Summer Vacation

This has been a busy two weeks for me! Once the kids got out of school, it rained for days and days and Lucy got sick so we couldn't go to the pool for an entire week. The children were so whiny and bored. This week, we finally went on Monday and Wednesday. Lucy loved it! It was her first trip to the pool and she splashed and splashed and tried to put her face in the water. Drake got to wear his new Lightning McQueen arm floaties and kept drinking the water sneakily after I told him not to. Bart played with a school friend (a girl...) and Skylar got upset because she had to take the swim test all over again this year and it was SOOO tiring to swim the length of the pool (oh, the drama).
I took my Pharm Tech mid-term and scored a 101 - woo-hoo! I've been working a good deal and trying not to beat my children as they squabble non-stop over who has this toy and who had the audacity to LOOK at the other one the wrong way. (Mom and Dad, I am offering up a sincere, heart-felt apology for all the stupid crap Elsie and I used to fight over, like dirt and who was going to have their time-out in the "gray chair"). I am also sorry about the time we mud-wrestled outside in a puddle and threw vegetables into the fan blades to make tossed salad. And also the time we loosened all the screws on the kitchen and bathroom cabinet doors so they would fall on you guys when you opened them. I know I'm so going to be getting payback times four.
Bart had Tennis Camp all this week at the high school. He came home totally tanned, even though I slathered him with sunscreen. He really enjoyed it and there's supposed to even be a school team this year.
Thursday, I helped give my friend Vanessa a baby shower - I hope she enjoyed it, even though I gave the YW the OK to play the Baby Poo in the Diaper game (the one with melted candy bars, and you have to smell and try to guess what kind it is). I know it was totally disgusting, but there is something so satisfyingly juvenile about giggling over fake poo.
Friday was Dad's birthday, so we headed over to visit him and Diane today. We had a really good time and the kids were enjoying themselves so much they didn't really want to leave. Drake kept asking if they had "another one present" for him. You see, no matter who's birthday it is, Drake thinks that he should get a present, too. We stayed for several hours and had lunch with them. It's funny because most of my teenage years were spent desperately wanting to get away from where I had grown up, but now I get so nostalgic when we go back there. I know it's only 100 miles away from where we live now, but it's so different to drive through the wide, green fields with the corn and soybeans growing and to see all the old, white farmhouses. In the fall, the fields of cotton are about the closest we get to having snow. There's just something that makes me feel so at home. Driving through the country in the summer - to me that's part of the essence of my childhood, right up there with catching lighting bugs at dusk with my sister and drinking water straight from the waterhose after we had doused each other.
It is strangely quiet this evening. The neighbor kids, I think, have finally learned their lesson. This time last week, they decided to have a crazy, screaming pool party again. At 12:30, they woke Lucy up, who having been sick all week, needed every bit of sleep she could get. Well, she was MAD. She would not go back to sleep and screamed for the better part of an hour. I was so ticked off, I took the baby monitor outside and plugged it up on our back porch and turned it up full blast so the neighbor kids could listen to her scream for awhile. They did quiet down...but then they started up again after I had finally gotten Lucy settled back down. They were yelling and hitting this stupid beach ball back and forth (thwack! thwack!) and just being really really loud. I wasn't going to give them a chance to wake Lucy up again, so I just called the cops. Well, the cop broke up the little shindig and it got real quiet at last. I finally got to bed at 2:15 am. I was such a zombie the next morning! Like I said, I don't mind parties, but if they interfere with my baby's sleep (and therefore mine), there is going to be some trouble.
I would love to go to sleep tonight, but I am not feeling very well. I think I enjoyed dinner a little too much, if you know what I mean. Now I am paying for it.