Another year down
Whew. Not only have I made it through another year (with a major job change thrown in there), but I made it through the weekend. We took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg, VA as sort of a belated birthday getaway for Jarrett (when it's $100/night cheaper, you go on whoever's birthday happens to be then). I think the kids had a good time, although it was not always easy.
It started particularly rough when we spent about 90 minutes to go 17 miles in part of the journey and then later on we stopped because Elliott was feeling carsick to move him up to the middle row and he proceeded to throw up his dinner in the parking lot of some random gas station. So, by the time we got there, we were ready to be done. But the room was great and the waterpark had a ton of stuff to do. Although, my kids appear to be sort of scared of many things, so convincing them to try things was a bit rough. But the boys eventually did try some things. Jillian, however, was in a rare form and decided this weekend that she hated boys (but really only daddy) and so would not do anything at all except have a fit of temper if I was not her constant companion for the boredom that is the 3 year old version of a waterpark. She seems to vary between bitchy and super sweet lately, and honestly, I'd take something in the middle rather than the extremes.
But we seemed to have a good time, and did a bunch of the hotel stuff. We came back today in just about half of the 5 hours it took us to get there, so that was nice. And I had a yummy seafood pasta for dinner that I did not make myself, and then got to open presents. The kids gave me an awesome card that J found with 3 kids watching TV which was essentially a picture of my family room, if my kids were replaced with ducks, and after a lovely set of gifts from my parents and them, they gave me what they thought was the best gift -- although they have no idea what it means -- an Angel t-shirt (www.cafepress.com/+do_not_annoy_the_angry_puppet_t,93415624 -- but not with the trim on the neck and sleeves). I laughed, too. This, along with a magnet that someone recently sent me (mastermia ), is turning me into a bigger Buffy fangirl now -- at least as far as others can see -- than I ever was when the show was new.
Anyway, tomorrow I have the day off and I will get all my grocery shopping done and J and I will have lunch and then go to start picking out the features of the new master bathroom we are getting this year. And there will be no kids. Ahh, I can hear the silence already. I can't imagine next year will be this exciting with daylight savings time and the announcement of the NCAA March Madness brackets on my birthday, but I guess I will just have to find a way to cope. Maybe I'll spend part of tomorrow trying to figure out how to beat my brother in the picks this year. Fingers crossed!!