A Hodge Podge

Apparently, I'm ignoring my blog again because I have a ton of small topics I've been wanting to post about for days all jumbled around in my head. Here they are in no particular order or relevance.

4 more sleeps and we leave for Florida. Dan hasn't heard anything about the other TDY so no news is good news. Joan asked me if I was all packed last week. Ha...I'm thinking about it. I really need to make a list for shopping tomorrow, but I won't do laundry or dig out my suitcases until Thursday. I did finally clean out our storage closet last night so I can reach suitcases when I need them. Our beachy stuff was located as well ~ not that we'll spend anytime at the actual beach since it might be covered in oil by the time we get there :( .

I got to work in the yard this weekend. I transplanted a few plants that are being swallowed by our butterfly bush. It's huge and the new one I planted last year that was 18 inches tall in March is now over my head. They must love our dry, hard clay. We also dumped new bark in the flowers beds after I expanded one to fit the above mentioned smothered plants. It looks so pretty. Jaelyn was a big helper. She was making up for getting up at 6 AGAIN. I've started calling us (Jaelyn and I) Grumpy and Grumpier in the mornings. I'm not sure who is who yet, but I am so tired of being woken up between 5 and 6:30 every morning. Neither of us do well on too little sleep.

Dan has been talking about disassembling the swing set for a while now. It was cheap when we bought it, but we knew it only need to last a couple of years. The swings were really getting rickety. He took the swing part off and left the fort and slide. Our yard is so small that just removing 2 swings doubled it's size. That's sad.

We had an amazing time this weekend at Nathan's birthday party. Nathan is Caden's best friend. He invited everyone to the party and Miss Krissy out did herself (even though she hadn't had electricity for about 20 hours when the party started). Everyone got a Star Wars costume complete with foamy light saber. They set up their huge water slide and passed out water balloons. The kids love playing with Mr. Ben, Nathan's Dad. Jaelyn especially had a ball blasting him with water and running. Ben has 2 boys, so he got a lesson in how mean and sneaky girls can be. The kids played hard for over 3 hours. They were all asleep within 15 minutes of going to bed. It was a quiet, peaceful night for me...Dan was at work. Phone duty stinks!

I've been calling Outdoor Rec at Aberdeen for weeks now trying to get the kids signed up for swim lessons. Finally today the right person answers and the kids are registered. We'll have a week when we get home from Florida to play, then swim lessons 4 days a week for 2 weeks, another week off, then 2 more weeks of lessons, another week off and school starts. It's going to be a fun summer! I learned that Mr. Lee, our favorite life guard, won't be life guarding this year. Allie and Jaelyn are going to be crushed when they hear because they had quite the crush on Mr. Lee last year.