Our Busy Weekend...

This weekend we were very busy! Friday night Neil & PJ headed out to a scout campout. I was SO glad that the weather got so much warmer than it had been the week before, with all the ice storms!! Friday night and Saturday, it was back up into the 60's! I love this crazy Arkansas weather! It goes from the 60's, down to freezing cold ice storms (so bad that some areas were without power for a couple weeks), then back up to the high 60's and rain, and severe thunderstorms (the tornado season is on it's way in the spring)!

So after Neil and PJ left, I headed to the fitness center with Tessa, Jonah, & Clay (for Tessa's gymnastics class). After that, we came home and had dinner, played some games together, read some stories, and I got the kids in bed. I was up until about midnight, because I never sleep well when Neil is gone. I had plans to clean the house really well once the kids were in bed, but had no desire to actually do it, so figured I'd just wait and do it in the morning.

Well, the next morning, the boys were up at 6:00 as usual (and Tessa wasn't far behind them), so I fed them some breakfast and turned on a video for them, so I could get ready and clean before the realtor showed up at 9:30. (As a side note...I'm just wondering what kind of strange gastrointestinal issues our kids have, that it seems like every time we have company--home teachers, missionaries, friends visiting, REALTORS, etc.--that at least one of them, all of a sudden gets gassy or has to poop just minutes before someone walks into our home! What's up with THAT?!) Anyway, we've had a couple people come look at our home now, and several realtors that know we are selling it ourselves, but are willing to pay them 3% commission if they bring us a buyer, so hopefully it will sell this spring. With the housing market the way it is, you just never know, but we figure things will work out when they are supposed to. We aren't in a huge hurry, because we'll just wait until our home sells and then start building on our property. But it would be nice if it happened quickly. Our first 2 homes, we sold on our own too, and had offers within 3-6 weeks, but the economy is much different now, so we'll just see what happens.

After showing our home, we headed to the fitness center (again) for Jonah's taekwondo lesson (we usually have PJ's tennis lesson at the same time, but he wasn't back from the scout campout yet, because they had a service project cleaning up a bunch of the broken branches from the ice storm). Once we got home and had lunch, I finished up some laundry, cleaned out the garage, and read through my primary lesson for Sunday, and then Neil & PJ got home around 1:00 or so. They had a great time, but were exhausted! Poor PJ hadn't slept more than about 4 hours. I've never seen him so tired! He went to shower, and Neil ran to the store to buy a bunch of wood mulch to refill our flower beds, to make them look nicer.

As soon as Neil got back, he showered and then took Tessa to her riding lesson, and right after that we headed to PJ & Tessa's piano recital. We were supposed to take some cookies, and because we were so busy running around, I just bought 2 dozen cute valentine sugar cookies from Wal-Mart. Well, Jonah wanted to help carry them out to the car, so I handed them to him and we headed out the door. Just as we were getting out by the van, he dropped the container, spilling them all over the cement. Neil and I started cleaning them up, and just sticking them back into the container and laughing that we could still serve them...nobody would know... and what's a little dirt and cement pieces in the coookies anyway, just some extra fiber, right?! We didn't have time to stop and get more, so we just left them in the car (no we didn't serve them, although we offered, and told them what happened! :) ha ha ha!) Well, PJ & Tessa did a great job on their piano pieces (even PJ, after getting so little sleep the night before), and I was so proud of them! I wish I could figure out how to post some clips of them playing their piano pieces, but can't seem to get it to work. :(

After the piano recital, we headed out to dinner to enjoy some family time and someone else's cooking! Once we got home, we got the kids ready for bed and then read a few stories before they all crashed at about 6:45! Neil was pretty wiped out too, after the campout, and I was tired from being up so late the night before, and still up early as usual, so we were even in bed by 8:30. Too funny!

It was such a busy weekend that I felt like I needed an extra weekend to recover. But Sunday after church we had some time to just relax and unwind. After getting home from church, having some lunch, and helping Tessa & Jonah with their valentines for school, we drove out to our property and walked around for a while. It's so quiet and peaceful and it makes us want to start building, but we don't want to start anything until our current house is sold, so we'll just wait. We already know what type of home we want to build (and found a home plan online that we love), so it's just a matter of finalizing everything with a builder once our house sells.

So, anyway, that was our very busy weekend...