Feeling the stress

Over the last few days, the stress of our current situation has really been creeping up on me. I think hotel living is hard enough, let alone when you add two children, 3 dogs and a cat to feed every day, driving all the way across town 2 and 3 times a day, etc. Here is how our last week has been.

The first part of the week was really not bad. I felt like I was getting a routine down and things were working. However, living with transition in my home and my job is still very hard, even when things are great. By Friday, I desperately needed to get out of the hotel and get away from my children! Because Henry goes to work with me, I usually have zero time by myself. Most of the time this is fine, but sometimes it gets to me and this was one of those days. I had some drama/stress to deal with at work, which made my pray this transition is over with as soon as possible (but the work transition is on hold until the house is finished!). My mother in law agreed to have KK and Henry spend the night, so we headed out to Bourbon Street for dinner, where we ran into a friend and neighbor and had dinner with them. After dinner, we met up with Rachel and Kathleen at a sports/karaoke venue (which is really not our type of place!), but we had a blast although we were all hoarse from yelling over the music all night.

Saturday morning Ben went to work and I picked up the kids and headed to Claremore for a play date with my long time friends Lindsay and Daniele and their kids. We each have two children, a boy and girl for each of us. KK is a full year older than their oldests but all our our second babies were born within a 2 month time span. The babies played by themselves, but interacted with each other a bit. The older kids played together and had fun and us mommies caught up. After that I went to my mom's to see my sister off to her first dance. Then we headed back to Tulsa and KK went to spend the night with her cousin Will.

Sunday, Ben, Henry and I headed to Home Depot to buy paint for KK's room. My poor daughter's bedroom was still the blue cars and trucks design that they boy who lived there before us had. As we were mixing her paint, we found an "OOps" can that was the exact color I wanted for our bedroom so we picked that up also. We had to apply two coats of Kilz to the bottom half of KK's room because it was bright, primary blue! My mother in law ended up watching all four grandbabies so my favorite sister in law could come help me paint. (Katie is my push behind getting KKs room done and even offered to do the whole thing herself!) We painted for almost 8 hours before both rooms were done! While we did this, Ben layed down the missing quarter round and did some little things that needed to be done.

So needless to say, we are all exhausted today. KK spent most of the weekend away from home, and playing and she was worn out. Henry missed a nap each day, which makes him miserable. We all had to get up and over to the house early this morning. Ben had to meet with the hardwood floor people and I wanted to be there when KK saw her room for the first time. Then the kids and I ran some errands and are back at the hotel. I think the kids and I have a touch of the stomach flu and we are exhausted, so we are trying to rest, or at least not leave the hotel today! Tomorrow starts the week (thankfully a short one), so there is always the typical "getting ready for the week stuff" to do. This was supposed to be the week we were moving home and moving my office home, but unfortunately due to some problems with the floors, it will probably be next week, which puts a wrench in my office and work schedule. I am trying not to stress about that today!

Thanks for reading, now I am off to try to take a nap while Henry is down.

Louisiana

Over the weekend, we made our annual trek down to Shreveport, LA. Ben's Uncle Johnny has a cabin that has been in the family for years on Caddo Lake and we started making the trip with the younger generations about 4 years ago. This year we carpooled with Katie, Bella, and Will for the trip to save money on gas. Driving 6 hours with 4 kids under 4 sounds scary, but it wasn't bad at all. We arrived on Thursday afternoon and were able to spend a couple of hours getting settled before Candace and Josh arrived. We then got to spend the evening with just the two of them. It was very nice because we only see Candace once a year since she lives in LA and Josh about 3x a year since he is currently working in Canada. Ben also caught two catfish that day. The next day three more groups arrived, but all at separate times, so we were able to enjoy everyone before it got too big. Saturday we spent another day of hanging out, fishing, sleeping. The kids played in a small inflatable pool and helped fish. On Sunday, we headed out to the Mudbug festival which we do every year. Before we left, I got stung by a wasp which has never happened to me and by the way hurts like hell! This year it was hotter than ever. We stayed long enough to eat (Ben had crocodile and I had catfish), let KK make one of those sand jars they always have at the fair, the kids played on some inflatible toys and then we were out of there. It was too hot!

One the way home, Katie and I ran into a local Wal-mart and found some really great deals on clothes for the kids. When we got up to check out, we stood in line for 30 minutes (I kid you not!). We then headed home to rinse off and relax for our last evening. We had a fish fry with the fish that had been caught during the trip and just enjoyed everyone. The next morning we packed up to head home and this time the car ride was more eventful. When we were ready to stop for lunch, we pulled up to a DQ and waited in line to order for 10 minutes. When we got to actually order, we were told there would be no food for 20 minutes. The best part was this DQ had a sign that said "Fastest Drive Thru in Town". Seriously? So we opted to find another drive through. Poor Henry was overly tired and cried for a good portion of the car ride. About two hours from home, I checked his pants to discover a poop explosion. KK was in a foul mood for most of the ride because she had had no down time throughout the trip and was cranky to all of us, especially poor Will seated next to her. And Bella is learning how to us her lungs and had a period of time where out of no where she would just yell really loud. We were all ready to get out of the car when we got home!


The next day was thankfully my day off, so I was able to stay home and try to get the laundry done and get the house picked up. Unfortunately, most of that did not happen because poor Henry is not a good day time sleeper (which we are working on). That evening we went to dinner at Rib Crib with some of Ben's family to celebrate his birthday, which was the day before. He is 27!!!

Now the end of the week is here and our weekend consists of:
Going to see Sex and the City tonight with Katie
Cadence's dance rehearsal and recital
Hopefully bathing the dogs
Recovering from the short week
And continuing to get Henry on the 90 minute sleep cycle. I stuck with it yesterday and he actually took 3 45 min naps and went down at 9 pm and slept in his crib till 1:30 am. This may not sound like alot, but it is for him. He never sleeps during the day!

Have a great weekend!

Best Friends

All of Cadence's very close friends happen to be boys. Two are family, Will & Forrest. Koen (my co-teacher's oldest son) is probably her current best friend, simply because they are closest in age. For the first half of the year, they had more of a love/hate relationship. All in all, they were more like siblings. Now they are much closer and fight less. In cleaning out my camera, I came across some pictures of Cadence and her boys, so I wanted to share the cute-ness with everyone!