since monday

Here's what we've been up to.



My darling Dan turned 41 on Monday.

As an early birthday present to him (and by early I don't mean before his actual birthday...I mean early in the morning ON his birthday) I stayed in bed and slept while he got ready for work so that I wouldn't be in his way in the kitchen while he prepared his own breakfast and made his own lunch for work. I know, I know. I'm so thoughtful.

I'm pretty sure I did wake up when he came in to say good-bye before leaving because I vaguely remember hugging him and wishing him a happy birthday. Or else I dreamed that I wished him a happy birthday. I can't remember. He leaves for work at 6:30 in the morning and how can I be expected to think clearly at that hour of the day?

The kids reminded me several times throughout the day that it was his birthday. We went to the store to buy him a weed whacker. That was thrilling. It was rainy and windy out. If it had been nice out we would have braved the party store for balloons. It wasn't so we didn't.

When Dan got home, my neighborfriend was over visiting with her kids. She convinced us to leave the kids with her and go out to eat. Just the two of us. It was lovely.



Then we came home and Cate helped Dan blow out his birthday candle over and over and over again. It was worth it to hear her sing the happy birthday song over and over and over again.



That kid sure loves her daddy. Seriously so cute.



And then we drenched our super duper healthy angel food cake (how can a food with angel in its title not be good for you?) with smooshed strawberries (also super duper healthy) and squirted a little white fluffy stuff on top (whipped cream is basically milk right? milk is super duper healthy too). That's Dan's birthday cake of choice so that's what he gets year after year. I can't complain.

I love this picture because it looks like Cate is having some kind of meltdown in the background. I don't remember her freaking out about anything during the festivities but it sure looks like she did.



I don't remember much about Tuesday.

Danny brought prepackaged brownie treat squares to preschool for the snack. I figured those poor kids had to be getting tired of fruit snacks and those little bunny crackers so we opted for something they couldn't resist. Danny picked them out. Then on the way home from preschool he asked me why the kid who brings the snack has to eat one too. He chose the brownies and then didn't even want to eat one. That kid.

Dan was late coming home from work because he had a class. He was late coming home from the class and was pretty much home for a total of 53 seconds before leaving for his church meetings. I don't think the kids even knew he had come home.

Tuesday was not my favorite day.

And that's ok because maybe Wednesday was.

Cate had a play date at her friend's house in the morning. On the way home from dropping her off I asked Danny what we should do while she was gone. I thought he'd suggest going to Target. He loves Target because he likes to stand in the Lego aisle admiring all the awesome Lego collections that I'll never buy him. He doesn't know that and I'm not one to crush the dreams of a 4-year-old.

He didn't suggest Target or the park or Cousin Kris' house even. All he wanted to do was watch a Star Wars movie with me and work on his sticker book. So that's what we did. We sat together on the couch and he narrated the movie for me, asking me if stuff was cool and who has what weapon and which planet are they from and on and on and on.

It was nice to not be folding laundry or washing dishes. I should try this relaxing and spending time with my kid thing more often.

Thursday came and went and I don't really remember what we did. I probably spent a few hours folding the laundry and washing the dishes that I had neglected the day before.

Friday some neighborfriends came over to play in the morning. Two of them are in Danny's class at church. They're girls though so they mostly just played with Cate. I let them "help" me make peanut butter cookies and then they played in the back yard while I washed more dishes. I swear I wouldn't know what to do with my time if I actually had a dishwasher.

Aunt Diane and Uncle Tony came down to visit last night. Dan and Cate went with them to Cocolito's. I hear she was very well behaved except for when she wanted Dan's Diet Pepsi. That sounds about right.

Danny and I stayed at Aunt Judy's house watching kids so some moms and dads could go to a meeting. They took baby Ray Ray with them though. Cate and I have decided that we really miss that kid so we're going to be spending a lot more time with him this week. Maybe he's ready to crawl around at the park.

And that brings us to Saturday.

I woke up early this morning and ran in a 5k. When I told Danny I'd be in a race he was excited. He told me he thought I'd be "soooooooo good" and that I'd probably win. How's that for a vote of confidence? I'm happy to report that I ran the entire race (except for when I had to stop because the car turning the corner didn't want to just let me run in front of it). No walking. As I was huffing and puffing along I thought several times of people who run marathons and all I could think was WHY WHY WHY do people do that? WHY?

The best part of the race (other than crossing the "finish line" and the girl telling me that my time was 26:58 and that I was in 6th place and being really excited about it because that's over 4 minutes better than my last 5k finishing time) was passing the girl who was in front of me the whole race who was wearing a half marathon t-shirt when she stopped running. The song playing in my ears at that exact moment was We Are The Champions. I kind of wished it was the song playing a few blocks later when I finished the race but oh, well. I passed half marathon girl. That's worth something!

Here I am in all my pink sweaty faced glory. A two time 5k finisher! Woo hoo!

Then I got myself all cleaned up and went and bought oodles of flowers to plant in the front. The wind picked up and blew a zillion tiny yellow flowers out of the tree and all over the yard. Should I sweep them up or just wait for more wind to take care of it for me?

Big bummer happened when I was ready to plant some of the flowers and a door-to-door salesman pulled up across the street. I saw him get out of his car with his name tag and duffle bag so I shooed the kids into the back so he wouldn't try to get me to buy his overpriced whatevers.

I was frustrated and the kids were a mess. They bathed and we went to eat dinner at Chick-fil-A so we could avoid me making dinner and the salesman guy when he eventually made it around to our house.

And then we came home and the kids were naughty to each other so I stuck them both in their rooms. Danny cried. Cate cried. Danny kept crying. Cate stopped. We went in to check on her and she had tucked herself into bed. It was a little after 7:00. Why can't she just do that every night? Minus the crying part of course.

Here's one last picture for you. It's not really "since monday" but I'm sticking it in here anyway.

Dan took exactly 14 pictures of me with my little people on Mother's Day. Not one of them has all three of us smiling and acting appropriately at the same time. This is the best one of the kids. Both smiling and cute, no silly faces.

And then there's me.



the end