What A Week

As I sit here in the silence this morning, I am reflecting on the crazy week that just passed. I'm actually shocked that school has only been in session a few days with how much has happened. Things went so crazy with school that I didn't even get to share my adventurous weekend last weekend, and here it is dawning on a new weekend.

My parents took my step brother and and me the U of M, Connecticut game in Ann Arbor last Saturday. It was the most awesome day. I had never been to the Big House, and it was even more special because they were honoring a local hero and also a re dedication of the field due to its newest construction. I can't do it justice but it was just an incredible experience. 113,090 people in the stadium, blue and yellow (although I'm supposed to say gold) everywhere. It was just massive. And so much fun. And how nice of the Woverines to win the game for us just to make the experience more wonderful. I found myself smiling all night and all the next day just thinking about it. And let's hope they at least make a good showing tomorrow against Notre Dame, huh?

Sunday we took another step toward joining our new church by attending "Pizza with the Pastors" which was kind of like an informal get-to-know-you type session that everyone is encouraged to take before they join. We definitely feel that we've found our home and are looking forward to taking the final joining class in October. It's kind of funny. When we left our old church, I told people that I wanted to take a year until we joined somewhere new. Without even planning it, we will be joining our new church in November, exactly a year after we left the old.

After the meeting, we went for a short and quite uncomfortable shopping trip with my MIL for school clothes for the kids. She wanted to have "special time" with each of the boys. What she doesn't understand is that the boys didn't really care about "special time", they just wanted to get clothes shopping over with. It was definitely a strange afternoon.

Sunday night I rented a new Wii game for family game night. It was all about circus games and very fun. I like being able to rent games before we buy them to find out if they will actually be something that we will play long term. Not sure if this one will make the cut or not but we had a lot of fun while we had it.

Monday Labor Day was yet another very strange day. Steve had told the director of the singing group that he is in that we would attend his backyard barbecue since we had missed the last several that we had been invited to. When we got there, we were the only ones there. Very strange. After a short time, of course, the boys got restless and I sent them outside in the back yard to find something to do. They found MUD! Lots of it. And proceeded to track it onto the director's brand new deck. After that, the director got out the two big huge water cannon blasters to fill them for the boys. Through the process, one of them EXPLODED and now they only had one. Mr. P's solution...give one of the kids the HOSE with a sprayer. Well, not much description is needed if you know Aaron. Half hour later, both kids are soaked to the bone, it's barely 70 degrees outside and Noah is complaining about being cold. Of course, I had no extra clothes so Mr. P's wife grabbed a towel and Noah stripped down to his nothing and I put the clothes in the dryer. Meanwhile, Aaron spent another 45 minutes just re-soaking himself. There's nothing like going to someone's house for the first time only to have both of your children sitting naked in towels as a greeting when other people arrive for a BBQ. Very strange!

You know what happened the rest of this week. School chaos that seems to be settling down finally. Homework started, after school schedules being tweaked, etc. Aaron woke up yesterday morning and asked, "Mommy, how many more days until the next summer vacation?" and Noah's first words this morning were, "Mom, I thought today was going to be a sleep in day." Yup, they're exhausted. Unfortunately, we don't get to relax tomorrow either. After Noah's scout pack does it's scheduled salute downtown in remembrance of 9/11, it's off to yet another strange and probably uncomfortable afternoon evening with the in-laws and Steve's singing group. I really am happy that Steve has found a group to sing with, but it really seems to take over our life a lot of the time. We actually have to miss my niece and nephew's birthday party for this one tomorrow.

So yes, the past week has definitely been an adventure. I knew that things were starting to settle yesterday though when I spent over two hours cleaning and re-organizing the boys' bedrooms. I also got numerous bill collection phone calls finally done and today it's cleaning out the car, getting more bill situation's taken care of, and for the first time in three months, a chance to get grocery shopping done in the day time when I can actually think straight without two other appendages begging for everything they see.

Yup, definitely starting to finally fall into a pattern. I really hope we can stay even keel for awhile before the next big crisis comes along.

We can only hope.