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| Rylan on her birthday afternoon. She isn't feeling too hot.. :( |
Jordan was next. Jordan is leaving for a scuba diving trip in just two short weeks - the last thing he needed was a head cold, considering he had burst his eardrum on Christmas Eve during the last cold, but germs don't seem to care about plans like that. Rylan finally ate a single bite of birthday cake on Wednesday night. She had skipped scouts that day - more due to her brothers than to her, but she did go to her ballet class late that afternoon.
Dean came down with it and stayed home from work on Thursday and Friday, running the occasional temp. We skipped a morning of play and work time we had planned to spend with the other girl scout leader and her three girls, and rested the rest of the day. Friday seemed to be a good day for the kids, so we left Dean at home to fend for his sick self, and we took off for Colorado Springs to take part in a field trip to the Air Force Academy for Jordan. Even though we don't officially start up with Colorado Calvert Academy until the fall semester begins, Jordan was invited to go on this field trip with other Calvert eighth graders for a tour of the campus. I'm glad everyone was feeling good enough that we could go. I gave a Jordan a don't-you-dare-cough-on-anyone lecture and we left him with a fellow homeschool friend and her mom (they are the ones that introduced us to Calvert) and wandered around the area for a couple of hours to kill time. I took the kids by a B-52 that is on permanent display, and then that was about all there was to see on the Academy grounds, so we drove to the east, into the Black Forest, an area that was devastated by wild fire not quite even a year ago yet. It was certainly a sight to see. I was curious to see if La Foret, the UCC church camp that I attended in my youth was still standing, and to my relief it was. The kids and I drove onto the grounds, and circled just a bit. It looked very familiar, and I wish I could have wandered around on foot, but I didn't feel comfortable asking. We drove back down the road to a parking lot we had seen for a recreation area, and got out to walk a trail through the blackened forest for a bit. I'm glad no one else was around because I'm sure it would have been a sad scene to listen to three kids hack and cough and wheeze as they ran back and forth along the trail.
We went back to pick up Jordan and then made a bee-line back up the interstate to none other than IKEA! I just about peed my pants when we passed it on the way down. It has been open for what...three years now? And I haven't been there yet. So I WENT. :) The place is huge, confusing, and I have a few unkind things to say to the men (obviously) who designed the layout, even though I know the effed-up plan is all in an effort to control 'flow'... but if you are someone like me, who leaves her wallet in the car and only figures that out while trying to pay for food in the cafeteria, it is damned near impossible to make a dash for the parking garage in any kind of quick manner. I am proud to say that we spent a whopping $17. We came home with a new wastebasket for the office, and plastic snack cups, bowls and plates. My husband got off very easy. This time...
Saturday morning I woke up and well...wanted to die. It may have been a cold for the rest of the family, but for me late Friday evening into Saturday morning felt like the flu. Everything hurt. I could even feel my insides hurting. I don't think that another single ounce of snot could have been packed into my sinuses. Despite feeling like curling into the fetal position, Dean and I dressed up, traveled across town and spent a scant 15 minutes congratulating a young man (who will forever be a sweet little toddler in my mind's-eye), on his high school graduation. Austen was a wee 5 months when I first started nannying for him and his older sisters, and the next seven years I spent with them were very happy ones - gosh I love their family. They were kind enough to host our wedding in their gorgeous backyard almost nine years ago, and so it was nice to be at their home again, for one last time. They are empty-nesters come this fall, so they are putting their home on the market this summer. I remember when it was built. I dragged the Austen and his sisters over there when they were pouring the concrete and each of them placed their hand prints on the front sidewalk.
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| The garden area where we got married nine years ago |
Dean picked me afterwards, with all the kids in tow, and we -as promised to our birthday girl - set out to start our quest to build a turtle enclosure that will sit on top of our present fish tank. All week, between episodes of dealing with sneezy, wheezy and snotty kids, we had been doing research on how to go about this. It has been a crash-course in all things turtle - habitat, keeping, species...blah, blah, blah. Rylan has settled on a Southern Painted turtle, which is one that swims and basks - hence the need for a basking area above the water. I'll go into more detail in another post. What it meant on this day was three hours of going from store to store to store gathering the different items we needed. Turtles are a real pain in the ass, if you ask me. I wish she had asked for a kitten.
On Sunday we went to my nephew's graduation party. He had his ceremony on Tuesday, and now it was time to party. We all went, I greeted people with a safety sick perimeter around me and we didn't stay too long. It was nice to see some of my SIL's family that came and family friends, I wish I had felt better.
And that was our week. It was a week I had been looking forward to - a birthday and two graduations, and to miss some of it was very frustrating. There is also that strange freedom you feel though, as you cancel things right and left... that you get to stay home and do nothing because nobody feels like doing anything anyway... and suddenly you feel a lot more relaxed and at peace. Note to self though - I need to have a batch of chicken noodle soup, frozen and ready to go for the next time.
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