The unbearable lightness of being random

Just random observations and happenings for you today:

• I think the grocery stores are employing some kind of aversion therapy (aside from rising prices... youch!). At the commissary the other day, every single time I reached for an item, I got shocked. Too bad it didn't stop me from buying the stuff... I guess the aversion therapy didn't work. Just annoyed the heck outta me.
  
• It was a crazy busy week of running back and forth and here and there last week. This week promises to be more of the same. Between baseball practices, Emily's play rehearsals, AWANA, and music lessons, there is always somewhere to be and go.
  
• Tonight we have the chance to see Trout Fishing in America here on base (FREE!). Just have to get Noah away from his baseball practice early enough.
• Major spring cleaning around here this past weekend. Brian and I worked on the garage together and it is SPIFFY. Our back porch/patio area is rockin', too. Still need to take a backhoe to the boys' room, but not sure how to get it in the house and up the stairs. I don't even want to think about a certain teenager's room.
  
• Trying to plan a major road trip back east (Missouri/Alabama) for June... experienced RVers tell us we won't be able to drive as many miles in a day as we would like to. They say no more than 3-400 miles a day. That will mean almost 6 days of driving each way with no time for sightseeing. :( Oh well, perhaps later on in the year we will be able to do a sightseeing kind of trip.
• Halle and I went to see Nim's Island yesterday. It was a pretty good movie. I'd like to read the book now and see how it compares. I have heard the movie was fairly true to it. Jodie Foster was fun to watch as an agoraphobic adventure novelist, and Gerard Butler was quite endearing as a widowed marine biologist raising his 11yo daughter (played by the always-adorable Abigail Breslin) on a remote island in the South Pacific.
• I wish someone would invent a dust-repellent I could spray over my entire house. I cannot get rid of the stuff. It is back 10 seconds after I wipe it away.

Roughing it... NOT

OK, internets..... I've been holding out on you. But it's not my fault. I was under strict orders not to say anything until we had a chance to experience the wonders in store for us with this baby:



This, my friends, seems to be the answer to our dilemma of how leave home for more than a day without needing to kennel the dogs or pay for 2 hotel rooms. She is an Allegro Open Road 35QBA (I gotta come up with a name for her). We made the decision to bring her home the day before Easter, but didn't actually get her until the 27th. Brian told me to hold off on the announcement until we got to break her in.

Well, we finally got our chance this past weekend. It was a whirlwind affair, trying to get ready to go.... what with 2 ball games to get through Saturday before we could even begin to leave. Somehow we managed to get it together enough to take a short trip about 40 minutes away to Lake Solano. See Brian drive:

We only had time to spend one night, what with baseball season and all. We are hoping for at least one more overnight trip somewhere else close by in May, and then maybe we will be able to do a 2- or 3-night stay for Memorial Day weekend. The kids had a blast, and we enjoyed ourselves a bit as well. We did discover that we will have to tweak the sleeping arrangements on the next trip so that the person who wants to sleep the latest isn't on the sofabed, but the dinette bed instead. It made moving about for the earlier risers (namely me, but the other 4 in the family as well) very difficult, since the sofabed takes up the entire width of the coach when it's pulled out.

Here are a few sights from Saturday and Sunday:



I am sure we will have lots of stories to share about all this... especially if I can't convince one small pony of a dog that she can do her business (what some humans call "paperwork") some place other than in her own back yard. Yes, my friends: we have a "holder." I'm glad we were gone for less than 24 hours. She was happy to come home and went straight to work as soon as she hit the back yard.

Yep... stories. We'll have 'em.

On the road again

I'll be picking Emily up from school at 11 today to get her some lunch and drive her to the airport. After this afternoon, it will just be me and the 3 youngest at home until Tuesday night, when I get to go back to pick her up. The choir has some busy days planned in Chicago... museum tours, the zoo, a night at a Blue Man Group show, and chapel at Moody Bible Institute are just a few of the scheduled activities.

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Did anyone else's heart stop for just a moment last night watching AI?? Emily threw the remote at the tv, she was so ticked off.... she had vowed never to watch the show again if Jordin were to be kicked off. I thought it was a no-brainer when it was down to Chris and Jordin, so when he said Chris was safe, I was dumbstruck. What a relief when he said that she was safe, too. I guess since it was a night of charity, they decided to extend it to the contestants as well. I can't believe we have to wait another week to narrow the field, though. It's getting tougher, but I am starting to think it's Kiki's time to go. She just doesn't look happy to be there and her last few songs have been sorely lacking.

Air miles

The calendar, she is filling up. Of course, not for me... other than running kids to school, orthodontist, and gymnastics. No, yesterday my beloved sat a few feet away from me at his laptop and read off the schedule of all his flights for the upcoming weeks.

Trip #1: Next week he heads back to St. Louis for 3 days to meet with his siblings and the nursing home people to discuss his mom's care. He'll leave shortly after midnight Monday night and get home after midnight Thursday.

Trip #2: Thankfully, this is a short one. In the middle of April he will have to fly to Vancouver, BC for an evening meeting. He leaves one morning and returns the next.

Trip #3: This is the one that stinks. He is heading to Wichita Falls on April 22 and doesn't return until late evening May 2. During the time he is gone, Emily will leave and return from her choir trip to Chicago and I will miss the quarterly "Coffee and Tea with Mrs. P" hosted by Em's principal. There will probably be at least one orthodontist appointment in there as well, along with the usual gymnastics and piano lessons.

Oh, there will be a trip to San Antonio in June for him probably as well. Another required thing for him. He'd like it if the family could go along (the kids have wanted to see the Alamo for a long time), but who knows if we will have the finances for that. As much fun as it would be, I'd probably feel guilty we weren't somewhere else more important. I guess time will tell whether we sit at home for that trip or not.

So, anyone up for a trip to CA next month?