Where Did That Week Go?

I know I experienced it cause I sure can feel it....I'm exhausted. Steven had left on his business trip in the wee a.m. hours last Sunday and the week that followed flew right past me. It was a week full of activity. I cleaned and polished a bit, I threw stuff out and organized a closet or two. I had over 20 bags of trash when I was done, a clean garage and a few happy dumpster divers that made off with a bit of my trash (which obviously was their treasure).

The kids and I stayed home for the most part. We went to a friend's house on Tuesday, but other than that we enjoyed each other's company for the most part. We did see my mom shortly a couple of times when she came to help me fix some household problems - the pilot light went out on our hot water heater and the plunger broke inside the tank of our main toilet - both easily fixed, but ironic that these things happened one of the only weeks that I was without a husband to fix them.

Friday rolled around and we left the beautifully cleaned house (I'm not kidding either, every table and counter was cleared and every bed made!) for our weekend road trip. The church I grew up in was celebrating its 150th birthday. My dad used to minister at this wonderful church in small town southeastern Illinois. It's about 275 miles from where we live now, so that meant a long road ahead of us through flat corn and bean filled fields. Mom and Dad went too so we took off in two vehicles late Friday morning and our first stop was at an outlet mall about an hour down the road. I shopped a bit and found some good deals then we piled in the car and drove until lunch time. After lunch we hit a traffic jam for about an hour trying to cross the state line into Illinois - moseyed on out of there and made it to Centralia, IL - home of the orphans - that's right their school mascot is an orphan. I promised a gal here from the church I attend now who is familiar with that area (her dad grew up around there) that I would stop at the local Wal-Mart and see if I could find her an Orphan's t-shirt. I was successful - I have one of my own that says "Proud Parent of a Centralia Orphan" - kinda funny eh?


Finally we made it to the motel and waited for the real festivities to start on Saturday. The morning brought a play date with one of my oldest (as in longest known, not number of years) friends that I have recently reconnected with - Vicki and her three kids met us at the park in Olney, IL where the kids played and hunted for the now elusive white squirrel. Here's a picture of the gang of kiddos....


And of Isaiah "pushing" Lillie in the swings....


Later on, since we were unsuccessful at finding a white squirrel in the park, we went to another little area suggested by Vicki, and we finally saw one as it scampered up a tree. The boys waited for a few minutes hoping that it would come back down - but no luck - at least they did catch a glimpse of one though - proving to them that their mom did not make up the story after all.


I'll let you know what else we did in the next post - this is getting to be pretty long, I think I will just have to create a part 2....