A Week That Began With Creepy Bad Guys and Ends with a Bunch of Crap

For a recap of a little over a week or so, here goes.  We began two weekends ago at a book launch party for Brandon Mull's new Beyonders book.  My eleven year-old had been begging and begging and begging to go (and giving me minute by minute status updates from Brandon Mull's website for several days),  so I mustered the courage and took all five kids and stood in line outside a brown brick high school in a mild March evening with other excited (geeky?), book-toting fans and a demon or two.  Because I'm such a stellar planner, I invited my husband a little too late and then my phone battery died, so I never knew whether he was going to be meeting us or not (not).

At first it was a very exciting party, which involved other authors in addition to Brandon Mull, some fun background from Mull's wife (one of my favorite parts of the night-- when she showed all these slides of her husband "zoned out" at different activities, lol, I can relate), and some fun from a comedy group.  Perfect timing too, because we have just started listening to Fablehaven together and my seven year-old has been riveted.  But after trying to keep the littlest ones suppressed and oppressed :)  on no dinner for over an hour, they had enough and wanted to run around.  So we had chips for dinner from the vending machine, licked up dusty orange handfulls of end-of-bag goodness, and waited.  And waited.  And ran around.  My littlest was in explore mode, and didn't care one bit about being out of my sight.  Keeping track of him was hard.  I somehow made my four year old mad at me at one point, and she ran the other direction. 

After the show, we waited for an additional tortuous two hours before I finally begged for them to make an exception and let us just meet our authors and go home! (we would have still had over an hour to two to wait and it was already 10pm)  (right after I chased down baby and lost my four year old simultaneously, then heard someone announcing that they had a cute little girl in cowboy boots up front and would her mother please come claim her!  aaaaaaagh!)  My older kids just could.not.leave.without.meeting Christopher Paolini and Brandon Mull.  We ended up inhaling a little In-N-Out on the way home while the older kids breathlessly exclaimed between fries that it was the best. night. ever.  (are we on the same planet?)  Of course it was worth it.  I hope this extra long run-on paragraph was worth it, too.

For a quick re-cap of the rest of the week, lets just say this:  pink-eye, sinus infection= dr. visit number one (he said she was pretty much the poster child for bacterial pink eye).  Next night, company from out of town.  My house a wreck.  Next day= dr. visit number two, for a double ear infection, sinus infection, another, single pink eye, and some antibiotics for the momma too, who, along with the littlest ones, has had a cough and sinus yucky stuff for three weeks.  Saturday= we decided to top off the week with a bunch of crap.  Yes, my husband noticed one of the walls in the basement was damp, so he and the kids dug a hole (the big kids have been spending all their free time digging a hole in the garden) and found that our sewer line was cracked right in half.  Yum.  So we spent the day not being able to use the facilities or the sinks.  Creative.  Uh-huh.  Its not like we have tools for outdoor usage around here.  Good news, I finally cleaned the house (hey, I couldn't do the dishes!  Blessing in disguise), and we went out for dinner.  Then had our previous wonderful company come and stay again, as if nothing had happened.  So glad I have a handy hubby, thankful for sewers, and even for adventurous weeks that I get to spend with my favorite people, even if we are miserable together.

Whew!  It wasn't an all-bad week, but I'm glad its over!  How about you? 

Morning routine update:  two days of practice turned into a whole week.  Ha.  But the kids were on time to the bus today, with very, very little nagging or reminding!  Getting better!