Livin' for the (Long) Weekend

With Fulton County Schools closed today for a teacher workday, we had a nice long weekend in store.  Josh & I decided to make it even longer, by taking Friday off to cash in a Living Social voucher for golf.  We had a great time.  we got a lesson from one of the pros beforehand, & we each learned some tips to help us play better.  Let's be honest though - I hadn't touched my clubs since getting pregnant with Zachary...almost 7 years ago!!  So the expectations for me were pretty low.  The course was only 9 holes, and whole we were technically allowed to play the course twice for 18 holes, we stopped after 9.  For one, I had about had enough. But we also wanted to leave time to grab some lunch before heading back home to meet Zachary at the bus stop.

That evening, Zachary & I went to paint at Just for Giggles.  The theme was "paint your own football helmet".  I thought Zachary would either want to do Georgia or the Philadelphia Eagles, but he surprised me by deciding to make up his own.  His helmet got a little busy.  He finished a bit faster than me, and I think while he waited for me to finish, he just kept thinking of other things.  By the time he was done, it was less of a helmet and more of a message board.  But it's his helmet and he loves it.  Like L.O.V.E.S it.  He kept going on & on about how he could not stop looking at his painting because of how good it is.  I (of course) made a Georgia helmet.

The "GG" stands for "Georgia Gladiators" (he wanted to make up his own team).  The swords are their logo.  The "#6" means it belongs to player #6.  The "10th best" part means that #6 is the 10th best player on the team...and "1 in the nat" means that the Georgia Gladiators are #1 in the nation.  Love his imagination!

The next 2 days are a bit of a blur to me, as I woke up Saturday morning with a killer sore throat and fever.  I managed to make it out for about an hour at Liam's school's fall festival Saturday morning, but that was it - it totally wiped me out, and as soon as we got home, I crawled back in bed.  By the afternoon, the fever had not come down and my throat was still killing me, so we took a trip to the urgent care place nearby.  The strep test was negative, but because they could tell it was bad, they gave me antibiotics anyway.  Woke up Sunday feeling about the same, so Josh took the boys to church by himself, and then also to swimming lessons by himself.  Heck - he did pretty much everything over those two days by himself.  I was basically useless.  My fever finally came down late Sunday afternoon, but the sore throat lingered, and a headache had set in (I assumed because I hadn't really eaten anything since dinner on Friday).  I did manage to get some pizza down - it wasn't that I was nauseous, it just hurt too much to eat.

So this morning we had plans to go to Burt's Farm.  Still had a bit of the sore throat and a bit of the headache, but was feeling a little better, so we went on with our plans.  It's days like this that I'm glad our kids like to get up early, because we were up there shortly after 9, and had left by 10:15 - before it got crowded.  I know it was Monday, but with Fulton County schools out, we didn't know - last year we went on the teacher workday & it was getting crowded by the time we left.  We had the hayride all to ourselves, and the boys did GREAT with the pictures.  I actually didn't take that many, but that was because they were doing so well, that I didn't want to make them mad.  They usually like to be silly & run around, but they were very cooperative this time (gave me hope for our Christmas card photo shoot in a little over a month!)

After returning from Burt's, we got a pumpkin roasting in the oven for a pie, and we had our 2nd parent-teacher conference in the past week.  This time was with Liam's teacher.  We had 2 really good conferences this year.  We finally got to meet Zachary's reading/language arts teacher (we had the conference with her, since she is who he spends the majority of the day with, even though she wasn't his "assigned" teacher at the beginning of the year - turns out he only stays with that teacher for a little bit in the morning, and then in the afternoons for science/social studies/health).  They are both doing well in school.  Zachary is finally getting over his summer hangover & learning curve of changing teachers during the day.  And Liam's teacher was pleased to see that he's "grown up" a bit since last year.  She even said that they are going to start taking steps towards getting him learning to read.  Amazing - he's not even 4 yet.  She feels he is ready since he is already spelling words & sentences with the plastic die-cut letters they have.

Despite the crummy middle, the weekend did have a good start and a good finish.  It stunk havng to spend 2 beautiful days inside in bed or on the couch, but all the boys hung in there & did great without me.