Unexcused Absence

I don't have doctor's note or viable reason for being incommunicado all weekend, so I suppose I will have to take it as an unexcused absence. I didn't even sit down in front of the computer Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. Wow.

On Friday, Kellen brought home is report card from school. Good job! His reading, writing, and mathematics are all at 4 or 5, which equates to strong and proficient, respectively. He also had mostly double plus marks, which are areas of strength. The only places that he had less than that are getting his work done quickly (he dawdles too much) and P.E. where they would like him to give a little more effort and participation. As a reward for his good report card, we took him out to a restaurant similar in style to Benihana's, a Japanese steak house. A little spendy, but we were feeling rich since part of our tax return had come that day (hooray for tax returns!) and Kellen has always loved Asian food more than any other, I think.

Saturday was fabulous. We had almost 80 degree weather so I loaded all the branches from last week's yard work into the trunk of my car and took them down the recycling center. I obviously wasn't the only person who had taken advantage of decent weather because people were lined up around the block with trucks and small utility trailers full of branches, grass, and other yard waste. Kellen had been invited to a birthday party for Saturday afternoon so I dropped him off at 1230pm and then took Madison back home for her nap. As soon as I laid her down, I went outside and pulled out the weed-eater so I could edge the lawn. My orange extension cord is too short. I have another one. Somewhere. I tried using a short (10') cord to make up the difference, but it wasn't long enough still, and I broke the grounding post on it in the process. Luckily, a neighbor loaned me their (probably 100') cord and I was able to finish the edging. Yeah! Then I pulled out the lawn mower, but it was running really poorly. With the same neighbor's help we looked at the sparkplug (it had never occurred to me that lawn mowers have those...) and tried a couple of things to get it running, but all it wanted to do was chug and die. Mid-way through that, Madison woke up. So much for getting the lawn done and a shower taken care of while she was asleep. The neighbor offered to let me borrow his mower, but I didn't really feel like I could do that while Maddi was awake. I wrote down the number from the spark plug so that I could go get a new one and maybe we can get our mower running later in the week. Since I really didn't feel like abandoning the glorious sunshine, Maddi and I washed the car instead. Not sure why exactly I bother because while I was running errands yesterday I caught three large splashes of bird crap right out on the hood. Oh, well. The birthday party that Kellen went to involved lunch, cake, and presents at the boy's house and then they all went to an indoor pool for the next couple of hours. At 5pm, they left the pool, stopping for ice cream on the way home, and Kellen got home around 5:30pm. When Steve got home we went to our favorite local Mexican restaurant for dinner (eating out twice in two days! Wow!) but we left early because Kellen was feeling sick. He had apparently had pizza, soda, candy, cotton candy, cake, and ice cream in the course of this party. That makes for an awful lot of junk, which left him feeling an awful lot like junk, of course :)

On Sunday, we drove into town immediately after church for lunch at Subway (eating out again!) and a trip through Cash & Carry. We don't buy a lot of things there, but Steve likes to get the #10 cans of corned beef hash, so that we can separate it out and have it for breakfast. We also grabbed a huge end of roast beef. You know, the ones that you see in the deli counter that they slice up as sandwich meat for you. And the other real reason for the trip was Steve's new favorite Tobasco sauce, Chipotle flavor, in a grande container that will last a couple of months, we hope! Madison had only taken a 20 min nap as we drove into town, so she was wired the rest of the day. I took her out to the park to run some of it off, which allowed Steve to play Flight Sim for a while, and Kellen to play on the internet for a bit. Of course, Kellen had neglected to tell Steve that he was grounded from all electronic entertainment (except the tv itself, because there is no escaping that unless we send him to his room) because he hadn't put away the play station controls last time. Tsk, tsk!

Monday was a normal day, complete with grocery shopping trip for the next 2-wk menu, and Steve had requested Brinner (breakfast for dinner) so that he could have some of the corned beef hash and poached eggs. After dinner, I took Madison with me to the church for my bible study group while Steve and Kellen watched Meet the Robinsons together. The girl who is supposed to watch Madison while we are in the bible study was late, so we had the study group in the nursery, where she could play while we talked. Ugh! I think it probably was okay for everyone else, really, but I get so stressed worrying about whether she's disrupting everyone else's attention on the lesson, I can't focus on the lesson, and I ended the night with a nasty head ache. Part of me wishes I had just left her home with Steve! Oh, well.

I think that's pretty much the weekend. I didn't take many pictures, although I may try to put up what I did take later this evening. I have gone through and read everyone's blogs (I missed so much stuff!) but I didn't comment. I know, bad, but there was so much there I wasn't sure where to even start. So you will all have to know that I did read, and I will just have to start commenting again from this point forward :) I will certainly try not to be gone so long again!