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.