Lunch with cousins

Monday was President's Day (no school!!) and so Charlotte and I wanted to get the kids together.  We met in Crawfordsville for a quick McDonald's lunch date.  We had a limited time because Katie had ballet that we had to get to.  I felt so bad when it was time to break up the fun.  Our kids do surprisingly well whenever we do anything together.  Despite the fact that we were loud (just by volume of people) the kids didn't run around screaming or being maniacs or get obnoxious or rude.  They sat and talked and talked and talked some more- although since they were all talking together it was loud in that way.  When it was time to go, Hunter and Elena were sitting at a table sit 6 inches away from each other nose to nose talking intensely about ninjas.  Anyway, they all behaved so nicely.  You know how you have people that you really like hanging out with because you know you're children will always get along nicely and be good??  That's Konrad, Elena, and Vaughn.
Here's some pictures of our nice lunch date.

I gave Coleson and Konrad money and sent them up to buy ice cream cones for all the kids. When I was gone in the bathroom changing Owen, Katie accidentally dropped her cone on the floor.  Charlotte said she handled it like a trooper (not even a tear) so we had to promptly replace hers.  Here's a picture of them all happily lapping up their ice cream.  Vaughn was enjoying his so much- it was pretty much the cutest thing of the day.


The other day I couldn't find my phone for anything.  I just knew I had brought it downstairs with me and I had only done one thing and then gone back upstairs.  So it had to be in that one place.  I looked all over for it and then finally in exasperation I said out loud, "what did I do with that phone?", to which Ethan promptly says in his adorable matter-of-fact voice, "oh well mom, I was keeping it safe for ya" as he goes right over to the cushion on the floor that he'd hidden my phone underneath.  Yea, keeping it safe for me...sure thing babe.

Jared gets to drive Katie to preschool 3 mornings a week (M,W,F) since I found a preschool just like a mile from his shop.  Very convenient.  So he drives her over and then I go in town at lunch-time to pick her up.  Anyway, Katelyn is a talker.  I've heard this is common of girls.  But it is so different from the boys.  Not that they are quiet- by ANY means.  But they just talk about stuff.  Most of it you can tune out.  Katelyn wants to have a conversation, though.  And most of the time she's talking about real things.  Like what we should do after school and what order things will happen in today.  Or how she had left something in a place at home and really hoped it'd be there when she got back or that she'd said something to someone and how they felt about it.  Conversation type things.  And she pretty much goes non-stop from one thing to another.  Constantly.  And it's worse when there's no brothers to have to share conversation time with. So Jared said the other morning that she was talking away and he pipes in with his occasional, "oh really?" when she says, "oh I wasn't talking to you, dad-I was talking to myself."  Ha!!!  Jared said it was so funny.  Then a little bit later she says, "OK dad now I'm talking to you".  Funny girl!

My Christmas decorations are still out. Ridiculous, I know, but true.  I have had them all collected and sitting on a shelf waiting to be actually wrapped up and put away in the Christmas boxes.  So last night I felt motivated to get the job done.  Katelyn really wanted to spend some time with me and do our girl things.  I said that I wasn't doing anything fun, just planning to spend the evening working on putting away the Christmas stuff.  She excitedly wanted to help too.  She's often like that.  She wants to help with dishes.  She wants to help with dusting.  Boring things that I usually get ditched to do alone.  I wonder if it's a girl thing or if she's just a helpful child or if it's that she's doing that follow her same gender parent to do whatever they do thing (the boys will do WHATEVER Jared does).  So I'm not really sure why she's like that- maybe it's all of those reasons together.  But I have to often remind myself to involve her in what I'm doing because I'm really not used to someone wanting to be with me.  Usually Jared is the cat's meow.  When he's home, no one wants to hang with me.  It's pretty nice to have a friend. 

We have a saying in our house, "Mom gets it done, and dad makes it fun".  Maybe that's why no one wants to hang with me.  I'm the task-master.  But that's what my job is.  I'm the manager.  That's what I do all day.  Coleson you need to do this, Hunter you need to do this, Katie this, Ethan this, and back to the beginning again.  On a good day I can keep everyone up and moving on what needs done and then by the time they wander off, their jobs are all done.  But if I don't stay on top of assigning and reminding, they wander off- jobs not done.  Then a little while later I'd have to try and roust them for their chores again.  So that's why I'm the no fun task master.  I need to work on being more fun.

That's it for today.