March 13

That is the next weekend when (as of right now), we don’t have anything planned (other than Saturday morning karate, and Sunday morning swimming lessons). It’s crazy. And that will be our one “free” weekend until sometime in May – no, make that mid-June. I don’t know how we got so busy. We don’t really feel that busy…until the weekends roll around – or until trying to plan something on a weekend with people. This past weekend was no exception, only, thankfully, we had planned the main event months ago. It started Friday night – I went to Just for Giggles (the art studio where we had our girls day last summer) to paint another masterpiece. This time my friend Bethany joined me & we had a lot of fun! I’ll have to take a picture of the painting – it turned out pretty good! And I’ve already picked out the next 3 paintings that I want to do. Next we had our usual Saturday morning karate for Zachary (he is really getting pretty good – and I must say that watching a karate class with 10 kids who are between ages 3-6 is pretty darn cute). Then we went to a birthday party at my favorite place, Monkey Joe’s (note sarcasm), for Zachary’s friend Andrew. We had to leave the party before the cake (thankfully Zachary did not really protest) so we could drive to Cornelia for our annual “holiday” dinner with all the girls & their families. We all really look forward to this dinner – it’s the one time each year when all 6 of us (Kimberly, me, Natalie, Amanda, Erin, and Merri) get together with husbands AND kids (although we did miss seeing Amanda this year). So fun. I think we all also wish we could do it more often. We’ve been doing this little get-together for 6 or 7 years now, and it’s funny thinking about the very first time we all got together with spouses. All of us weren’t married yet, and there certainly weren’t kids yet – except baby Sophie! Each year we seem to add 1 or 2 new children to the group, and now we have a group of 6 married couples, with 9 kids (soon-to-be 10) between us all. It is really quite entertaining. And it is also amazing that of these 10 kids we have all brought to the world, there are only 2 girls. What are the odds of that???

Now we are in packing mode for our trip. We told Zachary that today or tomorrow we would be picking out all of his clothes for the trip, so that he doesn’t end up wearing something this week that he wants to take, resulting in me having to do more laundry between now & Sunday. Needless to say, there may be some interesting wardrobe choices in the house this week. This morning Zachary had his jeans on, but then asked if he could leave his pajama top on. Ehhh…why not. So he went to school half in his pj’s today. If that’s what makes him happy, then by all means, wear the pajama shirt to school.

Doctor’s appointment for me this afternoon. My cough from mid-October has never totally gone away. And now it’s reared its ugly head and come back with a vengeance. So I’m off to try & get some answers. And hopefully drugs – lots of them.