Happenings 9/22- 9/28

The week ended with me getting sick; either I ate something bad on Friday or whatever afflicted the rest of the family finally caught up to me. (I think he was feeling a little smug because he was the only one not miserable last week and it came back to bite him. No, I actually felt sorry for him because I know how miserable I was.) I started feeling a little bad Friday afternoon, but not bad enough to cancel a 15-mile run with a friend on Saturday morning, although I told him that if I wasn’t outside when he ran by, it was because I woke up sicker. Well, I got up and got ready to go, but when I went to the bathroom, I knew that I wasn’t going to make it 15 miles, so I went back to bed. It got worse the rest of the day with a painful upset stomach, so I was on the couch all day long. I felt a little better on Sunday but not well enough to go to church. Even today (Monday) I’m not very hungry. I ate breakfast but have no appetite, which is how I was the last two days as well.

But me being sick didn’t stop the rest of the family from enjoying the weekend. Katy slept over on Friday night (It was a late night. The girls decorated foam picture frames and bookmarks and watched a movie and then got ready for bed about 9:00, but they didn't actually go to sleep until about 11:30 or so. It took quite a lot of reminding that they needed to go to sleep. Then Claire got up about 7 am and Katey got up shortly after. We fixed chocolate chip waffles - a mommy special and got ready to go to the farmer's market.) and in the morning JJ took the three girls to the Farmer’s Market where they were having some kids activities, like a petting zoo. (Not much of a zoo. They had a cow, two pigs and a turkey locked up in a pen. I almost dropped Claire on her head helping her lean over the fence to touch the pig. It was pretty crowded and I was hot and trying to keep track of the three girls, we just bought them each a small pumpkin and had some lemonade and popcorn and went on home. On the way home I took a detour to see a pumpkin farm and along the way I saw them harvesting tobacco. It is pretty amazing to watch since they do it all by hand. It is a lot of hard work. I was pretty fascinated. I like to see the smoking barns when they are smoking the tobacco too, it looks pretty cool and it just looks like fall.) Katy and Claire played at home when they got back until Claire went to a birthday party. (Claire got to dress up for the birthday party, so she was Minnie Mouse. She looked great!) Rachel stayed home with me, and I laid on the couch and let her play in the living room, which she did very well, even though I was in and out of sleep. (I don't even want to know what she did or what she got into when Paul was "in and out of sleep") I was a little better in the evening so that I was able to take care of the girls while JJ went to the Women’s Conference broadcast, and then when she got home I hung out upstairs watching some football. (We didn't have anyone to babysit at the Women's Conference since I was going to try an finagle my husband into doing it, so I sat down in the nursery with some little boys during the meeting and only got to hear some bits and pieces. Thank goodness for the internet. We had 20 women show up for the broadcast which is really good. I think last time we had single digits. I worked really hard on some refreshments - compliments of Wal-Mart- for after, so that was good too. Chocolate is always a good thing.)

The rest of the week was pretty routine for us, I guess. I was busy at work and we had things going on in the evenings. JJ had book club on Tuesday, (We discussed Atonement. I have come to the realization that I just read books differently from at least the people in the book club. I like to read just to read a story and enjoy it. They seem to be more aware of writing styles and watching for things like foreshadowing and thinking about why things were written a certain way, what the author "really means", etc. I enjoy listening to their ideas since I just don't think like that. It's pretty entertaining.) and I played tennis on Thursday evening and then went to a book reading by a colleague afterwards. I completed a few things this week so that I am starting on some new projects, which is nice. I sent off a couple of articles to journals for consideration, and though I probably could have tinkered with them for another month or two, it was to the point where I just needed to send them in. If they aren’t accepted as is or with minor revisions, most of the responses nowadays are “revise and resubmit,” which means they like it enough but it needs some significant changes. So then I’ll make the changes as recommended by the reviewer. That is more efficient than trying to guess now what sort of things they will look for in my basic article. (I went to work on Friday for a meeting since our office is joining the hospital and we had to do a new orientation, so the girls and Logan had a babysitter in the morning which they always love. The office transition is weird since no one really has an idea what is going on.)

The Fall weather came upon us pretty suddenly, but it is really dry again. The weather is cooling down some more, which is great, but there is a burn ban everywhere because of the lack of rain for a few weeks. On Wednesday morning, after the college-kid-plan for cutting the fallen trees in our yard fell through again, my friends Chris and Trevor came over and using Chris’ saw we had it all cut up in 2 hours. We stacked the limbs in piles on the edge of the yard, but now I don’t know what to do with them. We can’t burn them right now, and I don’t know if our garbage service will take them. So they are still there. The bigger logs are up for grabs too — we don’t know anyone with a wood-burning stove so we may just keep it for camping, but then we will have to buy an ax to cut it. Anyway, so much trouble.

I used some of the cut limbs to make a sort of a lean-to fort in the back yard for Claire, and it turned out pretty cool. The neighborhood kids set up a table in there and they like to hang out. Hopefully it lasts until it’s too cold to play outside.