Crazy week

This last week was crazy. Not so much for Grace having a super busy week, just a lot of little things going on. Last Sunday was Mother's Day and I got Julie tickets to 42nd Street. We're going in a few weeks. She's pretty excited.

Monday turned out pretty normal. Riley and I did make it to the bike shop and got some new tubes for the trailer. I also used a LivingSocial deal from our bike shop and got a new helmet. I was lucky to get that. Got a cool helmet for much less than it would have normally cost. My old helmet was 10 years old. I think it was time for a new one!

I was able to change the tubes while Riley was napping so it was all ready on Tuesday for her first ride. She was really excited and she really enjoyed it too! Here's a photo of her all excited about going.



We rode down to the village hall and paid our bill and saw a canadian goose family. She just loves birds and was excited to see them up close without a window between them and her. Here's a shot I took of them swimming away from us.



Then we went over to this "new" business in our town that sells gardening plants and supplies. They've been there a year and I had never visited it. Riley liked this too. Then on the way back we happened to go past the park so we stopped there. She finally got up the nerve to climb this by herself this time. I think it was because she saw another girl that was there doing it.



She did get a little nervous for this last step that she's doing here in the photo, but I just told her to hold on to the bar further up instead of the ladder and she was fine. This girl just love, love, loves the slide! It's definitely her favorite. That's why she was going up the ladder here instead of going all the way around the playset and going up the steps.

She enjoyed the ride home too but was obviously disappointed that all the fun was over when we got home. We actually took a family bike ride after dinner on Tuesday also. Riley was super excited. Now if it would just warm up again (the high today was 46 I think) we could do this more often. I know it's coming soon, but it's hard to wait when it's still so cold here in mid-May.

Here are my girls before we had dinner.



Wednesday and Thursday Grace had dance class and brownies. I suppose the rest of the week was pretty normal. Especially considering that it was cold and rainy. We weren't doing much outside. On Friday we finally made it to the eye doctor for us to get Riley fitted for her new glasses. They had been waiting for some other frames to come in that were more her color, but they were backordered. The frames we picked out were the cutest ones they had but were blue. That's alright as they are still really cute. My only concern is that people will mistake her for a boy. Hopefully her clothes will give her away. Here is a photo I took of us when she tried them on.



This weekend was crazy as well. Our nephew graduated from our community college on Saturday and Julie took Grace while Riley and I stayed home. Well actually we ran to the Home Depot for a few things. Wow was the graduation ceremony long. They didn't get home until 4 hours after it started. So Saturday was more like a weekday. Then today we took Grace to get her Nintendo DSi after church. She's really excited about this. The funny part is I think she's really only excited about the built-in camera. I don't think she realizes all the extra things it will do compared to her DS.

Well, I'd better try for a decent bedtime. The shuttle Endeavor is launching in just 7 hours. And Grace will be going to school just before that.

May? Really?

Sorry for the delay since my last post. Obviously I don't have a good track record though, so I suppose it doesn't come as much of a surprise. We have been super super busy around here. Grace had something going on each day last week. And her first communion was yesterday.

Fortunately for our house, we keep having company, so we've been keeping it pretty clean. I won't go so far as to say it's spotless (ha ha, yea right,) but it's cleaner than we normally keep it and I have every intention of keeping it this way and working towards getting it cleaner yet now that it is as good as it is.

Our entertaining started with having some of Julie's relatives over last Saturday the 30th. We were originally going to have them over for dinner back in February I think. But then Julie got the flu. Really bad flu. So we cancelled that get-together (surprise!) After re-scheduling it, we had them over last Saturday. We had gumbo and it turned out really good. I've never actually made gumbo before, but I got my Uncle's recipe (his family is from New Orleans) and it turned out great. They even asked for the recipe.

After this Grace had her last REP class (religious education) on Monday and a practice on Thursday to get her ready for her first communion on Saturday (yesterday.) Tuesday she had softball evaluations and Julie wasn't home before we had to leave so we brought Riley with us. It hasn't been so very warm here so we had to bundle up. Poor Riley's little hands were freezing. Actually all of our hands were freezing. Grace did well and saw another girl that was on her team last year. She wants her to be on her team again, so I have to remember to call and see if they can do that.

Anyway, Julie came by and picked up Riley a few minutes after Grace had started and got her home to warm up. Wednesday is dance class and Friday she had more dance stuff as she was practicing for the finale of her recital coming up next month and then she had a pizza party after that.

Yesterday was super busy for Grace's first communion and the party was afterwards at our house. Remember the clean house? Yea, we did spend some time "refining" the house in the morning, but the day went really well. We had to be at the church a half an hour before the service started and we were actually early. Yes, you just read that, we were early, by a full 12 minutes. This never happens. The only glitch was not getting back to the house in time for the catering to be delivered (taking pictures.) We had to send my cousin home ahead of us leaving the church so that someone was there. Actually I think they had to wait a few minutes as my neighbor called wondering what to do. We do have good neighbors!

We even made it to church on time today. Not early, but not late either. I can't say I made this Mother's day super special for Julie, but I think we made the day about as good as we could. This week is much less hectic and that is certainly welcome. And actually a lot of things are starting to wind down as Grace only has a few weeks of school left. Then we'll move on to the summer schedule. As always, right now I'm looking forward to it. The summer...no schedule or at least a limited one. Sleeping in...or at least mostly sleeping in. Grace doesn't seem to sleep in anymore. In fact Riley hasn't even been sleeping in all that much any more either. I really miss that. Clearly it would help if I'd go to bed earlier so I can get more sleep, but I can't seem to break this habit of staying up late.

The good thing about this summer is that Riley is old enough to go and do things we couldn't really do last year when she was only one. I tried to get our bicycles and the trailer ready for us to use today. Since Grace and Julie got home so late this evening we didn't have time to go out for a bike ride anyway. We haven't used the trailer since Grace was like 3 or 4 probably so I'm guessing about 4 years. I had been cleaning it up and airing up the tires as well as airing up the tires in all of our bikes. As I was working on Julie's bike I hear this pop and then a loud sound of air coming out. Maybe it's their age or something, but the tube on one of the trailer tires had blown a hole. I think I'll replace them both. I have a feeling that the other one will go at some point anyway so I might as well just replace them both while we're not in the middle of a trail with no pump to air up a new tube.

Grace will obviously be playing softball this summer and I'll be coaching again. I'm really looking forward to it. I feel much less anxiety than last year as I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. Now that I know how it all works and how everything fits together I'm guessing it will be much more fun as most of the stress will be removed. She's also going to a half-day day camp for a couple weeks. I'm going to try and get us outside a lot more this summer. We all need it and the kids both really enjoy it.

Better start implementing my earlier bedtime. Gotta go.