park with them! Too bad there are not enough hours. Maybe next week!

Yesterday I had a visit from a friend from highschool and his wife and three kids. It was good to see him and to finally meet his wife, who sometimes comments here! I felt like such a dirtbag though... more to come on that later. But when they'd all left and I went into the bathroom later in the evening, I found one of Anja's milkweed pods on the counter. She uses them for boats and plays with them in the sink... but if they sit in the water for too long, they absorb it and the pod puffs up and the open side closes up and they get kind of slimy and they look exactly like a giant slug. Very disgusting and startling when you don't know (or remember, as is often the case for me when going into the bathroom and finding one on the counter) what it is. Jeepers.

Also in the line of playdates this week was with some new friends we met at church! We met them on Easter and they just moved here a few weeks ago. They are really nice and have a two year old daughter and another two month old daughter. On Monday we all met up at the park (all except Martin) on Tuesday the girls and I went out to their house for the afternoon. Their house was so clean that I came home kind of intimidated. We'd like to have them over to grill out but when I got home I was thinking of all the things I'd have to clean up before I wouldn't be embarassed to have them over. I kept thinking that we'd be at least we'd be getting our flowers over the weekend, so if we could just wait till after that, at least our house would look a little prettier, to cover up some of the trashiness. Imagine my horror when they called me on Thursday morning to say they were downtown and they'd like to stop by and say hello! I frantically cleaned up the front of the house and just hoped they wouldn't come all the way into the kitchen or need to use the bathroom. I removed the ironing board from the dining room (I know, our ironing board is STILL set up in our dining room, and I haven't even been sewing lately!) and basically threw everything else that didn't belong (like Martin's socket set) into the bedroom and hoped for the best. Luckily, Anja and I had just brought in some lilacs, so at least we had fresh flowers on the tables. But STILL. Ugh. Embarrassment!

Today we are going down to Louisville. I know it seems random, but it's actually not. Today was the day we were going to leave for our trip to Tennessee to see Martin's grandma and to stay at a cabin down at Mammoth Cave for a few days. Unfortunately, thanks to Martin's work and a very, very annoying something (I try to tell myself it's one of those things that has a reason for happening, but I'm still having a very hard time getting over the annoyingness of it all) we had to cancel our trip. And because we weren't going anywhere, Martin cancelled his vacation days too. Really kind of rotten, but oh well. So anyway, we were going down by way of the Louisville area and were going to spend some time down there to break up the trip for the girls. So even though we're not going to end up at Mammoth Cave tonight, we are still going down there for a little day trip to try and salvage some of the fun that would've been had this week.