A Day Without Dan

Today started out bad after Dan left for work and his night long duty and I was sure we were headed for an Alexander day - you know of the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad kind of day. Jaelyn tried her best to push every button I have. Well, she didn't try, she did push them. I had a fun day planned too. The library in the morning and the pool in the afternoon. The kids lost out on the library for the way Jaelyn and Allie behaved in the car. First, Jaelyn did something mean. I honestly don't even remember what. I pulled over immediately and just stopped. There was no way I was taking her anywhere acting like that. I warned her that if she continued, we wouldn't be going to the library and asked her if she understood. All she had to say was yes. I tell you, when she wants, that girl has a stubborn streak a mile long. There was no way she was going to answer me. I gave her about 5 minutes of sitting and then drove to the library, returned our movies through the drive-thru and we came home. Allie and Jaelyn also had a slapping contest on the way home. I've got to seperate their seats.

We got home and Jaelyn and Allie started throwing toys while playing. We don't throw toys because little Caden always gets hit. Sure enough, he got hit twice in the head. Bye-bye swimming pool. After that, I rethought the pool because I really wanted to go so I offered them the chance to earn it back which they did by playing outside together very nicely before lunch. I had one more incident with Jaelyn and she did earn 10 minutes in a chair at the pool watching everyone else swim. After that, things improved. We had a great time at the pool. We spent about 3 hours and went back and forth between the big pool and the baby pool. We did have to share it with 3 other families. Last time we were there, we had the whole pool to our selves. It was "the bees knees" to quote our newest favorite book series: Judy Moody. We ate dinner and played more outside making bug buckets (sand and flowers) for a snail. Everyone is in bed now, but Jaelyn won't give it a rest and keeps yelling at me. She's beyond exhausted. Why won't she just close her eyes??? Because she'd fall asleep. Silly question.

So that's our day without Danny coming home. We miss seeing him in the evenings. He'll be gone most of September (to Texas and Korea). Makes me a little sad. Anyone want to come visit?